自然阅读中儿童和成人新词学习能力的差异比较:基于眼动的证据

从读者重复学习新词时眼动行为经历的变化,揭示儿童和成人自然阅读中新词学习能力的差异。构造双字假词作为新词,将其嵌在五个语境中,记录儿童和成人阅读时的眼动轨迹。结果发现:随着新词学习次数的递增,儿童和成人在新词上的首次注视时间呈相同变化;在对新词的凝视时间和再注视概率上,成人在第二次阅读时就大幅下降,而小学生在第四次阅读时才开始下降。表明成人新词学习能力高于儿童体现在词汇加工的相对晚期阶段。     

Self control of when and how much to test face-name pairs in a novel spaced retrieval paradigm: An examination of age-related differences

ABSTRACT Although the mnemonic benefit of spaced retrieval is well established, the way in which participants naturally space their own retrieval is relatively unexplored. To examine this question, a novel experimental paradigm was developed in which young and healthy older adults were given control over the frequency and timing of retrieval practice in the context of an ongoing reading task. Results showed that both age groups naturally expanded the intervals of their retrieval practice. When instructed, younger adults but not older adults were better able to employ equal spaced retrieval during retrieval practice. However, even under equal spaced retrieval instructions, young adults included an early retrieval attempt prior to equally spacing their retrieval. Although memory performance was equivalent, secondary task performance was reduced in the experimenter-instructed condition compared with the participant-selected condition. The results overall indicate that both younger and older participants naturally monitor their memory and efficiently use testing to titrate the number and timing of retrieval attempts used during the acquisition phase.     

Effects of contextual diversity on semantic decision and reading aloud: evidence from a word learning study in English as a second language / Efectos de la diversidad contextual en la decisión semántica y la lectura en voz alta: evidencia de un estudio de aprendizaje de palabras en inglés como segundo idioma

This experiment investigated contextual diversity effects on novel word learning in English as a second language (L2). A group of advanced English speakers, whose native language was Spanish, participated in the study. Participants learned the meaning of real but obscure words that were embedded in either two or 12 different sentences and learned over two days (frequency of exposure was kept constant). On day three, participants were tested using reading aloud and semantic decision tasks. The results showed that participants learned the meaning of words in both conditions fairly well as revealed by their accuracy in the semantic decision task. However, words experienced in 12 different contexts generated more accurate and faster reaction times (RTs), suggesting the acquisition of more robust semantic representations. Strikingly, reading latencies were also faster for the 12-sentence condition, which might imply that semantics has an effect on reading newly learned words in English as a second language. These results are discussed and accommodated in view of the DRC and the PDP models of single-word reading.     

新词词素熟悉性影响视觉词切分线索在新词学习中的促进作用

为考察词素熟悉性是否会影响视觉词切分线索在新词学习中的作用,本研究中新词由两类假词构成：第一类假词由两个高频字（高熟悉性词素）组成,第二类假词由两个低频字（低熟悉性词素）组成。实验采用学习-测试范式,将新词镶嵌在句子中供大学生被试阅读。结果发现,相比由低熟悉性词素构成的新词,词间空格在由高熟悉词素构成的新词中起到的促进作用更大。表明在汉语阅读过程中,词素熟悉性可能作为一种线索参与词切分。     

How aging affects the reading of words in noisy backgrounds

Young and old adults were shown simple sentences masked by visual noise. In half of the sentences, the final word was predictable; in the other half, it was not. The older participants were able to identify the same number of final words as the younger ones only when the intensity of the visual noise was significantly diminished. However, the difference in the number of correct identifications between predictable and unpredictable conditions was higher for the older observers than for the younger observers, indicating that older observers benefit from context more.     

Becoming a written word: Eye movements reveal order of acquisition effects following incidental exposure to new words during silent reading

We know that from mid-childhood onwards most new words are learned implicitly via reading; however, most word learning studies have taught novel items explicitly. We examined incidental word learning during reading by focusing on the well-documented finding that words which are acquired early in life are processed more quickly than those acquired later. Novel words were embedded in meaningful sentences and were presented to adult readers early (day 1) or later (day 2) during a five-day exposure phase. At test adults read the novel words in semantically neutral sentences. Participants’ eye movements were monitored throughout exposure and test. Adults also completed a surprise memory test in which they had to match each novel word with its definition. Results showed a decrease in reading times for all novel words over exposure, and significantly longer total reading times at test for early than late novel words. Early-presented novel words were also remembered better in the offline test. Our results show that order of presentation influences processing time early in the course of acquiring a new word, consistent with partial and incremental growth in knowledge occurring as a function of an individual’s experience with each word.     

