Doctoral Dissertation Research: Using eye-tracking to study auditory comprehension in codeswitching: Evidence for the link between production and comprehension

博士论文研究：使用眼动追踪研究语码转换中的听觉理解：产生与理解之间联系的证据

• 批准号: 1124218
• 负责人: Paola Dussias
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-09-01 至 2013-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1124218&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Using; eye

Bilinguals in the presence of other bilinguals engage in a linguistic skill known as codeswitching, defined as the fluid alternation between two or more languages within the same conversation (e.g. "El niño está reading el book"). Once thought to be a sign of lack of competence in either language, three decades of research has revealed that codeswitching is systematic and not random. Previous research has mainly studied the production of codeswitching both from theoretical and sociolinguistic perspectives, leaving the comprehension of codeswitched speech an understudied area of inquiry. Yet there are critical consequences for the comprehension system. Whereas production is under the control of the speaker, a listener must seamlessly integrate multiple languages in real time in order to successfully comprehend codeswitched speech. Jorge Valdés Kroff, under the supervision of Drs. Paola Dussias and Chip Gerfen, will conduct a series of experiments to investigate whether codeswitches that are more frequent in production are easier to comprehend for bilinguals. They will capitalize on the presence of grammatical gender in codeswitched noun phrases to investigate this question and will use an eye-tracking methodology known as the visual world paradigm. Participants are shown objects in a visual scene while listening to a phrase that names one of the objects. By examining the pattern of eye movements, researchers are able make inferences on the timecourse of comprehension of speech. This line of research provides an ideal testing ground for examining the link between production and comprehension by specifically testing the hypothesis that language use and exposure have critical consequences for how the comprehension system processes language. Furthermore, the focus on Spanish-English bilinguals in the U.S. will provide important information on a vastly underrepresented yet increasingly visible sector of our society with implications for language policy in education and cognition in general.

在其他双语者在场的情况下，双语者则具有一种语言技能，称为代码开关，被定义为同一对话中两种或多种语言之间的流体替代方法（例如，“ ElNiñoEstá阅读El Book”）。一旦被认为是两种语言缺乏能力的迹象，三十年的研究表明，代码开关是系统的，而不是随机的。先前的研究主要研究了从理论和社会语言学角度来研究代码开关的生产，这使得对言语的理解理解是一个理解的探究领域。然而，对理解系统有关键后果。尽管生产在说话者的控制之下，但听众必须实时无缝整合多种语言，以便成功理解代码开关的语音。豪尔特·瓦尔德斯·克罗夫（JorgeValdésKroff），在博士的监督下。 Paola Dussias和Chip Gerfen将进行一系列实验，以调查生产中更易于使用的代码开关对于双语者而言更容易理解。他们将利用在编码开关的名词短语中的语法性别来研究这个问题，并将使用一种可见的视觉世界范式来调查。参与者在聆听命名一个对象的短语时，在视觉场景中显示对象。通过检查眼动运动的模式，研究人员可以推断出对语音的理解的时间。这一研究线为检查生产和理解之间的联系提供了理想的测试基础，该假设是语言使用和暴露对理解系统如何处理语言的方式至关重要。此外，对美国西班牙语双语者的关注将提供有关我们社会中代表性不足但越来越明显的部门的重要信息，对教育和认知的语言政策具有影响。