台大心理系

This study explored how phonological structure in terms of syllable configuration in Mandarin Chinese affects word learning performance in children with cochlear implants (CIs, 24–43 months old) and their age-matched peers with normal hearing (NH). After a brief exposure, children’s understanding of the novel word-object associations involving monosyllable (Du), reduplicated syllable (DuDu), and disyllable (DuDi) were measured by examining their preferential looking responses through the eye tracking. The data revealed that although children who use CI were generally less efficient at word learning in all conditions than the hearing control, they were able to correctly recognize words with reduplicated syllable. The learning advantage found for syllable doubling was interpreted in favor of child-directed structures. Taken together, this study provides evidence suggesting that the word learning performance is not only affected by auditory experience, but also by the internal configurations of the novel words.
Keywords: cochlear implants, word learning, phonological structure, preferential looking, eye-tracking