Learning foreign labels from a foreign speaker: the role of (limited) exposure to a second language.

Three- and four-year-olds (N = 144) were introduced to novel labels by an English speaker and a foreign speaker (of Nordish, a made-up language), and were asked to endorse one of the speaker's labels. Monolingual English-speaking children were compared to bilingual children and English-speaking children who were regularly exposed to a language other than English. All children tended to endorse the English speaker's labels when asked 'What do you call this?', but when asked 'What do you call this in Nordish?', children with exposure to a second language were more likely to endorse the foreign label than monolingual and bilingual children. The findings suggest that, at this age, exposure to, but not necessarily immersion in, more than one language may promote the ability to learn foreign words from a foreign speaker.

Cognitive and linguistic correlates of early exposure to more than one language.

This chapter reviews recent studies of cognitive and linguistic correlates of exposure to two languages in infancy and early childhood. Most of the studies reviewed directly compare monolingual children to those who are exposed to two languages. The cognitive correlates include enhanced executive functioning (especially inhibitory control), and Theory of Mind. The linguistic correlates include smaller vocabularies in each language, different word-learning strategies, slower lexical access, and enhanced pragmatic and metalinguistic skills. Issues in interpreting group differences, in particular, whether such differences should be interpreted as deficits, are discussed.