Bilingual Infants Demonstrate Advantages in Learning Words in a Third Language

Prior research suggests that bilingualism may endow infants with greater phonological flexibility. This study investigated whether this flexibility facilitates word learning in additional languages (n = 96). Experiment 1 compared 18‐ to 20‐month‐old monolingual (English) and bilingual (English/Mandarin) infants on their ability to learn words distinguished by click consonants from a Southern African language, Ndebele. English–Mandarin bilingual infants were sensitive to Ndebele click contrasts, but monolingual English infants were not. In Experiments 2a and 2b, we investigated whether enhanced bilingual sensitivity extended to analogous nonlinguistic labels: hand claps and finger snaps. Although discriminated by infants, neither group distinguished words labeled by hand claps and finger snaps. Results suggest that bilingual infants' sustained openness to non native contrast may facilitate the uptake of words in distant languages.     

Flexibility in Bilingual Infants' Word Learning

The present experiments tested bilingual infants' developmental narrowing for the interpretation of sounds that form words. These studies addressed how language specialization proceeds when the environment provides varied and divergent input. Experiment 1 (N = 32) demonstrated that bilingual 14‐ and 19‐month‐olds learned a pair of object labels consisting of the same syllable produced with distinct pitch contours (rising and falling). Infants' native languages did not use pitch contour to differentiate words. In Experiment 2 (N = 16), 22‐month‐old bilinguals failed to learn the labels. These results conflict with the developmental trajectory of monolinguals, who fail to learn pitch contour contrasts as labels at 17–19 months (Hay, Graf Estes, Wang, & Saffran, 2015). Bilingual infants exhibited a prolonged period of flexibility in their interpretation of potential word forms.     

Using speech sounds to guide word learning: the case of bilingual infants

Despite the prevalence of bilingualism, language acquisition research has focused on monolingual infants. Monolinguals cannot learn minimally different words (e.g., "bih" and "dih") in a laboratory task until 17 months of age (J. F. Werker, C. T. Fennell, K. M. Corcoran, & C. L. Stager, 2002). This study was extended to 14- to 20-month-old bilingual infants: a heterogeneous sample (English and another language; N = 48) and two homogeneous samples (28 English-Chinese and 25 English-French infants). In all samples, bilinguals did not learn similar-sounding words until 20 months, indicating that they use relevant language sounds (i.e., consonants) to direct word learning developmentally later than monolinguals, possibly due to the increased cognitive load of learning two languages. However, this developmental pattern may be adaptive for bilingual word learning.     

The Impact of Early Social Interactions on Later Language Development in Spanish–English Bilingual Infants

This study tested the impact of child‐directed language input on language development in Spanish–English bilingual infants (N = 25, 11‐ and 14‐month‐olds from the Seattle metropolitan area), across languages and independently for each language, controlling for socioeconomic status. Language input was characterized by social interaction variables, defined in terms of speech style (“parentese” vs. standard speech) and social context (one‐on‐one vs. group). Correlations between parentese one‐on‐one and productive vocabulary at 24 months (n = 18) were found across languages and in each language independently. Differences are highlighted between previously published monolingual samples, which used the same methods as the current study of bilingual infants. The results also suggest cultural effects on language input and language development in bilingual and bicultural infants.     

Putting Mutual Exclusivity in Context: Speaker Race Influences Monolingual and Bilingual Infants’ Word-Learning Assumptions

Previous work indicates mutual exclusivity in word learning in monolingual, but not bilingual toddlers. We asked whether this difference indicates distinct conceptual biases, or instead reflects best-guess heuristic use in the absence of context. We altered word-learning contexts by manipulating whether a familiar- or unfamiliar-race speaker introduced a novel word for an object with a known category label painted in a new color. Both monolingual and bilingual infants showed mutual exclusivity for a familiar-race speaker, and relaxed mutual exclusivity and treated the novel word as a category label for an unfamiliar-race speaker. Thus, monolingual and bilingual infants have access to similar word-learning heuristics, and both use nonlinguistic social context to guide their use of the most appropriate heuristic.     

