Concepts of containment, support, and degree of fit were investigated using nonverbal, preferential-looking tasks with 9- to 14-month-old infants and adults who were fluent in either English or Korean. Two contrasts were tested: tight containment vs. loose support (grammaticized as 'in' and 'on' in English by spatial prepositions and 'kkita' and 'nohta' in Korean by spatial verbs) and tight containment vs. loose containment (both grammaticized as 'in' in English but separately as 'kkita' and 'nehta' in Korean). Infants categorized both contrasts, suggesting conceptual readiness for learning such spatial semantics in either language. English-speaking adults categorized tight containment vs. loose support, but not tight vs. loose containment. However, Korean-speaking adults were successful at this latter contrast, which is lexicalized in their language. The adult data suggest that some spatial relations that are salient during the preverbal stage become less salient if language does not systematically encode them.

中文翻译：

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理解空间关系：灵活的婴儿，词汇成人

对 9 至 14 个月大的英语或韩语流利的婴儿和成年人使用非语言的、看起来优先的任务来研究遏制、支持和适合程度的概念。测试了两个对比：严格遏制与宽松支持（英语中的空间介词语法化为“in”和“on”，韩语中的空间动词语法化为“kkita”和“nohta”）和紧密遏制与松散遏制（两者都语法化在英语中为“in”，但在韩语中分别为“kkita”和“nehta”）。婴儿对两种对比进行了分类，表明在概念上准备好学习这两种语言中的这种空间语义。讲英语的成年人将严格遏制与松散支撑分类，但没有将严格遏制与松散遏制分类。然而，说韩语的成年人在后一种对比中取得了成功，这种对比在他们的语言中被词汇化。成人数据表明，如果语言没有系统地对它们进行编码，那么在前语言阶段一些显着的空间关系就会变得不那么显着。