Bilingualism

Question 1

Byers-Heinlen et al (2010)

Answer 1

• langauge sensitivity soon after birth
• monolingual new learners - born with a preference to the rhythm of own language (exposure in womb)

Experiment 1:

• studied newborns of English-Tagulog speaking mothers
• HAS perception of sentences
• English monolinguals were less interested in Tagalog than English, but Tagulog bilinguals were similarly interested in their 2 languages
• mother is bilingual then will attune to both languages

Experiment 2:

• ability to discriminate one language presented at test after familiarisation to other languages
• bilinguals ale to discriminate familiarisation to other languages
• therefore, infants exposed to two languages throughout gestation have already begun to process bilingual acquisition at birth
• even after exposure, can still discriminate and show a preference between 2 languages

Question 2

Werker (2010)

Answer 2

• use of visual cues to aid language discrimination
• use available cues (faces)
• exposure to one lang = visual discrimination declines
• exposure to 2 languages = discrimination matures
• infants attune to visual distinctiveness necessary in language learning environment

3 bilingual french/english speakers

• read sentences in both F and E, presented as silent video clips
• infants habituated to clips in one language, and then shown clip in either same lang or other lang
• look at facial behaviour
• all infants succeeded in discrimination at 4-6 months
• SAME = looking time decreased
• SWITCH = increase
• 8 months = only bilinguals with interest will look for longer

Question 3

Sebastian-Galles et al (2012)

Answer 3

• bilinguals retain an abiltiy to have a sensitivity across different languages
• Spanish-Catalan bilingula s
• 8 months old show dan increased ability to seperate two unknown languages
• therefore bilingual systems can modulate the attentional system even without explicit training or feedback
• monos cannot discriminate, bilinguals maintain ability to distinguish

Question 4

Different language environments:

Answer 4

1. parental background (mono/bi/tri)
2. community (stable bi, minority lang)
3. language environment - one parent one lang. OR mixed lang

Question 5

Hoff et al (2012)

Answer 5

• effects of language dominance
• high SES bilingual and monolingual developing children - 1;10-2;0
• mono were significantly more advances than bilinguals on measures of vocal and grammar on single language comparisons, but equal on measures of total vocabulary
• bilingual = measures of vocal and grammar related to relative amount of input in that language
• English vocal size at 2;1 was same as mono at 1;10
• effects of language dominance on english grammatical complexity and english MLU

Question 6

Albareda-Castellot et al (2011)

Answer 6

• head turn familiarisation procedure - bilinguals did not show native phoneme discrimination patterns, but monolinguals did
• bilinguals = universal discrimination at 12 months
• BUT said that failing was task related as monos had anticipatory looking procedures
• therefore language attunment occurred in monolinguals
• eye movement paradigm:
• lack of discrimination for certain native contrasts in 8 month old Catalan-Spanish bilingual infants, but not French-Englsh bilinguals
• actually Spanish-Catalan bilingual infants do not lose capacity to discriminate native sounds

Question 7

Burns et al (2007)

Answer 7

• at 6-8 months, mono and bi show same pattern, but at 14-20 months, bilinguals show sensitivity to phonetic boundaries consistent with both F and E categories
• development of phonetic representations is neither delayed or compromised by additional languages
• still limited evidence
• may be premature

Question 8

Garcia-Sierra et al (2011)

Answer 8

• longitudinal
• Spanish-English children and relationships
• early brain measures of phonetic discrimination in both languages
• degree of exposure to both languages in the him, and children’s later bilingual word production abilities - speech discrimination associated with event-related brain potentials (ERBP)
• bilinguals infant brains responded differently to monolingual infant brains - no neural discrimination at 6-9 months
• related to amount of exposure to each native language
• finally infants later word production measures were significantly related to both early neural discrimination skills and amount of exposure
• neural discrimination in mono, but not in bi
• mono and bi sow a different developmental timeline for developmental change e.g. lag
• conflicting evidence - development of phonetic categories occurs within same timeframe

Question 9

Kavacs and Mehler (2009)

Answer 9

• efficiently manage 2 languages
• need good cog. ability
  processing 2+ langs during 1st months of life improve social domain, general components of executive function well before language production begins

Question 10

Brita et al (2014)

Answer 10

• Spanish-Catalan individuals and Spanish-English - WM task and imitation after 30 min delay
• greater memory flexibility system in 18 month old bilinguals than mono/tri
• being trilingual could be qualitatively different from being bilingual

Question 11

Fennell et al (2007)

Answer 11

• learn 2 sets of acoustic representations and associations
• delay in successful use of phonetic detail in switch learning tasks
• maybe bilinguals use initial compensatory approach for longer than monos as have more word learning challenges
• habituate to /b/ or /d/ to a pic, then present opposite, incorrect pairs
• expect looking time to increase

Question 12

Buac et al (2014)

Answer 12

• effect of parental SES
• vocal skills in 58 Spanish-Eng children aged 5-7
• SES played an important role in bilinguals children’s vocab performance, but only when English measures were considered
• language exposure served as an important predictor of children’s vocal skills in 2 langs with the exception of Spanish receptive vocal skills
• AND found bilinguals children’s vocal skills were sensitive to primary caregivers vocal knowledge and English
• only within and not across language relationships were observed
• child exposure to language and SES = robust predictor of children’s English but not Spanish vocal skills
• early school ages, primary caregiver vocal skills have a stronger impact on bilingual children’s second language than native language vocabulary

Question 13

McCarthy et al (2014)

Answer 13

• effect in charge in dominance at onset of schooling
• immigrants exposed to L1 in early years - emerse in host country
• longitudinal - explored perception and production of English voicing contrast in 55 children
• tested in nursery and 1 yr later
• sequential bilinguals perception and production of English plosives was initially driven by experience with L1, but after starting school, changed to match mono peers
• no dif. in VOT at T2, but at T1, bilinguals had shorter production of plosives /b/ /g/