Age of Bilingual Exposure Is Related to the Contribution of Phonological and Semantic Knowledge to Successful Reading Development

Bilingual children's reading as a function of age of first bilingual language exposure (AoE) was examined. Bilingual (varied AoE) and monolingual children (N = 421) were compared in their English language and reading abilities (6–10 years) using phonological awareness, semantic knowledge, and reading tasks. Structural equation modeling was applied to determine how bilingual AoE predicts reading outcomes. Early exposed bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on phonological awareness and word reading. Phonology and semantic (vocabulary) knowledge differentially predicted reading depending on the bilingual experience and AoE. Understanding how bilingual experiences impact phonological awareness and semantic knowledge, and in turn, impact reading outcomes is relevant for our understanding of what language and reading skills are best to focus on, and when, to promote optimal reading success.     

Incidental word learning in a hearing child of deaf adults

It is unclear how children develop the ability to learn words incidentally (i.e., without direct instruction or numerous exposures). This investigation examined the early achievement of this skill by longitudinally tracking the expressive vocabulary and incidental word-learning capacities of a hearing child of Deaf adults who was natively learning American Sign Language (ASL) and spoken English. Despite receiving only 20% of language input in spoken English, the child's expressive vocabularies at 16 and 20 months of age, in each language, were similar to those of monolingual age-matched peers. At 16 months of age, the child showed signs of greater proficiency in the incidental learning of novel ASL signs than she did for spoken English words. At 20 months of age, the child was skilled at incidental word learning in both languages. These results support the methodology as it applies to examining theoretical models of incidental word learning. They also suggest that bilingual children can achieve typical vocabulary levels (even with minimal input in one of the languages) and that the development of incidental word learning follows a similar trajectory in ASL and spoken English.     

Back to Basics: A Bilingual Advantage in Infant Visual Habituation

Comparisons of cognitive processing in monolinguals and bilinguals have revealed a bilingual advantage in inhibitory control. Recent studies have demonstrated advantages associated with exposure to two languages in infancy. However, the domain specificity and scope of the infant bilingual advantage in infancy remains unclear. In the present study, 114 monolingual and bilingual infants were compared in a very basic task of information processing—visual habituation—at 6 months of age. Bilingual infants demonstrated greater efficiency in stimulus encoding as well as in improved recognition memory for familiar stimuli as compared to monolinguals. Findings reveal a generalized cognitive advantage in bilingual infants that is broad in scope, early to emerge, and not specific to language.     

The Role of Auditory and Visual Speech in Word Learning at 18 Months and in Adulthood

Visual information influences speech perception in both infants and adults. It is still unknown whether lexical representations are multisensory. To address this question, we exposed 18‐month‐old infants (n = 32) and adults (n = 32) to new word–object pairings: Participants either heard the acoustic form of the words or saw the talking face in silence. They were then tested on recognition in the same or the other modality. Both 18‐month‐old infants and adults learned the lexical mappings when the words were presented auditorily and recognized the mapping at test when the word was presented in either modality, but only adults learned new words in a visual‐only presentation. These results suggest developmental changes in the sensory format of lexical representations.     

Young Infants’ Word Comprehension Given An Unfamiliar Talker or Altered Pronunciations

To understand spoken words, listeners must appropriately interpret co‐occurring talker characteristics and speech sound content. This ability was tested in 6‐ to 14‐months‐olds by measuring their looking to named food and body part images. In the new talker condition (n = 90), pictures were named by an unfamiliar voice; in the mispronunciation condition (n = 98), infants’ mothers “mispronounced” the words (e.g., nazz for nose). Six‐ to 7‐month‐olds fixated target images above chance across conditions, understanding novel talkers, and mothers’ phonologically deviant speech equally. Eleven‐ to 14‐months‐olds also understood new talkers, but performed poorly with mispronounced speech, indicating sensitivity to phonological deviation. Between these ages, performance was mixed. These findings highlight the changing roles of acoustic and phonetic variability in early word comprehension, as infants learn which variations alter meaning.     