来源记忆中背景的情绪效价与唤醒对提取过程的影响

以往研究表明情绪背景对来源记忆存在影响,但背景的情绪效价和唤醒如何影响熟悉性及回想尚存争议。本研究以ERPs技术作为测量手段,采用来源记忆多键范式,操纵背景的情绪效价及唤醒强度,以探讨编码阶段背景情绪影响来源记忆提取的认知神经机制。学习阶段,呈现中性汉字及情绪图片（正性高唤醒、正性低唤醒、负性高唤醒、负性低唤醒）;测验阶段,仅呈现汉字,被试进行五键判断。行为结果发现：来源正确的比率比来源错误的比率更高,反应时更短;同时提取正性背景的辨别力更强,反应时更短;提取高唤醒背景反应时更短。脑电结果发现了分别代表熟悉性及回想的FN400及LPC新旧效应,且在500～700 ms,提取正性背景及高唤醒背景诱发显著更正的ERPs,但效价与唤醒没有交互作用。总体来说,来源记忆中背景效价及唤醒度对回想过程存在独立影响,体现为正性背景及高唤醒背景对来源提取的促进作用。     

Context length and reading novel words: An eye‐movement investigation

The current study investigated the effects of context length on the processing of novel words. Participants read real adjectives or novel words embedded in either sentence or paragraph contexts while their eye movements were recorded. The results extend the literature on novel word reading by exploring the time‐course of word processing using realistic contexts derived from existing sources. Eye‐movement measures demonstrated that readers were very sensitive to the presence of novel words. Novel words were more likely to be fixated and had longer reading times than real words. In addition, words in sentence contexts had longer gaze durations than words in paragraphs. The effect of novelty on reading the target word did not vary as a function of the context length. While performance on the surprise post‐test did not demonstrate significant word learning, participants did report higher confidence in correct responses than incorrect, suggesting that some learning took place.     

Positional character frequency and word spacing facilitate the acquisition of novel words during Chinese children's reading

Children's eye movements were recorded to examine the role of word spacing and positional character frequency on the process of Chinese lexical acquisition during reading. Three types of two-character novel pseudowords were constructed: words containing characters in positions in which they frequently occurred (congruent), words containing characters in positions they do not frequently occur in (incongruent) and words containing characters that do not have a strong position bias (balanced). There were two phases within the experiment, a learning phase and a test phase. There were also two learning groups: half the children read sentences in a word-spaced format and the other half read the sentences in an unspaced format during the learning phase. All the participants read normal, unspaced text at test. A benefit of word spacing was observed in the learning phase, but not at test. Also, facilitatory effects of positional character congruency were found both in the learning and test phase; however, this benefit was greatly reduced at test. Furthermore, we did not find any interaction between word spacing and positional character frequencies, indicating that these two types of cues affect lexical acquisition independently. With respect to theoretical accounts of lexical acquisition, we argue that word spacing might facilitate the very earliest stages of word learning by clearly demarking word boundary locations. In contrast, we argue that characters' positional frequencies might affect relatively later stages of word learning.     

Effects of feedback and test practice on recollection and retrieval monitoring: comparing first graders,third graders,and adults*

We tested the effects of repeated testing and feedback on recollection accuracy in first graders, third graders, and adults. All participants studied a list of words and pictures, and then took three recollection tests, with each test probing different words and pictures from the earlier study phase. On the first and third tests no feedback was given, whereas on the second test, some subjects received item-level feedback throughout the recollection test. Recollection confusion scores declined across successive tests in all age groups. However, explicit feedback did not improve recollection accuracy or reduce recollection confusions in any age group. We also found that all age groups were able to use picture recollections in a disqualifying monitoring strategy without task experience or feedback. As a whole, these findings suggest that children and adults can use some aspects of retrieval monitoring without feedback or practice, whereas other aspects of retrieval monitoring can benefit from test practice in children and adults. We discuss the potential roles of metacognitive learning and unintended social feedback on these test practice effects.     

