Children's early speech often bears little resemblance to that of adults, and yet parents and other caregivers are able to interpret that speech and react accordingly. Here we investigate how these adult inferences as listeners reflect sophisticated beliefs about what children are trying to communicate, as well as how children are likely to pronounce words. Using a Bayesian framework for modeling spoken word recognition, we find that computational models can replicate adult interpretations of children's speech only when they include strong, context-specific prior expectations about the messages that children will want to communicate. This points to a critical role of adult cognitive processes in supporting early communication and reveals how children can actively prompt adults to take actions on their behalf even when they have only a nascent understanding of the adult language. We discuss the wide-ranging implications of the powerful listening capabilities of adults for theories of first language acquisition.

翻译：幼儿早期言语往往与成人语言大相径庭，但父母及其他看护者却能解读这些话语并做出相应回应。本研究探究了成人作为听者进行这些推断时，如何反映出他们对儿童试图传达信息及儿童可能发音方式的精准信念。我们采用贝叶斯框架对口语词汇识别进行建模，发现只有当计算模型包含关于儿童意图传达信息的强且情境特定的先验期望时，才能复现成人对儿童言语的解读。这一发现揭示了成人认知过程在支持早期沟通中的关键作用，并展现出即便儿童对成人语言仅有初步理解时，也能主动促使成人为其采取行动的能力。我们进一步讨论了成人强大倾听能力对第一语言习得理论的广泛启示。