The Linguistic Mass/Count Distinction as an Indicator of Referent Categorization in Monolingual and Bilingual Children

This study examines the acquisition of the linguistic mass/count distinction in English by bilingual (Spanish-English) children. The goal of the study is to explore whether bilingual children, like their monolingual peers, can draw information from the linguistic context in which a new noun id presented to determine whether the new word refers to an object or a substance. Results indicate that at 7 years of age, even bilinguals who are strong in English do not yet draw such inferences. By 9 years of age, however, bilinguals who are strong in English have response patterns similar to those of their monolingual peers but bilinguals who have lower English abilities still lag behind their monolingual peers in drawing such inferences.     

Bilingual Education and Social Class: some speculative observations in the Hong Kong context

In this paper, we propose a possible correlation between bilingual education and social class. We investigate this assumption along four parameters: intergroup relationship, usefulness of the target language, first language proficiency and quality of program; we argue that the results differ depending on the social‐economic background of the learners. When the four variables are applied to the bilingual program in Hong Kong, we find a similar situation, namely, that because of the different language learning environment, members from the lower social‐economic background are less likely to learn successfully in a bilingual program than those from the higher social background. We also suspect that since 90% of the programs in our secondary education system are bilingual, learners from certain social groups may find themselves at a disadvantage when competing for equal educational opportunity.     

Phonological awareness in monolingual and bilingual English and Greek five‐year‐olds

This study examined and compared levels of phonological awareness in monolingual and bilingual English and Greek five‐year‐olds. Sixty‐eight children from Britain and Cyprus, matched on the basis of age, gender, non‐verbal and verbal IQ, were assigned to four groups: two bilingual (English‐Greek, Greek‐English) and two monolingual (English, Greek). Performance of the four groups on a set of six phonological tasks was compared. Bilingual children were given both English and Greek versions of the tasks; monolingual children were given the phonological tasks in their mother tongue only. Given the results of previous research, it was predicted that bilingual children would show higher levels of phonological awareness than monolingual. The children tested in Britain were already being taught to read in school, whereas those tested in Cyprus were not. On the basis of previous research, it was further predicted that there would also be effects of learning to read in an alphabetic language, such that the bilingual children tested in Britain would show higher levels of phonological awareness at the level of the phoneme than their counterparts tested in Cyprus. Results showed that the bilingual English‐Greek children significantly outperformed the monolingual English children, but this pattern was not replicated in the bilingual Greek‐English/monolingual Greek comparisons. This difference is discussed in terms of the bilingual enhancement effect, which, according to the present data, seems to occur only when bilingual children are exposed to a second language that is phonologically simpler than their first language. Results also showed that English‐Greek bilingual children performed significantly better than Greek‐English bilinguals, especially on tasks requiring phoneme awareness. This accords well with suggestions that learning to read in an alphabetic language promotes this level of phonological awareness.     

Judging Words by Their Covers and the Company They Keep: Probabilistic Cues Support Word Learning

Statistical learning may be central to lexical and grammatical development. The phonological and distributional properties of words provide probabilistic cues to their grammatical and semantic properties. Infants can capitalize on such probabilistic cues to learn grammatical patterns in listening tasks. However, infants often struggle to learn labels when performance requires attending to less obvious cues, raising the question of whether probabilistic cues support word learning. The current experiment presented 22‐month‐olds with an artificial language containing probabilistic correlations between words' statistical and semantic properties. Only infants with higher levels of grammatical development capitalized on statistical cues to support learning word‐referent mappings. These findings suggest that infants' sensitivity to correlations between sounds and meanings may support both word learning and grammatical development.     

Development and Prediction of Context-Dependent Vowel Pronunciation in Elementary Readers

ABSTRACT

As children learn to read, they become sensitive to context-dependent vowel pronunciations in words, considered a form of statistical learning. The work of Treiman and colleagues demonstrated that readers’ vowel pronunciations depend on the consonantal context in which the vowel occurs and reading experience. Using explanatory item-response models we examined child- and nonword-factors associated with children’s assignment of more versus less frequent grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPC) to vowel pronunciations as a function of rime coda in monosyllabic nonwords. Students (N = 96) in grades 2-5 read nonwords in which more versus less frequent vowel GPCs were wholly supported or partially favored by the rime unit. Use of less frequent vowel GPCs was predicted by set for variability, word reading, and rime support for the context-dependent vowel pronunciation. We interpret the results within a developmental word reading model in which initially incomplete and oversimplified GPC representations become more context dependent with reading experience.     