不同情境转换对重复学习条件下类别-例词回忆的影响

为了考察重复学习条件下内部心境转换和外部情境转换对类别-例词回忆的影响,本研究参考提取练习范式,进行了两个实验。实验1选取96名被试,在初始学习与重复学习阶段之间通过指导语操纵被试维持初始学习时的心境,或转换为合作心境,或转换为竞争心境;实验2选取64名被试,被试在不同外部情境中进行初始学习和重复学习,测试时或处于初始学习的情境,或处于重复学习的情境。回忆测验的结果显示:与未经历重复学习的基线词相比,同类别重学的例词回忆率高于基线词,表现出促进现象;当发生内部心境转换,或发生外部情境转换且在重复学习的情境测试时,同类别中未重学例词的回忆率低于基线词,表现出削弱现象;当发生外部情境转换但在初始学习情境测试时,同类别未重学例词的回忆却高于基线词。可采用联结凸显-曝光-线索扩展性的三维度观点解释这一结果。     

Semantic context influences memory for verbs more than memory for nouns

Three experiments revealed that memory for verbs is more dependent on semantic context than is memory for nouns. The participants in Experiment 1 were asked to remember either nouns or verbs from intransitive sentences. A recognition test included verbatim sentences, sentences with an old noun and a new verb, sentences with an old verb and a new noun, and entirely new sentences. Memory for verbs was significantly better when the verb was presented with the same noun at encoding and at retrieval. This contextual effect was much smaller for nouns. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated this effect and provided evidence that context effects reflect facilitation from bringing to mind the same meaning of a verb at encoding and at retrieval. Memory for verbs may be more dependent on semantic context because the meanings of verbs are more variable across semantic contexts than are the meanings of nouns.     

The influence of consistency, frequency, and semantics on learning to read: an artificial orthography paradigm

Two experiments explored learning, generalization, and the influence of semantics on orthographic processing in an artificial language. In Experiment 1, 16 adults learned to read 36 novel words written in novel characters. Posttraining, participants discriminated trained from untrained items and generalized to novel items, demonstrating extraction of individual character sounds. Frequency and consistency effects in learning and generalization showed that participants were sensitive to the statistics of their learning environment. In Experiment 2, 32 participants were preexposed to the sounds of all items (lexical phonology) and to novel definitions for half of these items (semantics). Preexposure to either lexical phonology or semantics boosted the early stages of orthographic learning relative to Experiment 1. By the end of training, facilitation was restricted to the semantic condition and to items containing low-frequency inconsistent vowels. Preexposure reduced generalization, suggesting that enhanced item-specific learning was achieved at the expense of character-sound abstraction. The authors' novel paradigm provides a new tool to explore orthographic learning. Although the present findings support the idea that semantic knowledge supports word reading processes, they also suggest that item-specific phonological knowledge is important in the early stages of learning to read.     

The effect of verbal elaborations on memory in young and older adults

The Stein paradigm was used to examine the circumstances under which verbal elaborations enhance memory in young and older adults. Subjects studied target adjectives that were embedded in one of three sentence contexts that varied in elaboration of the subject-adjective relationship: (1) nonelaborated base sentences; (2) base sentences with semantically consistent, but arbitrary verbal, elaborations; and (3) base sentences with explanatory verbal elaborations that clarified the significance of the subject-adjective relationship. The presence of the elaborations was varied at encoding and retrieval, and cued recall of the target adjectives was tested with incidental and intentional learning procedures. In Experiments 1A and 1B, explanatory elaborations at encoding and retrieval yielded the largest memorial facilitation for both young and older adults, and the benefit was comparable for the incidental and intentional learning measures. In Experiment 2, age-related differences in recall were minimal with explanatory elaborations at encoding and retrieval, but larger age differences occurred in the nonelaborated comparison conditions. In Experiment 3, explanatory elaborations present at encoding but not at retrieval enhanced recall when the original Stein stimuli were used, but not with the present stimuli. The implications of these results with regard to the mnemonic efficacy of verbal elaborations for young and older adults are discussed.     

Does limiting pre-movement time during practice eliminate the benefit of practicing while expecting to teach?

