Bilingual and Monolingual First Language Acquisition Experience Differentially Shapes Children’s Property Term Learning: Evidence from Behavioral and Neurophysiological Measures

Abstract

Studies of novel noun learning show bilingual children rely less on the Mutual Exclusivity Constraint (MEC) for word learning than monolinguals. Shifting the focus to learning novel property terms (adjectives), the present study compared 3.5- and five-year-old bilingual and monolingual preschoolers’ adherence to the MEC. We found no bilingual-monolingual differences on a behavioral forced-choice task for the 3.5-year-olds, but five-year-old monolinguals adhered more to the MEC than bilinguals did. Older bilinguals adhered less to the MEC than younger ones, while there was no difference in MEC adherence between the younger and older monolinguals. In the 5-year-olds, we additionally acquired neurophysiological data using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to allow for a first explorative look at potential neuronal underpinnings. The data show that, compared to bilinguals, monolinguals reveal higher activation over three brain regions (right frontal, left temporo-parietal, and left prefrontal) that may be involved in exploiting the MEC, building on conflict detection, inhibition, solution of a disjunction, and working memory processes. Taken together, our behavioral and neurophysiological findings reveal different paths towards novel property term learning depending on children’s language acquisition context.

Learning and Processing Multiple Languages: The More the Easier?

“…Bilingual-but not monolingual-infants showed higher sensitivity to vowel change and consequently could learn the words. Similarly, monolingual-but not bilingual-infants (9-10-month old) showed a one-to-one mapping bias (i.e., expecting one basic label per object), whereas the bilingual infants shared no such expectation (Byers-Heinlein, 2017;Kandhadai, Hall, & Werker, 2017; and for 5-year-olds, see Groba, De Houwer, Obrig, & Rossi, 2019). With another study, Byers-Heinlein and Werker (2009) accentuated the effects of differential mapping tendencies.…”

A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Language and Cognition in the Developing Bilingual Brain: From Infancy to Adolescence

“…German (Groba et al, 2018(Groba et al, , 2019. Several studies conducted the task in both bilinguals' languages (8/26).…”