汉字习得的年龄效应:语音完整性假设的检验

采用语音匹配任务,考察汉字习得的年龄效应及其语音完整性假设的合理性。实验1首先采用整体语音匹配任务,证明了语音匹配实验范式的有效性。实验2和实验3分别采用声母匹配和韵母匹配任务,即事先呈现汉字的声母或者韵母,之后呈现汉字,要求被试判断呈现汉字的声母或者韵母是否与事先呈现的语音片段相同。结果发现,部分语音提取的任务中存在汉字习得的年龄效应,表现为早习得的汉字,无论声母和韵母的提取都比晚习得汉字声母和韵母的提取容易。研究结果不支持语音完整性假设,任意映射假设能够解释本研究的结果。     

聋大学生的词汇习得年龄效应

通过3个实验, 考察了聋大学生的词汇习得年龄效应。实验1采用汉字命名任务和图片命名任务, 被试使用手语命名, 发现在图片命名中存在着词汇习得年龄效应, 在汉字命名中未出现此效应。实验2和实验3分别采用汉字词语义分类任务和图片语义分类任务, 要求被试做生命物和非生命物的判断, 发现在两个语义分类任务中均出现了词汇习得年龄效应。整个研究表明, 在控制了语音因素之后, 语义因素在聋生的词汇习得年龄效应产生中具有重要的作用, 从而支持了语义假设。     

汉语词汇习得的年龄效应：语义假设的证据

通过三个实验考察了词汇加工中的习得年龄效应。实验一对比了汉字命名和图片命名中词汇习得的年龄效应,发现图片命名中存在着较大的词汇习得的年龄效应,汉字命名中没有出现这种效应。实验二和实验三分别采用语义范畴判断任务和图片语义分类任务,两个实验均发现了词汇习得的年龄效应。实验结果说明,词汇习得的年龄效应至少部分来源于语义加工的层次,结果支持了语义假设的观点     

在回忆性同一判断中汉字信息提取的研究

继《再认性同一判断中汉字信息的提取》一文之后,我们作了《回忆性同一判断中汉字信息的提取》的研究,进一步研究了在同一性判断中汉字信息的提取问题,旨在比较在回忆与再认条件下人们对汉字信息提取的特点。结果表明,在回忆条件下意同判断的反应时最长,音近其次,形似最短。形似与意同判断,音近与意同判断间反应时差异显著,音近与形似之间不显著。 与前次实验相比。在回忆条件下语音的作用提高了,但形的作用仍然很大,说明字形与字音的编码对提取语义信息都有重要作用。同时,在回忆条件下,特征干扰都大于一般分心物的作用,说明单词的各种特征都影响到汉字信息的提取。     

潮汕话-普通话双言者的词汇习得年龄效应

采用潮汕话-普通话双言者为被试, 通过3个实验, 考察了词汇习得年龄效应。实验1采用汉字命名和图片命名范式, 证实了在双言者的两种语言中都存在词汇习得年龄效应。实验2和实验3分别采用语义范畴判断及声母监控任务, 在语义层面及语音层面检验了双言者的两种语言的词汇习得年龄效应的特点。结果表明, 在语义任务上发现了词汇习得年龄效应, 在语音任务上未发现。整个研究表明, 语义在汉语词汇习得年龄效应产生中具有重要作用, 支持了语义假设。     

任务性质、家族大小和词类一致性对义符语法信息激活的影响

采用义符启动范式,考察任务性质、家族大小和词类一致性对义符语法信息激活的影响。实验1通过词汇判断任务和词性判断任务的比较,发现义符的语法信息激活具有任务特定性:只有在直接针对词类的词性判断任务中,义符的语法信息才比较容易显现。实验1的结果为实验2的任务选择奠定了基础。实验2考察在词性判断任务中,义符的家族大小和词类一致性对义符语法信息激活的影响,发现家族大小和词类一致性都是影响义符语法信息激活的重要变量,具体表现为大家族义符和高词类一致性义符在语法信息激活上具有促进效应。     

再认性同一判断中汉字信息的提取

我们用Condry和Levy(1979)的实验方法,研究了在同一性判断中汉字信息的提取。实验中,大学生和小学生各30名在四种干扰条件(形似干扰、音近干扰、意同干扰和控制干扰)下,分别对汉字进行同一性判断(形似、音近、意同)。结果表明,大学生与小学生进行同一性判断的反应时,有明显的年龄差异;在同一年龄组内,形似判断的反应时最短,音近判断稍长.而意同判断最长。音近和意同的差别不显著。形似对意同判断的干扰,大于音近对意同判断的干扰。这说明,在现有的实验条件下,语音编码并不是提取意义的一个必不可少的阶段。这一结论是和神经心理学的某些发现一致的。     

