Prosody-to-Focus Mapping and Alternative Processing in Word Learning
Résumé
The present experiment examined two issues concerning the role of prosody in word learning. First, we explored whether learners use prosodic focus to map words produced with contrastive stress onto contextually new visual referents. Second, we asked whether prosodic focus facilitates better memory for focused words and their contextual alternatives. In an eyetracking task, 48 monolingual English-speaking adults (18-40 yrs-old) were familiarized with videos of different people doing different actions. At test, participants saw two side-by-side videos, one showing a novel person performing a familiar action, and the other a familiar person performing a novel action. Participants then heard an utterance with prosodic focus on the noun or the verb (e.g., "Now JOHNNY is blicking!" vs. "Now Johnny is BLICKING!"). As predicted, participants paired the prosodically focused word with the contextually novel referent; participants who heard name-focused sentences looked longer at the novel person, while those who heard verbfocused sentences looked longer to the novel action. However, verb-focused sentences during word learning led to better recall of people's names than name-focused sentences. Further, eyegaze turns to alternative events during word learning led to better recall, indicating that eye movements during word learning support and reflect alternative processing.
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