In a recent study, preschoolers adapted their syntactic expectations about a familiar phrase in French; this adaptation affected later word learning. In two experiments, we probed the generality of this finding by replicating the experiment and extending it to a different expression in English. We examined the ambiguous phrase the baby, which can be followed by nouns (the baby monkeys) or verbs (the baby sleeps). In induction trials, the baby consistently preceded either familiar nouns (noun condition) or verbs (verb condition). In later novel‐word trials, children in the verb condition were more likely to interpret novel words following the baby (The baby gorps!) as verbs than were children in the noun condition. In Experiment 2, a modified design isolated the effect of experience with the critical phrase from possible effects of task structure, and an added baseline condition showed the adaptation effect to be asymmetrical, suggesting frequency or surprisal effects on adaptation.

中文翻译：

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3至4岁儿童的句法适应和单词学习


在最近的一项研究中，学龄前儿童调整了他们对法语中熟悉短语的句法期望；这种适应影响了后来的单词学习。在两个实验中，我们通过复制实验并将其扩展到不同的英语表达来探讨这一发现的普遍性。我们检查了模棱两可的短语宝宝，后面可以跟名词 (小猴子们) 或动词 (宝宝睡觉了）。在诱导试验中，宝宝始终位于熟悉的名词（名词条件）或动词（动词条件）之前。在后来的小说单词试验中，处于动词状态的儿童更有可能解释以下的小说单词：宝宝(宝贝们！ ）作为动词，而不是名词条件下的孩子。在实验2中，修改后的设计将关键短语的经验影响与任务结构的可能影响分开，并且添加的基线条件显示适应效果是不对称的，这表明对适应的频率或意外影响。