Cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants

Kovács, Ágnes Melinda; Mehler, Jacques

doi:10.1073/pnas.0811323106

Cited by 526 publications

(534 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(27 reference statements)

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“…This discovery helps dismiss the widespread, but unsupported concern that bilingual acquisition leads to language delay. Indeed, it provides evidence of a sensitivity that may lay the foundation for some of the cognitive advantages previously reported among bilinguals 24,25 . Further, it demonstrates how studying bilingual infants can reveal mechanisms of language acquisition, and ultimately language evolution, not readily apparent in studies of only a monolingual population.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 69%

Prosody cues word order in 7-month-old bilingual infants

2013

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A central problem in language acquisition is how children effortlessly acquire the grammar of their native language even though speech provides no direct information about underlying structure. This learning problem is even more challenging for dual language learners, yet bilingual infants master their mother tongues as efficiently as monolinguals do. Here we ask how bilingual infants succeed, investigating the particularly challenging task of learning two languages with conflicting word orders (English: eat an apple versus Japanese: ringo-wo taberu 'apple.acc eat'). We show that 7-month-old bilinguals use the characteristic prosodic cues (pitch and duration) associated with different word orders to solve this problem. Thus, the complexity of bilingual acquisition is countered by bilinguals' ability to exploit relevant cues. Moreover, the finding that perceptually available cues like prosody can bootstrap grammatical structure adds to our understanding of how and why infants acquire grammar so early and effortlessly.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 69%

Prosody cues word order in 7-month-old bilingual infants

2013

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“…left) for the first six trials, before swapping sides and appearing on the other side (e.g. right) for the subsequent six trials (the 'reversal' phase) (Kovacs & Mehler, 2009) …”

Section: Reversal Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in behavior and salivary cortisol after targeted cognitive training in typical 12-month-old infants.

Wass

Cook

Clackson

2017

Developmental Psychology

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Previous research has suggested that early development may be an optimal period to implement cognitive training interventions, particularly those relating to attention control, a basic ability that is essential for the development of other cognitive skills. In the present study, we administered gaze-contingent training (95 minutes across 2 weeks) targeted at voluntary attention control to a cohort of typical 12-month-old children (N = 24) and sham training to a control group (N = 24). We assessed training effects on (a) tasks involving non-trained aspects of attention control: visual sustained attention, habituation speed, visual recognition memory, sequence learning and reversal learning; (b) general attentiveness (on-task behaviours during testing) and (c) salivary cortisol levels. Assessments were administered immediately following the cessation of training and at a 6-week follow-up. On the immediate post-test infants showed significantly more sustained visual attention, faster habituation and improved sequence learning. Significant effects were also found for increased general attentiveness and decreased salivary cortisol. Some of these effects were still evident at the 6-week follow-up (significantly improved sequence learning and marginally improved […] sustained attention). These findings extend the emerging literature showing that attention training is possible in infancy.

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“…Research has been quite conclusive in establishing that, contrary to popular belief, the important milestones of language acquisition are similar among monolinguals and bilinguals 48 . The most prominent and consistently documented advantage of bilingual children is in executive functions, more specifically in tasks requiring inhibition of attention, monitoring and cognitive control 47,49 . Other comparisons instead may show an advantage for monolinguals.…”

Section: R E V I E Wmentioning

confidence: 99%