Language Use Contributes to Expressive Language Growth: Evidence From Bilingual Children

The unique relation of language use (i.e., output) to language growth was investigated for forty‐seven 30‐month‐old Spanish–English bilingual children (27 girls, 20 boys) whose choices of which language to speak resulted in their levels of English output differing from their levels of English input. English expressive vocabularies and receptive language skills were assessed at 30, 36, and 42 months. Longitudinal multilevel modeling indicated an effect of output on expressive vocabulary growth only. The finding that output specifically benefits the development of expressive language skill has implications for understanding effects of language use on language skill in monolingual and bilingual development, and potentially, for understanding consequences of cultural differences in how much children are expected to talk in conversation with adults.     

12-month-olds' phonotactic knowledge guides their word-object mappings

This study examined whether 12‐month‐olds will accept words that differ phonologically and phonetically from their native language as object labels in an associative learning task. Sixty infants were presented with sets of English word–object (N = 30), Japanese word–object (N = 15), or Czech word–object (N = 15) pairings until they habituated. Infants associated CVCV English, CCVC English, and CVCV Japanese words, but not CCVC Czech words, with novel objects. These results demonstrate that by 12 months of age, infants are beginning to apply their language‐specific knowledge to their acceptance of word forms. That is, they will not map words that violate the phonotactics of their native language to objects.     

How Symbolic Experience Shapes Children's Symbolic Flexibility

The current experiments asked whether children with dual‐symbolic experience (e.g., unimodal bilingual and bimodal) develop a preference for words like monolingual children (Namy & Waxman, 1998). In Experiment 1, ninety‐five 18‐ and 24‐month‐olds, with monolingual, unimodal bilingual, or bimodal symbolic experience, were tested in their willingness to treat digitized sounds as referents. In Experiment 2, forty‐seven 24‐month‐olds, with the same types of symbolic experience, were tested in their willingness to treat novel words as referents. Monolingual children performed in ways indicative of a growing preference for words, whereas children with dual‐symbolic experience performed in ways indicative of consistency in symbolic flexibility over time. Results suggest that the developmental trajectory of children's symbolic flexibility might depend on their symbolic experience.     

How do beginners learn to read irregular words as sight words?

Learning irregular words involves mental marking of irregular letters in the spelling, a process not fully understood. In a within‐subjects experiment, we manipulated the type of scaffolding given to beginning readers to evoke mental marking. We pretested to sort 103 kindergarten and first‐grade participants into sequential decoders, who decode letter by letter, and hierarchical decoders, who recognise vowel patterns. In the control phase, children read irregular words in sentence contexts with minimal scaffolding. In the experimental phase, participants read additional irregular words in sentence contexts by ‘operating on the word’ to mark irregular letters. Results indicated that the experimental condition induced better untimed word reading, but it did not improve spelling or reading in a flash presentation. Hierarchical decoders were significantly more successful than sequential decoders in untimed word reading, spelling and reading in the flash presentation. These results suggest that learning hierarchical decoding predisposes readers to learn irregular words.     

Verbal Positional Memory in 7‐Month‐Olds

Verbal memory is a fundamental prerequisite for language learning. This study investigated 7‐month‐olds' (N = 62) ability to remember the identity and order of elements in a multisyllabic word. The results indicate that infants detect changes in the order of edge syllables, or the identity of the middle syllables, but fail to encode the order of middle syllables. This suggests that the representational format of multisyllabic words is determined by core mnemonic biases, which favor accurate encoding of edges and limits the encoding of temporal order for internal segments. The studies support accounts proposing that content and order are encoded separately; in addition, the data show that this dissociation occurs early in development.