ABSTRACT

This study investigated age differences in the utilization of visually contrastive information (i.e., differently colored identical objects) for temporary referential ambiguity resolution during spoken sentence comprehension. Five- and 6-year-old Japanese children and adults listened to sentences that contained a color adjective-noun combination and identified the object that the noun phrase referred to from a visual scene. We examined the effects of visually contrastive information on either fixations on referent/competitor objects or pupil dilations. The results showed that participants of all age groups directed fewer gazes toward the referent object after they heard the adjectives, when the visually contrastive object was the competitor (i.e., not the referent). The 5-year-olds also directed fewer gazes toward the referent when the contrastive object was the referent. With regard to pupil dilations, no significant effects emerged among adults; however, the pupil dilations of 6-year-olds were larger when the displays contained visually contrastive information than when they did not. The pupil dilations of 5-year-olds were smaller when the referent was one of the contrastive objects. These results suggest that young children’s utilization of visually contrastive information is not fully mature and that it may begin with scalar adjectives and eventually generalize to non-scalar adjectives.

摘要

这项研究调查了口头理解过程中使用暂时性参照歧义解决视觉对比信息（即不同颜色的相同对象）时的年龄差异。五岁和六岁的日本儿童和成年人听着包含颜色形容词-名词组合的句子，并从视觉场景中识别出名词短语所指的对象。我们检查了视觉对比信息对参考对象/竞争对手对象注视或瞳孔散大的影响。结果显示，当视觉对比对象是竞争者（而不是参考对象）时，所有年龄段的参与者在听到形容词后，将较少的目光指向参考对象。当以对比对象为参照物时，五岁儿童也将较少的目光对准参照物。关于瞳孔扩大，在成年人中没有出现明显的影响。然而，当显示器包含视觉对比信息时，6岁儿童的瞳孔散大比没有显示器时更大。当目标对象是对比对象之一时，5岁儿童的瞳孔扩张较小。这些结果表明，幼儿对视觉对比信息的利用还不完全成熟，并且可能始于标量形容词，并最终推广到非标量形容词。当显示器包含视觉对比信息时，6岁儿童的瞳孔扩大要比不包含视觉对比信息时大。当目标对象是对比对象之一时，5岁儿童的瞳孔扩张较小。这些结果表明，幼儿对视觉对比信息的利用还不完全成熟，并且可能始于标量形容词，并最终推广到非标量形容词。当显示器包含视觉对比信息时，6岁儿童的瞳孔散大比没有显示器时。当目标对象是对比对象之一时，5岁儿童的瞳孔扩张较小。这些结果表明，幼儿对视觉对比信息的利用还不完全成熟，并且可能始于标量形容词，并最终推广到非标量形容词。