College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/8
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Syntactic Processing and Word Learning with a Degraded Auditory Signal(2017) Martin, Isabel A.; Huang, Yi Ting; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The current study examined real-time processing and word learning in children receiving a degraded audio signal, similar to the signal children with cochlear implants hear. Using noise-vocoded stimuli, this study assessed whether increased uncertainty in the audio signal alters the developmental strategies available for word learning via syntactic cues. Normal-hearing children receiving a degraded signal were found to be able to differentiate between active and passive sentences nearly as well as those hearing natural speech. However, they had the most difficulty when correct interpretation of a sentence required revision of initial misinterpretations. This pattern is similar to that found with natural speech. While further testing is needed to confirm these effects, the current evidence suggests that a degraded signal may make revision even harder than it is in natural speech. This provides important information about language learning with a cochlear implant, with implications for intervention strategies.Item Fast mapping in linguistic context: Processing and complexity effects(2015) Arnold, Alison Reese; Huang, Yi Ting; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Young children readily use syntactic cues for word learning in structurally-simple contexts (Naigles, 1990). However, developmental differences in children's language processing abilities might interfere with their access to syntactic cues when novel words are presented in structurally-challenging contexts. To understand the role of processing on syntactic bootstrapping, we used an eye-tracking paradigm to examine children's fast-mapping abilities in active (structurally-simple) and passive (structurally-complex) sentences. Actions after sentences indicated children were more successful mapping words in passive sentences when novel words were presented in NP2 ("The seal will be quickly eaten by the blicket") than when novel words were presented in NP1 ("The blicket will be quickly eaten by the seal"), indicating presenting more prominent nouns in NP1 increases children's agent-first bias and sabotages interpretation of passives. Later recall data indicate children were less likely to remember new words in structurally-challenging contexts.