Novel Word Learning in Bilingual and Monolingual Infants: Evidence for a Bilingual Advantage.

Previous studies revealing that monolingual and bilingual infants learn similar sounding words with comparable success are largely based on prior investigations involving single-feature changes in the onset consonant of a word. There have been no investigations of bilingual infants' abilities to learn similar sounding words differentiated by vowels. In the current study, 18-month-old bilingual and monolingual infants (n = 90) were compared on their sensitivity to a vowel change when learning the meanings of words. Bilingual infants learned similar sounding words differing by a vowel contrast, whereas monolingual English- and Mandarin-learning infants did not. Findings are discussed in terms of early constraints on novel word learning in bilingual and monolingual infants.

Developmental change in tone perception in Mandarin monolingual, English monolingual, and Mandarin-English bilingual infants: Divergences between monolingual and bilingual learners.

Most languages use lexical tone to discriminate the meanings of words. There has been recent interest in tracking the development of tone categories during infancy. These studies have focused largely on monolingual infants learning either a tone language or a non-tone language. It remains to be seen how bilingual infants learning one tone language (e.g., Mandarin) and one non-tone language (e.g., English) discriminate tones. Here, we examined infants' discrimination of two Mandarin tones pairs: one salient and one subtle. Discrimination was investigated in three groups: Mandarin-English bilinguals, English monolinguals, and Mandarin monolinguals at 6 months and 9 months of age in a cross-sectional design. Results demonstrated relatively strong Mandarin tone discrimination in Mandarin monolinguals, with salient tone discrimination at 6 months and both salient and subtle tone discrimination at 9 months. English monolinguals discriminated neither contrast at 6 months but discriminated the salient contrast at 9 months. Surprisingly, there was no evidence for tone discrimination in Mandarin-English bilingual infants. In a second experiment, 12- and 13-month-old Mandarin-English bilingual and English monolingual infants were tested to determine whether bilinguals would demonstrate tone sensitivity at a later age. Results revealed a lack of tone sensitivity at 12 or 13 months in bilingual infants, yet English monolingual infants were sensitive to both salient and subtle Mandarin tone contrasts at 12 or 13 months. Our findings provide evidence for age-related convergence in Mandarin tone discrimination in English and Mandarin monolingual infants and for a distinct pattern of tone discrimination in bilingual infants. Theoretical implications for phonetic category acquisition are discussed.

A New View of Language Development: The Acquisition of Lexical Tone.

Research in first language development draws disproportionately from nontone languages. Such research is often presumed to reveal developmental universals in spite of the fact that most languages are tone languages. Recent research in the acquisition of tone languages points to a distinct course of development as compared to nontone languages. Our purpose is to provide an integrated review of research on lexical tone acquisition. First, the linguistic properties and origins of tone languages are described. Following this, research on the acquisition of tones in perception and production is reviewed and integrated. Possible reasons for the uniqueness of tone in language acquisition are discussed. Finally, theoretical advances promised by further research on tone acquisition and specific research directions are proposed.

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.

Perceptions of Child Maltreatment Among Professionals and the Public in Singapore.

Child maltreatment is associated with significant negative long-term outcomes. Behaviors considered to be more serious and abusive are more likely identified as maltreatment and reported. Therefore, studying child maltreatment perceptions among professionals and the public who regularly work with children could inform practice. Existing studies examining professionals' and the public's perceptions of maltreatment have reported mixed findings, motivating a more comprehensive study of maltreatment perceptions. Our study compared perceived abusiveness and seriousness of behaviors (a) across professional groups (educators, counselors/social workers, nurses, doctors, and police officers), and (b) between professional groups and the public. We surveyed 1,022 professionals and 500 members of the public. Respondents completed an 18-item measure on their perceived abusiveness of potential maltreatment behaviors, and rated the seriousness of 21 vignettes depicting maltreatment behaviors. We found that educators surveyed in our study perceived all child maltreatment behaviors as more serious, and emotional maltreatment behaviors as more abusive, than other professional groups. Conversely, police officers in our sample perceived neglect/emotional maltreatment behaviors as less serious than other professionals. Police officers also perceived physical abuse and emotional maltreatment behaviors as less abusive than other professionals. In our sample, professionals perceived maltreatment behaviors as less serious than the public, while the public was more hesitant to label behaviors as constituting abuse than professionals. These findings highlight the need to address inconsistencies in maltreatment perceptions across professionals and the public, to ensure the provision of appropriate intervention in suspected maltreatment cases.

Corrigendum: Limits on Monolingualism? A Comparison of Monolingual and Bilingual Infants' Abilities to Integrate Lexical Tone in Novel Word Learning.

[This corrects the article on p. 667 in vol. 7, PMID: 27242584.].

Limits on Monolingualism? A Comparison of Monolingual and Bilingual Infants' Abilities to Integrate Lexical Tone in Novel Word Learning.

To construct their first lexicon, infants must determine the relationship between native phonological variation and the meanings of words. This process is arguably more complex for bilingual learners who are often confronted with phonological conflict: phonological variation that is lexically relevant in one language may be lexically irrelevant in the other. In a series of four experiments, the present study investigated English-Mandarin bilingual infants' abilities to negotiate phonological conflict introduced by learning both a tone and a non-tone language. In a novel word learning task, bilingual children were tested on their sensitivity to tone variation in English and Mandarin contexts. Their abilities to interpret tone variation in a language-dependent manner were compared to those of monolingual Mandarin learning infants. Results demonstrated that at 12-13 months, bilingual infants demonstrated the ability to bind tone to word meanings in Mandarin, but to disregard tone variation when learning new words in English. In contrast, monolingual learners of Mandarin did not show evidence of integrating tones into word meanings in Mandarin at the same age even though they were learning a tone language. However, a tone discrimination paradigm confirmed that monolingual Mandarin learning infants were able to tell these tones apart at 12-13 months under a different set of conditions. Later, at 17-18 months, monolingual Mandarin learners were able to bind tone variation to word meanings when learning new words. Our findings are discussed in terms of cognitive adaptations associated with bilingualism that may ease the negotiation of phonological conflict and facilitate precocious uptake of certain properties of each language.

More Limitations to Monolingualism: Bilinguals Outperform Monolinguals in Implicit Word Learning.

To succeed at cross-situational word learning, learners must infer word-object mappings by attending to the statistical co-occurrences of novel objects and labels across multiple encounters. While past studies have investigated this as a learning mechanism for infants and monolingual adults, bilinguals' cross-situational word learning abilities have yet to be tested. Here, we compared monolinguals' and bilinguals' performance on a cross-situational word learning paradigm that featured phonologically distinct word pairs (e.g., BON-DEET) and phonologically similar word pairs that varied by a single consonant or vowel segment (e.g., BON-TON, DEET-DIT, respectively). Both groups learned the novel word-referent mappings, providing evidence that cross-situational word learning is a learning strategy also available to bilingual adults. Furthermore, bilinguals were overall more accurate than monolinguals. This supports that bilingualism fosters a wide range of cognitive advantages that may benefit implicit word learning. Additionally, response patterns to the different trial types revealed a relative difficulty for vowel minimal pairs than consonant minimal pairs, replicating the pattern found in monolinguals by Escudero et al. (2016) in a different English accent. Specifically, all participants failed to learn vowel contrasts differentiated by vowel height. We discuss evidence for this bilingual advantage as a language-specific or general advantage.