ABSTRACT

The current study examined the effect of speaker variability on children’s cross-situational word learning (XSWL). The study also examined the role of bilingual experience and sustained attention. Forty English monolingual children and 40 Spanish-English bilingual children ages 4–7 completed a XSWL task in a Single Speaker Condition and a Multiple Speaker Condition. Results indicated that speaker variability neither facilitated nor hindered XSWL. While monolingual children outperformed bilingual children, speaker-variability effects did not fluctuate across the two language groups. Notably, exposure to multiple speakers facilitated XSWL in children with poorer sustained attention skills, suggesting that variability in the input may be especially useful to children with poorer cognitive processing abilities.

摘要

目前的研究检查了说话人的可变性对儿童跨情境单词学习 (XSWL) 的影响。该研究还考察了双语经验和持续关注的作用。40 名英语单语儿童和 40 名 4-7 岁的西班牙语-英语双语儿童完成了单语者条件和多语者条件下的 XSWL 任务。结果表明，说话人的可变性既没有促进也没有阻碍 XSWL。虽然单语儿童的表现优于双语儿童，但说话人差异效应在两个语言组之间没有波动。值得注意的是，在持续注意力技能较差的儿童中，接触多个说话者会促进 XSWL，这表明输入的可变性可能对认知处理能力较差的儿童特别有用。