When listening to speech, adults rely on context to anticipate upcoming words. Evidence for this comes from studies demonstrating that the N400, an event-related potential (ERP) that indexes ease of lexical-semantic processing, is influenced by the predictability of a word in context. We know far less about the role of context in children’s speech comprehension. The present study explored lexical processing in adults and 5–10-year-old children as they listened to a story. ERPs time-locked to the onset of every word were recorded. Each content word was coded for frequency, semantic association, and predictability. In both children and adults, N400s reflect word predictability, even when controlling for frequency and semantic association. These findings suggest that both adults and children use top-down constraints from context to anticipate upcoming words when listening to stories.

中文翻译：

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理解上下文中的单词：儿童词汇处理的自然脑电图研究

在听演讲时，成年人依靠上下文来预测即将到来的单词。这方面的证据来自于研究，该研究表明 N400 是一种事件相关电位 (ERP)，用于衡量词汇语义处理的难易程度，它受到上下文中单词的可预测性的影响。我们对上下文在儿童言语理解中的作用知之甚少。本研究探讨了成人和 5-10 岁儿童听故事时的词汇处理。记录了时间锁定在每个单词出现时间的 ERP。每个内容词都根据频率、语义关联和可预测性进行编码。无论是儿童还是成人，N400 都反映了单词的可预测性，即使在控制频率和语义关联的情况下也是如此。这些发现表明，成人和儿童在听故事时都会利用上下文中自上而下的约束来预测即将出现的单词。