Flexibility in Bilingual Infants' Word Learning

Abstract

The present experiments tested bilingual infants' developmental narrowing for the interpretation of sounds that form words. These studies addressed how language specialization proceeds when the environment provides varied and divergent input. Experiment 1 (N = 32) demonstrated that bilingual 14- and 19-month-olds learned a pair of object labels consisting of the same syllable produced with distinct pitch contours (rising and falling). Infants' native languages did not use pitch contour to differentiate words. In Experiment 2 (N = 16), 22-month-old bilinguals failed to learn the labels. These results conflict with the developmental trajectory of monolinguals, who fail to learn pitch contour contrasts as labels at 17-19 months (Hay, Graf Estes, Wang, & Saffran, 2015). Bilingual infants exhibited a prolonged period of flexibility in their interpretation of potential word forms.

Finding patterns and learning words: Infant phonotactic knowledge is associated with vocabulary size

“…Specialization in language-specific phonotactics is crucial preparation for becoming a native language user (see also Graf Estes & Hay, 2015; Hay et al, 2015). Our finding that infants with large- and medium-sized vocabularies failed to demonstrate learning of phonotactic patterns that violate native language phonotactics suggests that they showed stronger specialization than infants with smaller vocabularies.…”

Bilingual Infants Demonstrate Advantages in Learning Words in a Third Language

“…Kuhl's predictions were borne out by empirical studies demonstrating that bilingual infants do indeed demonstrate a prolonged period of perceptual narrowing (Ferjan Ramírez, Ramírez, Clarke, Taulu, & Kuhl, ; Garcia‐Sierra et al., ; see also Petitto et al., ). The protraction of perceptual narrowing in infants is manifest both in terms of a postponement (delayed onset) in infants' specialized sensitivity to native language contrasts (Ferjan Ramírez et al., ; Garcia‐Sierra et al., ) as well as in terms of a protracted sensitivity (delayed offset) to non native contrasts (Graf Estes & Hay, ; Petitto et al., ). In other words, bilingual infants may embark on a more gradual course toward perceptual expertise for the sounds of their own language and, for a greater period of time, may remain closely tethered to non native phonological systems in comparison to their monolingual peers.…”

The Use of Pitch Accent in Word–Object Association by Monolingual Japanese Infants

“…Traditionally, most of the research on early word–object association has focused on how infants learn words using segmental features. However, some recent studies have started to shed light on word learning with regard to suprasegmental features such as stress, accent, and lexical tones (e.g., Burnham, Singh, Mattock, Woo, & Kalashnikova, ; Curtin, , ; Curtin, Campbell, & Hufnagle, ; Graf Estes & Hay, ; Hay, Graf Estes, Wang, & Saffran, ; Liu & Kager, ; Singh, Hui, Chan, & Golinkoff, ; Singh, Poh, & Fu, ; see Singh & Fu, for review). In line with these studies, the present work explores the role of suprasegmental features in early lexical acquisition by testing monolingual Japanese infants’ ability to use Japanese lexical pitch accent in word–object associative learning.…”

“…However, younger, 12‐ to 13‐month‐old monolingual Mandarin‐learning infants who were tested with the habituation/dishabituation paradigm failed to associate word and object using native Mandarin tones (Singh et al., ). Unexpectedly, slightly older, 14‐month‐old English‐learning infants, who are not native learners of a tone language, were successful in a word‐learning task using Mandarin tone contrasts (Graf Estes & Hay, ; Hay et al., ). This discrepancy implies that word learning using tones may be easier for non‐tone‐language learners possibly because they utilize a general rather than a language‐specific mechanism.…”

“…This fact allows us to home in on the contribution of pitch alone to word learning, and to refine our understanding of the interactions between word learning and suprasegmental features explored in existing research. In addition, most studies involving word–object pairing with lexical tone often focus on non‐native or bilingual listeners (e.g., Graf Estes & Hay, ; Hay et al., ; Liu & Kager, ). Although data have recently accumulated concerning native language listeners as well, the current study will contribute to revealing how infants who must learn lexical pitch distinctions in their native language attend to pitch information during early word learning.…”