Utterance-final position and pitch marking aid word learning in school-age children.
| Autor: | Filippi P; Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria., Laaha S; Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria., Fitch WT; Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria. |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Zdroj: | Royal Society open science [R Soc Open Sci] 2017 Aug 16; Vol. 4 (8), pp. 161035. Date of Electronic Publication: 2017 Aug 16 (Print Publication: 2017). |
| DOI: | 10.1098/rsos.161035 |
| Abstrakt: | 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 position, and was marked with a pitch contrast typical of IDS. Word learning occurred in all conditions except the control condition. Moreover, learning performance was significantly higher than that observed with simple co-occurrence ( control condition) only for the Pitch peak + Utterance-final condition. We conclude that, for school-age children, the combination of words' utterance-final alignment and pitch enhancement boosts word learning. Competing Interests: We declare we have no competing interests. |
| Databáze: | MEDLINE |
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