Utterance-final position and pitch marking aid word learning in school-age children

We investigated the effects of word order and prosody on word learning in school-age children. Third graders viewed photographs belonging to one of three semantic categories while hearing four-word nonsense utterances containing a target word. In the control condition, all words had the same pitch and, across trials, the position of the target word was varied systematically within each utterance. The only cue to word–meaning mapping was the co-occurrence of target words and referents. This cue was present in all conditions. In the Utterance-final condition, the target word always occurred in utterance-final position, and at the same fundamental frequency as all the other words of the utterance. In the Pitch peak condition, the position of the target word was varied systematically within each utterance across trials, and produced with pitch contrasts typical of infant-directed speech (IDS). In the Pitch peak + Utterance-final condition, the target word always occurred in utterance-final ...

本研究考察了词序与韵律对学龄儿童词汇学习的影响。三年级学生在聆听包含目标词的四词无意义话语的同时，观看隶属于三种语义类别之一的图片。在控制条件下，所有单词的音高均保持一致，且在各试次中，目标词在每段话语内的位置会被系统地变化。词汇-语义映射的唯一线索为目标词与指称对象的共现关系，该线索在所有实验条件中均存在。在话语末尾条件（Utterance-final condition）下，目标词始终处于话语末尾位置，且其基频与话语中其余所有单词保持一致。在音高峰值条件（Pitch peak condition）下，各试次中目标词在每段话语内的位置会被系统地变化，且其发音带有婴儿导向言语（infant-directed speech, IDS）典型的音高反差特征。在音高峰值+话语末尾条件（Pitch peak + Utterance-final condition）下，目标词始终处于话语末尾……