Past research has revealed practicing and studying a motor skill with the expectation of teaching it to another person increases the amount of time participants spend preparing for movement during practice trials of the skill. However, it is unknown whether the increased motor preparation time explains the benefit of expecting to teach on motor learning. To address this question, we had participants practice golf putting with the expectation of teaching the skill to another participant the following day or the expectation of being tested on the skill the following day. We limited the motor preparation time for half of the participants who expected to teach and half of the participants who expected to test, and allowed the remaining participants to take as much motor preparation time as they liked. All participants were tested on their putting the next day. We predicted that participants who expected to teach would exhibit superior posttest performance, but this benefit would be exclusive to those participants who also practiced with unlimited motor preparation. Although the current data did not support this hypothesis, we also conducted an exploratory analysis in which we aggregated data from two prior experiments. This cumulative analysis suggested that expecting to teach does indeed enhance motor learning, but not through motor preparation during practice.     

WORKING MEMORY CAPACITY DISSOCIATES LEXICAL AND SENTENTIAL CONTEXT EFFECTS

Abstract— Semantically associated and unassociated word pairs were embedded in normal meaningful sentences and in sentences that were semantically anomalous throughout The influence of lexical context was isolated via comparison of responses to the second words of the associated and unassociated pairs. The influence of sentence-level context was isolated by comparing responses to the same words in the two sentence types Subjects of high, medium and low working memory capacity (as evaluated by the reading span test) showed modulations of event-related brain potentials in response so lexical context. In contrast, only the high- and medium-capacity groups were responsive to purely sentence-level semantic context. The results demonstrate that sentential context influences the processing of words in intermediate sentence positions at normal reading speeds but that the on-line utilization of this context is more demanding of working memory than single-word contexts.     

Strategy development and learning to spell new words: generalization of a process

The authors used microgenetic methods in 2 experiments to examine children's and adults' progress from initial attempts at spelling nonwords to later direct memory retrieval of the spellings. Participants repeatedly spelled nonwords presented in computerized, dictated-word spelling tests over several weeks. Following each spelling, participants provided retrospective strategy reports. Half of the children showed a gradual shift from spelling words with effortful backup strategies to fast retrieval; half of the children continued using backup strategies that were fast and effective for them. Relatively more adults shifted from backup strategies to retrieval, but otherwise their patterns of spelling development were quite similar to those of the children. This research provides support for the generalizability of the overlapping waves model to nonalgorithmic domains. It also demonstrates parallels between children and adults in learning to spell new words.     

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Naturalistic studies have reported contextual facilitation of oral reading in passage‐length materials, but inconsistent results have been obtained in studies of sentence‐long contexts. While studies of intrasentence contextual facilitation effects constitute conservative tests of top‐down reading theories, failure to observe such effects raises serious doubts concerning the scope of those theories. The present study examined both quantitative and qualitative aspects of children's oral reading of words in isolation and in sentence‐length contexts. Results indicated that, although sentence‐long context did not facilitate reading accuracy, children did appear to be exploiting contextual information in their reading of sentences, with a relatively high proportion of reading errors being contextually acceptable. Introspective data suggested that children may have adopted different reading strategies in the two context conditions, using a slower, bottom‐up strategy for words in isolation and a fluent, top‐down strategy for the sentences.     

Dual-coding, context-availability, and concreteness effects in sentence comprehension: an electrophysiological investigation.

Event-related potentials were recorded in 2 experiments while participants read sentences in a word-by-word congruency judgment task. Sentence final words were either congruent, semantically anomalous (Experiments 1 and 2), or neutral (Experiment 2) with respect to sentence context. Half of all final words referred to concrete and half to abstract concepts. A different scalp distribution of the N400 to concrete and abstract final words was found for anomalous and neutral, but not congruent sentences. Although the interaction of context and concreteness is consistent with the context-availability model, the differential scalp distribution of effects for concrete and abstract words, as well as larger context effects for concrete words, was interpreted as being more consistent with an extended dual-code account of semantic processing.     

Acquisition of early words from single-word and sentential contexts

Toddlers 15 and 18 months of age were exposed to audiovisual recordings of two novel words paired with novel toys. The words were presented in familiar sentence frames or in isolation. Linguistic context had a greater effect on younger than on older infants. Specifically, 15-month-old boys exhibited successful learning only in the context of single words, and 15-month-old girls did so only for words presented in sentences. Older infants acquired the new words from both contexts, and they learned more rapidly than younger infants. Receptive and expressive vocabulary made no independent contribution to performance.