Data_Sheet_1_Stable organization of the early lexical-semantic network in 18- and 24-month-old preterm and full-term infants: an eye-tracker study.docx

IntroductionAn organized mental lexicon determines new information acquisition by orienting attention during language processing. Adult-like lexical-semantic knowledge organization has already been demonstrated in 24-month-olds. However, the outcomes of earlier studies have been contradictory in terms of the organizational capacities of 18-month-olds, thus our aim was to examine lexical-semantic organization in this younger age group. In prematurely born infants, audiovisual integration deficits have been found alongside disruptions in language perception. By including late preterm infants with corrected ages in our study, we aimed to test whether maturational differences influence lexical-semantic organization when vocabulary is growing rapidly.MethodsWe tested 47 late preterm and full-term 18- and 24-month-old infants by means of an infant-adapted target-absent task using a slightly modified version of the original visual world paradigm for eye tracker.ResultsWe found a longer fixation duration for the lexical and semantic distractors compared to the neutral pictures. Neither language proficiency nor age affected the looking time results. We found a dissociation by age between taxonomic and associative semantic relations. Maturational differences were detectable in the initial processing of taxonomic relations, as processing in the preterm group was slightly delayed and qualitatively different in the first half of the looking time. The size and composition of the expressive vocabulary differed only by age.DiscussionIn general, our study demonstrated a stable lexical-semantic organization between 18 and 24 months of age, regardless of maturational differences.

引言：有序的心理词汇库通过在语言处理过程中定位注意力，决定了新信息的获取。在24个月大的儿童中，类似于成人的词汇-语义知识组织已被证实。然而，早期研究的结果在18个月大的儿童的组织能力方面存在矛盾，因此，我们的目标是检查这一年龄组的词汇-语义组织。在早产儿中，发现音频-视觉整合缺陷与语言感知中断并存。通过在我们的研究中纳入校正年龄的晚期早产儿，我们旨在测试成熟度差异是否会影响词汇快速增长时的词汇-语义组织。方法：我们通过使用略微修改的原始视觉世界范式，采用婴儿适应的目标缺失任务，测试了47名晚期早产儿和足月儿18个月和24个月大的婴儿。结果：我们发现，与中性图片相比，词汇和语义干扰物的注视持续时间更长。语言熟练程度和年龄均未影响注视时间结果。我们发现，在年龄之间，分类和联想语义关系存在分离。在处理分类关系时，可检测到成熟度差异，早产儿组的处理在注视时间的上半部分略有延迟且质量上有所不同。表达词汇的大小和组成仅随年龄而变化。讨论：总的来说，我们的研究证明了在18至24个月大之间，词汇-语义组织稳定，无论成熟度差异如何。