聋生汉字识别的同音判断与启动效应实验研究

本研究采用暂同形似、音同形异、音异形似和无关字四类汉字字组为实验材料．每类字组都按汉字使用频率分为低频字、中频字、高频字三种．对使用手语聋生和使用口语聋生进行了同音判断和启动效应实验,旨在探究聋生在汉字识别过程中语音编码所起的作用。实验结果表明,在聋生汉字识别中,字形的知觉加工对提取语音具有非常重要的作用,但语音的提取对聋生来说非常困难。不同字频对不同字组的同音判断成绩的影响不同,表明聋生对不同汉字的语音意识不同。聋生在汉字识别中存在语音混淆和字形混淆的现象,说明语音编码和字形编码在汉字识别过程中都起了重要的作用。字频对聋生汉字识别的影响也不同,同频字产生语音特征的影响;低频字产生字形特征的影响;而中频字都不产生语音特征和字形特征的影响。     

内隐学习中东巴文促进幼儿汉字字形记忆的研究

采用任务分离范式考察了内隐学习中只学汉字、结合图画学习汉字、结合东巴文学习汉字对幼儿汉字字形记忆的影响。幼儿通过颜色判断任务进行学习。实验1采用再认任务考察学习方式对汉字字形外显记忆的影响。实验2采用偏好判断任务考察学习方式对汉字字形内隐记忆的影响。研究发现, 在伴随学习条件下, 东巴文能够促进幼儿对汉字字形的外显记忆, 东巴文可以成为幼儿汉字学习的工具。     

汉字词特征语义提取的实验研究

本研究运用语义判断的方法,对汉字词特征语义的提取做了初步的探讨,被试是28名大学生。实验结果表明,汉字形声字的义符在汉字词定义特征语义提取中有重要作用,在义符与词义一致时,能加速词的定义特征语义的提取。义符对词的特有特征的语义提取无作用,而特有特征的强度能很好地预测提取时间。本研究还发现,词的熟悉性和该词距其上属的语义距离对词的定义特征的语义提取亦有重要影响。     

Determinants of lexical access in speech production: Role of word frequency and age of acquisition

The main determinants of lexical access in speech are considered to be a word's age of acquisition (AoA) and its frequency of occurrence in a speaker's experience. It is unclear whether and how these variables interact, although they are commonly observed to be correlated, for the few studies that address the issue have reported inconsistent findings. An influential view of AoA in lexical processing (Ellis and Lambon Ralph, 2000) predicts stronger frequency effects for items acquired later in life than for those acquired at an early age. Five experiments were designed to investigate the possible interaction of AoA and frequency effects in speech. We found that the interaction between word frequency and AoA was not robust and that, contrary to expectation, the effect of word frequency was greater for words acquired earlier in life than for those acquired later. The implications of our findings are discussed.     

Long-term age of acquisition effects in famous name processing

The age of acquisition (AoA) effect refers to the processing advantage that words, objects, and people learnt earlier in life hold over those acquired later. We explored the long-term effects of AoA on performance, using naturally occurring famous names, acquired by participants cumulatively over three decades. We manipulated AoA by selecting celebrities who had first become known to our participants in the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s and explored the effects of age by testing participants aged in their 40s, 50s, or 60s. Seventy-two participants made push-button 'Yes-No' familiarity decision judgements to the printed names of celebrities. We found a significant AoA effect. A linear increase in reaction time was uncovered, with the participants being fastest to respond to the 1960s celebrities, followed by those from the 1970s, and being slowest to respond to celebrities from the 1980s. There was no age × AoA interaction, although the AoA effect was most pronounced in the oldest participant group. Our data demonstrate the long-term persistent influence of AoA on processing speed. Moreover, they indicate that the effects of AoA are much more subtle than simply reflecting a difference between the earliest acquired stimuli in a processing domain and all later acquired items.     

Age of acquisition affects early orthographic processing during Chinese character recognition

Three experiments investigated age of acquisition (AoA) effects on early orthographic processing during Chinese character recognition. In Experiment 1, we measured the accuracy of identification of brief masked characters, accuracy was higher for early compared to late acquired characters. In Experiment 2, the visual duration threshold (VDT) was measured for both early and late acquired Chinese characters. The results showed that early acquired characters were successfully identified at shorter display durations than late acquired characters. Significant AoA effects were also found in Experiment 3, using a lexical decision task requiring mainly orthographic processing (discriminating real Chinese characters from orthographically illegal and unpronounceable characters). In summary, three experiments provide converging empirical evidence, for AoA effects on the early orthographic processing stages of Chinese character recognition. These results suggest that AoA effects during word identification go beyond the phonological or semantic processing stages. These results aslo provide cross-linguistic evidence for an AoA effect on early perceptual processing during identification.     

