Abstract:
This study examined grammatical gender processing in school-aged children with varying levels of cumulative English exposure. Children participated in a visual world paradigm with a four-picture display where they heard a gendered article followed by a target noun and were in the context where all images were the same gender (same gender), where all of the distractor images were the opposite gender than the target noun (different gender), and where all of the distractor images were the opposite gender, but there was a mismatch in the gendered article and target noun pair. We investigated 51 children (aged 5;0-10;0) who were exposed to Spanish since infancy but varied in their amount of cumulative English exposure. In addition to the visual word paradigm, all children completed an article-noun naming task, a grammaticality judgment task, and standardized vocabulary tests. Parents reported on their child\'s cumulative English language exposure and current English language use. To investigate the time course of lexical facilitation effects, looks to the target were analyzed with a cluster-based permutation test. The results revealed that all children used gender in a facilitatory way (during the noun region), and comprehension was significantly inhibited when the article-noun pairing was ungrammatical rather than grammatical. Compared to children with less cumulative English exposure, children with more cumulative English exposure looked at the target noun significantly less often overall, and compared to younger children, older children looked at the target noun significantly more often overall. Additionally, children with lower cumulative English exposure looked at target nouns more in the different-gender condition than the same-gender condition for masculine items more than feminine items.
摘要:
这项研究检查了累积英语暴露水平不同的学龄儿童的语法性别处理。孩子们参与了一个视觉世界的范式,展示了一个四幅图片,他们听到了一个有性别的文章,然后是一个目标名词,并且在所有图像都是相同性别(相同性别)的背景下,其中所有干扰者的图像都是与目标名词相反的性别(不同的性别),所有干扰者的图像都是相反的性别,但是性别化的文章和目标名词对不匹配。我们调查了51名儿童(5岁;0-10岁;0),这些儿童自婴儿期以来就暴露于西班牙语,但其累积英语暴露量各不相同。除了视觉词范式,所有孩子都完成了文章名词命名任务,语法判断任务,和标准化的词汇测试。父母报告了他们孩子的累积英语语言接触和当前英语语言使用情况。为了研究词汇促进效应的时间过程,对目标的外观进行了基于聚类的置换测试分析。结果显示,所有儿童都以便利的方式使用性别(在名词区域),当文章-名词配对是非语法而不是语法时,理解力受到显着抑制。与累积英语接触较少的孩子相比,累积英语暴露更多的孩子在整体上看目标名词的频率明显较低,与年幼的孩子相比,年龄较大的儿童更经常地查看目标名词。此外,与女性项目相比,英语累积暴露量较低的儿童在不同性别条件下对目标名词的观察更多。