As a spoken word unfolds over time, similar sounding words (cap and cat) compete until one word "wins". Lexical competition becomes more efficient from infancy through adolescence. We examined one potential mechanism underlying this development: lexical inhibition, by which activated candidates suppress competitors. In Experiment 1, younger (7-8 years) and older (12-13 years) children heard words (cap) in which the onset was manipulated to briefly boost competition from a cohort competitor (cat). This was compared to a condition with a nonword (cack) onset that would not inhibit the target. Words were presented in a visual world task during which eye movements were recorded. Both groups showed less looking to the target when perceiving the competitor-splice relative to the nonword-splice, showing engagement of lexical inhibition. Exploratory analyses of linguistic adaptation across the experiment revealed that older children demonstrated consistent lexical inhibition across the experiment and younger children did not, initially showing no effect in the first half of trials and then a robust effect in the latter half. In Experiment 2, adults also displayed consistent lexical inhibition in the same task. These findings suggest that younger children do not consistently engage lexical inhibition in typical listening but can quickly bring it online in response to certain linguistic experiences. Computational modeling showed that age-related differences are best explained by increased engagement of inhibition rather than growth in activation. These findings suggest that continued development of lexical inhibition in later childhood may underlie increases in efficiency of spoken word recognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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口语识别中词汇抑制的发展。

随着口语单词的展开，发音相似的单词（cap 和 cat）会相互竞争，直到一个单词“获胜”。从婴儿期到青春期，词汇竞争变得更加有效。我们研究了这一发展背后的一个潜在机制：词汇抑制，激活的候选人通过这种抑制来压制竞争对手。在实验 1 中，年龄较小（7-8 岁）和年龄较大（12-13 岁）的儿童听到的单词（cap）中的开头被操纵以短暂地促进来自同类竞争者（cat）的竞争。将此与不会抑制目标的非词 (cack) 起始条件进行比较。在记录眼球运动的视觉世界任务中呈现单词。相对于非单词拼接，两组在感知竞争拼接时都较少注视目标，显示出词汇抑制的参与。对整个实验中语言适应的探索性分析表明，年龄较大的儿童在整个实验中表现出一致的词汇抑制，而年龄较小的儿童则没有，最初在试验的前半部分没有效果，然后在后半部分表现出强烈的效果。在实验 2 中，成年人在同一任务中也表现出一致的词汇抑制。这些发现表明，年幼的孩子在典型的听力中不会一直进行词汇抑制，但可以迅速将其带到网上以响应某些语言体验。计算模型表明，与年龄相关的差异最好用抑制作用的增加而不是激活的增加来解释。这些发现表明，儿童后期词汇抑制的持续发展可能是提高口语识别效率的基础。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2023 APA，保留所有权利）。