Age of acquisition effects in vocabulary learning

Two experiments examined whether the age of acquisition (AoA) of a concept influences the speed at which native English speakers are able to name pictures using a newly acquired second language (L2) vocabulary. In Experiment 1, participants were taught L2 words associated with pictures. In Experiment 2 a second group of participants were taught the same words associated with L1 translations. Following training both groups performed a picture naming task in which they were asked to name pictures using the newly acquired words. Significant AoA effects were observed only in Experiment 1, in that participants were faster at naming pictures representing early acquired relative to late acquired concepts. The results suggest that the AoA of a concept can exert influence over processing which is independent of the AoA of the word form. The results also indicate that different training methods may lead to qualitative differences in the nature of the links formed between words and concepts during the earliest stages of second language learning.     

Age of acquisition effects on an object‐name verification task

Naming latencies for words, objects and faces have been shown to be affected by the age at which an item is acquired (AoA). Originally, this effect was explained in terms of differential access to name representations. However, a number of recent studies have found AoA effects in tasks which do not require access to names (e.g. Brysbaert, Van Wijnendaele, & De Deynes, 2000 ; Lewis, 1999 ; Moore, Smith Spark, & Valentine, 2004 ; Moore & Valentine, 1999 ). Ellis and Lambon Ralph (2000) propose an alternative account of AoA, predicting that the effect should arise in any task where previously stored information is retrieved. The current study explored the effect of AoA on an object‐name verification task. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that early acquired objects were verified significantly faster than later acquired objects. A third experiment collected naming latencies for the same picture stimuli in order to allow a comparison of the magnitude of the AoA effect for object verification and naming. The implications of these findings for accounts of AoA and its locus of effect are discussed.     

First language acquisition differs from second language acquisition in prelingually deaf signers: evidence from sensitivity to grammaticality judgement in British Sign Language

Age of acquisition (AoA) effects have been used to support the notion of a critical period for first language acquisition. In this study, we examine AoA effects in deaf British Sign Language (BSL) users via a grammaticality judgment task. When English reading performance and nonverbal IQ are factored out, results show that accuracy of grammaticality judgement decreases as AoA increases, until around age 8, thus showing the unique effect of AoA on grammatical judgement in early learners. No such effects were found in those who acquired BSL after age 8. These late learners appear to have first language proficiency in English instead, which may have been used to scaffold learning of BSL as a second language later in life.     

The role of age of acquisition in picture and word naming in dyslexic adults

To date, there has been numerous reports that early acquired pictures and words are named faster than late acquired pictures and words in normal reading but it is not established whether age of acquisition (AoA) has the same impact on adult dyslexic naming, especially in a transparent orthography such as Turkish. Independent ratings were obtained for AoA, frequency, name agreement, and object familiarity in Turkish for all items in the Snodgrass and Vanderwart line drawing set. Dyslexic (N= 15) and non-dyslexic (N= 15) university undergraduates were asked to name 30 early acquired and 30 late acquired pictures and picture names standardized and selected from these norms. As predicted, there were main effects for (a) AoA with reaction times (RTs) for Early items named faster than Late items, (b) reader status with non-dyslexic students faster than dyslexic students, and (c) stimuli types with pictures named slower than words. A two-way interaction between reader status and stimuli type was also significant. Implications of the results for theoretical frameworks of AoA within the cognitive architecture and normal and impaired models of reading are discussed.     

Hemispheric Differences in the Processing of Words Learned Early Versus Later in Childhood

The research investigated whether there are hemispheric differences in processing for words acquired early in childhood (early AoA) and words acquired later in childhood (late AoA). We hypothesized that because of recent evidence suggesting that there is a right hemisphere dominance in early childhood, early AoA words would be represented in the right hemisphere, and late AoA words would be represented in the left hemisphere. This hypothesis differs from an early view that late AoA words would be represented in the left hemisphere, and early AoA words would be represented in both hemispheres (Gazzaniga, 1974). We report two experiments using the divided visual field (DVF) technique. The results showed that there was a right visual field (RVF)/left hemisphere (LH) advantage only for late AoA words. For early AoA words, there was a left visual field (LVF)/right hemisphere advantage (RH). Implications for theories of hemispheric differences in word processing are discussed.     

Age of acquisition affects the retrieval of grammatical category information

This study investigated age of acquisition (AoA) effects on processing grammatical category information of Chinese single-character words. In Experiment 1, nouns and verbs that were acquired at different ages were used as materials in a grammatical category decision task. Results showed that the grammatical category information of earlier acquired nouns and verbs was easier to retrieve. In Experiment 2, AoA and predictability from orthography to grammatical category were manipulated in a grammatical category decision task. Results showed larger AoA effects under lower predictability conditions. In Experiment 3, a semantic category decision task was used with the same materials as those in Experiment 2. Different results were found from Experiment 2, suggesting that the grammatical category decision task is not merely the same as the semantic category decision task, but rather involves additional processing of grammatical category information. Therefore the conclusions of Experiments 1 and 2 were strengthened. In summary, it was found for the first time that AoA affects the retrieval of grammatical category information, thus providing new evidence in support of the arbitrary mapping hypothesis.