Serial Experimental Study On The Ability Of Fast Mapping In Children With Hearing Impairment

Fast mapping refers to the ability to quickly infer and obtain novel word’s meaning or referent via minimal exposure.It is an important basis for vocabulary acquisition and development.Previous studies showed that the vocabulary ability of hearing-impaired children lagged behind the children with typical development,and few studies have examined basic vocabulary skills in children with hearing impairment.Fast mapping can simulate the new word encountered in real life,and is very important for research in the hearing-impaired children.Moreover,by studying the ability of fast mapping,we can better understand whether and what difficulties exist in the vocabulary learning in hearing-impaired children.Therefore,on the basis of predecessors,this study aims to analyze the characteristics of word comprehension and word fast mapping of preschool hearing-impaired children,so as to provide rehabilitation implications for them.The main results are as follows:1.A characterization study of word comprehension in chidden with hearing impaired(1)For the children with typical development,the ability of word comprehension improves significantly with age;But for the children with hearing impairment,although the ability of word comprehension also gradually improves with age,it does not show a similar age effect.(2)PPVT scores of hearing-impaired children at all ages are significantly lower than those of children with typical development,with an average score of only 64%.(3)The scores of nouns and verbs of all hearing-impaired children are also significantly lower than those of children with typical development.Among which,the comprehension of nouns lags behind by about 30% and that of verbs by more than 50%.2.A characterization study of fast mapping in chidden with hearing impaired(1)There is also “nouns bias” in word learning of hearing-impaired children,which is similar to that of typical developmental children.(2)Hearing-impaired children can establish a semantic mapping between the meaning of new nouns and objects in dynamic events,which indicates that there is no difficulty in learning nouns,but maybe the learning process is slower.(3)Hearing-impaired children have difficulty in mapping new verbs to actions in dynamic events,and are prone to errors that correspond to objects.It shows a strong "noun tendency".(4)Hearing experience and the ability of word comprehension were significantly correlated with fast mapping.3.A strategy study of fast mapping in chidden with hearing impaired(1)The timing of verb can significantly improve the verb learning for hearingimpaired children,that is,the presentation of novel word after the action can promote verb learning.(2)Highlighting actions in dynamic events also can promote verb learning for hearing impaired-children.The main innovations of this study:1.In this study,strict and standard experimental procedures are adopted,and reaction time is added as the evaluation index,which reduce the operation error to a certain extent.2.With the help of dynamic events,this study simultaneously investigates how hearing-impaired children map the meaning of new nouns and verbs,and it also proposes and verifies the promotion strategy of verb fast mapping.3.In this study,it was found that the fast mapping of nouns(r =.769 **)and verbs(r =.865 **)in hearing-impaired children are significantly correlated with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test(PPVT-R)score,indicating the fast mapping can better evaluate or predict children’s vocabulary ability.