EXAM 3: Bilingual Development Flashcards
Bilingualism
Ability to use 2 languages in everyday life
More than half of the world is bilingual and bilingualism is often the norm in many countries
Early vs. Late Bilinguals
Early bilinguals:
Early age of acquisition (AoA) of 2nd language (L2)
Acquired both L1 and L2 early in life
Late bilinguals:
Late age of acquisition of L2
Acquired L1 early in life and L2 after childhood
Simultaneous vs. Successive Bilinguals
Simultaneous bilinguals: Learned both languages at the same time
Successive bilinguals:
Learned L2 after the first
Balanced vs. Unbalanced bilinguals
Balanced bilinguals:
Mastery of 2 languages equivalently
Unbalanced bilinguals: Greater proficiency in one language over the other, or use dominant language significantly more
Additive vs. Subtractive bilinguals
Additive bilinguals:
Upon successive acquisition of L2, L1 is kept
Subtractive bilinguals:
Upon successive acquisition of L2, L1 is lost
Abrams (2014)
Question:
Can late bilinguals produce cognitive advantages/disadvantages that are typical of early bilinguals?
Early bilinguals advantage: Executive function
Early bilinguals disadvantage: Lexical access and vocab
Study:
3 groups:
1. Monolingual English
2. Late bilinguals
3. Early bilinguals
Tested executive function with Flanker tests
Tested lexical access with picture naming task
Results:
Early and late bilinguals EQUIVALENT for both executive function and lexical access:
-Lexical deficit
-Executive function benefit
This is associated with the proficient, habitual use of L2 than development of early bilinguals; even if AoA differ, bilinguals have the same advantages/disadvantages
Flanker tests
Decide direction of arrow in the midst of distraction, tests selective attention and speed of decision
Control
Go distraction
Congruent distraction
Incongruent distraction
Ways to measure lexical vocab:
- Single language measure
Measuring just 1 language - Total conceptual vocabulary
Measuring total concepts that can be expressed
i.e. 집 and house count as 1 - Total vocabular
Measuring total number of words that can be expressed in BOTH languages
i.e. 집 is 1, house is 1
Bilingual lexical deficit in single language measure
Bilinguals have this deficit because they must divide their time/resources to 2 language/vocab sets
Lacking in single language measure and slower to recall vocab words than monolinguals
But with double language measure (concept or total), they are equivalent or more than monolingual vocabulary
Unimodal bilinguals
2 languages of SAME modality
speech-speech
Bimodal bilinguals
2 languages of DIFFERENT modality
speech-sign
Emmorey (2008)
Question:
Bilinguals outperform monolinguals on cognitive tasks because they need to switch from one language to another actively (unimodal)
So bimodals who do not need to switch languages do not have same advantage?
Study:
3 groups:
1. Monolinguals
2. Bimodal bilinguals
3. Unimodal bilinguals
Tested on flanker test
Results:
Unimodals were fastests
bimodals and monolinguals had similar performance
Proved that the bilingual advantage in executive function exists because of active switching between 2 languages exclusive to unimodals and bimodals do not have this same advantage
Code-switching (CS)
Alternating between 2 languages without violating sociolinguistic (pragmatic) and grammar rules
Often misunderstood as confusion or language deficiency, but NOT TRUE!
Code switching is NOT a sign of confusion
Often CS because of limited language resources for young bilinguals, or easier to retrieve word in other language and external factors such as community occurrences
Inter-sentential codeswitching
Switching BETWEEN sentenced
No need to be governed by syntactic rules of other language
Intra-sentential codeswitching
Switching INSIDE a sentence
Governed by syntactic rules of other language
Do infants get confused?
Confusion only occurs with simultaneous infants who may be learning 2 languages at the same time– how do these infants tell apart the 2 languages they are learning simultaneously?
Sebastian-Galles (2012)
Question:
Do bilingual infants have an advantage in visual language discrimination
Can bilingual children differentiate 2 languages by just visual cues?
Study:
5 groups of 18 month olds:
1. Spanish/catalan bilingual
2. French-English bilingual*
3. Spanish monolingual
4. Catalan monolingual
5. English monolingual *
Watched silent video recordings of French-English bilingual speakers code-switching
Tested to see if each group could differentiate the 2 languages using ONLY visual cues
Results:
ALL monolinguals failed to detect different
BOTH bilingual groups succeeded in differentiating, even the spanish-catalan could still differentiate even though the two languages were neither its L2 or L1
Bilingual children CAN differentiate 2 languages with just visual cues, no concerns for confusion
Bosch and Sebastian-Galles (2003)
Question:
Can infants with bilingual exposure perceive native-sound and foreign sound contrasts?
Study:
3 groups:
1. Spanish monolingual
2. Catalan monolingual
3. Spanish-catalan bilingual
Exposed to contrasts present in catalan only
Results:
@ 4 months old, all 3 groups could distinguish
@ 8 months old, only monolinguals could contrasts, bilinguals couldn’t
@ 12 months old, bilinguals could discriminate again
Learning 2 languages may slightly delay phonological discrimination
Can infants associate parents with language?
Short answer no
Misconception that if each parent spoke only 1 language with bilingual child, it’ll make them less confused, but proved false
Cannot associate language with a person
Bilingual babbling
Evidence for language differentiation in simultaneous dual language acquisition
Infants as young as 6 months old can differentiate and babble in French and English respectively
Adult code-switching Heinlein (2022)
Question:
Why do bilingual parents code switch?
Study:
Took recordings of bilingual families when infant was 10 and 18 months old
Result:
Rate of codeswitching low at 10 months and higher at 18 months
Parents codeswitched more intersentential than intrasentential
Most common reason was to enhance infant’s understanding and teach vocabulary for bilingual acquisition
Critical period
Limited developmental period during which it is possible to acquire a language to normal, native level
Controversial: when is it and what are its boundaries?
Wiley (2003)
Question:
Tested critical period hypothesis for L2 acquisition (AoA) and SES
Study:
Used survey responses from over 2.3 million immigrants
Results:
Declines in L2 proficiency as a function of age of immigration of all education/SES groups across the board
L2 success decreases as AoA increases
SES affects L2 success as well, formal education, higher L2 success
Kazmi (2002)
Question:
Does the onset and type of initial language exposure contribute to critical period?
If they had previous L2 exposure, can it help them achieve better performance on L2?
Study:
3 groups:
1. Late deafness (exposed to spoken language) and Late ASL
2. Deaf since birth and late ASL
3. Deaf since birth and early ASL
Results:
Late deafness with early language exposure had higher ASL performance
Timing of L1 experience is a strong influence of capability of learning L2 later
If exposed to language during critical period, better L2 acquisition
No exposure to early language during critical period, not good L2
