Background data for: Stable organization of the early lexical-semantic network in 18- and 24-month-old preterm and full-term infants: an eye-tracker study

Description of dataset The dataset presents the results of the investigation of the early lexical-semantic knowledge organization capabilities of 18- and 24-month-old toddlers. We were interested in the maturational differences in age and language proficiency. We included full-term (FT) and late preterm (PT) Hungarian-speaking infants. The PT and FT groups were matched according to their maturational ages. We conducted an infant-adapted target-absent Visual World Paradigm for eye-tracker presenting a Target Word verbally. It was followed by a visual panel with four pictures (aphonological distractor, a categorical distractor, and two unrelated images). We also tested children with the Hungarian version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). The dataset includes descriptive data of the participants, the CDI results (word count per category and the total sentence length), and fixation duration and count data registered by the eye-tracker for the presented stimuli. We provide the raw fixation data and the calculated variables per stimulus picture categories.
Article abstract An 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. We 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. We 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. In general, our study demonstrated a stable lexical-semantic organization between 18 and 24 months of age, regardless of maturational differences.

本数据集详述了对18个月和24个月大幼儿早期词汇-语义知识组织能力的调查研究结果。本研究旨在探究年龄与语言熟练程度之间的成熟差异。研究纳入了足月（FT）和晚期早产（PT）的匈牙利语婴儿。PT组和FT组在成熟年龄上进行了匹配。研究采用了适用于婴儿的、目标词缺失的视觉世界范式，通过眼动追踪器呈现目标词，随后展示包含四幅图片的视觉面板（非语音干扰项、分类干扰项以及两幅无关图像）。此外，我们还使用了匈牙利版的麦克阿瑟-贝茨沟通发展量表（CDI）对儿童进行了测试。数据集包括参与者的描述性数据、CDI结果（每个类别的词汇计数及总句子长度）、以及眼动追踪器记录的呈现刺激的注视时间和次数数据。我们提供了原始的注视数据以及针对每个刺激图片类别的计算变量。

文章摘要：有序的心理词汇库通过在语言处理过程中引导注意力，决定了新信息的获取。24个月大的儿童已表现出类似成人的词汇-语义知识组织能力。然而，关于18个月大儿童的组织能力的研究结果相互矛盾，因此我们的目标是检查该年龄段儿童的词汇-语义组织。在早产儿中，发现听觉-视觉整合缺陷与语言感知中断同时存在。通过将校正年龄的晚期早产儿纳入本研究，我们旨在测试成熟差异是否会影响词汇增长迅速时的词汇-语义组织。我们通过使用略作修改的原始视觉世界范式眼动追踪任务，对47名晚期早产儿和足月18个月及24个月大的婴儿进行了测试。我们发现，与中性图片相比，词汇和语义干扰项的注视时间更长。语言熟练程度和年龄均未影响注视时间的结果。我们发现，在分类和关联语义关系之间存在年龄差异。在分类关系的初始处理中，成熟差异是可检测的，早产组的处理在注视时间的前半部分略有延迟且存在质的差异。表达词汇的大小和组成仅随年龄而异。总的来说，我们的研究证明了18至24个月大的儿童之间，无论成熟差异如何，都存在稳定的词汇-语义组织。