Language acquisition depends on the ability to detect and track the distributional properties of speech. Successful acquisition also necessitates detecting changes in those properties, which can occur when the learner encounters different speakers, topics, dialects, or languages. When encountering multiple speech streams with different underlying statistics but overlapping features, how do infants keep track of the properties of each speech stream separately? In four experiments, we tested whether 8‐month‐old monolingual infants (N = 144) can track the underlying statistics of two artificial speech streams that share a portion of their syllables. We first presented each stream individually. We then presented the two speech streams in sequence, without contextual cues signaling the different speech streams, and subsequently added pitch and accent cues to help learners track each stream separately. The results reveal that monolingual infants experience difficulty tracking the statistical regularities in two speech streams presented sequentially, even when provided with contextual cues intended to facilitate separation of the speech streams. We discuss the implications of our findings for understanding how infants learn and separate the input when confronted with multiple statistical structures. 相似文献
Gaze following plays a role in parent–infant communication and is a key mechanism by which infants acquire information about the world from social input. Gaze following in Deaf infants has been understudied. Twelve Deaf infants of Deaf parents (DoD) who had native exposure to American Sign Language (ASL) were gender‐matched and age‐matched (±7 days) to 60 spoken‐language hearing control infants. Results showed that the DoD infants had significantly higher gaze‐following scores than the hearing infants. We hypothesize that in the absence of auditory input, and with support from ASL‐fluent Deaf parents, infants become attuned to visual‐communicative signals from other people, which engenders increased gaze following. These findings underscore the need to revise the ‘deficit model’ of deafness. Deaf infants immersed in natural sign language from birth are better at understanding the signals and identifying the referential meaning of adults’ gaze behavior compared to hearing infants not exposed to sign language. Broader implications for theories of social‐cognitive development are discussed. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/QXCDK_CUmAI 相似文献
Over the past two decades, researchers consistently demonstrated the importance of science teaching approaches and student self-efficacy in influencing their science achievement. These findings have become the foundation of science education reform. However, empirical supports of these relationships are limited to direct relationships and small-scale studies. Therefore, little is known about the mechanism of how teaching approaches and student self-efficacy affect student achievement. In order to fill these gaps, this study used a multilevel structural equation modeling approach to analyze the direct and indirect relationships between teaching approaches, student self-efficacy, and science achievement by using the data of US eighth grade students in the 2011 TIMSS assessment. The results indicated that none of the teaching approaches identified in this study were directly associated with student science achievement, but significant mediation effect was found between generic teaching and student science achievement through student self-efficacy. Implications of these results for US educational system and reform were discussed.