Semantic facilitation in bilingual first language acquisition

Bilson, Samuel; Yoshida, Hanako; Tran, Crystal D.; Woods, Elizabeth A.; Hills, Thomas T.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.03.013

Cited by 61 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…This view is consistent with that put forward by Bilson et al. () who proposed that bilingual children might learn about concepts at the same rate as monolinguals, but it takes them longer to learn to name the concept because of its inconsistent labeling (sometimes in one language and sometimes in the other). Moreover, there is some previous empirical support for the Labels account, for example stronger priming reported in the dominant than the nondominant language (Singh, ; although we did not replicate this effect), and an observed correlation between priming in English and English vocabulary size (Wojcik & Werker, ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Labels or Concepts? The Development of Semantic Networks in Bilingual Two‐Year‐Olds

Jardak¹,

Byers‐Heinlein²

2018

Child Development

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The adult lexicon links concepts and labels with related meanings (e.g., dog-cat). How do children's encounters with concepts versus labels contribute to semantic development? Three studies investigated semantic priming in 40 monolinguals and 32 bilinguals, who have similar experience with concepts but different experience with labels (i.e., monolinguals hear "dog," bilinguals hear "dog" and "chien"). Similarities in performance across monolinguals and bilinguals at age 24 months, as well as across bilinguals' two languages at age 30 months, support the position that encounters with concepts contribute more to early semantic development than encounters with labels. Findings also suggest that the effects of semantic priming are challenging to observe at 24 months but are strong in bilinguals by age 30 months.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Labels or Concepts? The Development of Semantic Networks in Bilingual Two‐Year‐Olds

Jardak¹,

Byers‐Heinlein²

2018

Child Development

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“…In studies using the AST, bilingual 24‐month‐olds show within‐language semantic priming effects only in their dominant language, suggesting that language input affects the developmental trajectory of semantic networks . Additionally, in simulations, bilingual infants learn words faster when the words are connected to more words within and across languages . Further work with bilingual infants will not only shed light on their lexical–semantic networks, but also reveal how the language environment (e.g., number of languages, and quality and quantity of language input) affects the development of networks.…”

Section: Remaining Questionsmentioning

confidence: 98%

The Development of Lexical–Semantic Networks in Infants and Toddlers

Wojcik

2017

Child Dev Perspectives

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Researchers have focused for decades on how young children learn individual words. However, they have paid less attention to how children organize their word knowledge into the network of representations that underlies our ability to retrieve the right words efficiently and flexibly when we need them. Although methodological limits have made it difficult to study the development of lexical–semantic networks, in recent work with new paradigms, infants and toddlers have shown that they organize their vocabulary systematically via both categorical and associative relations from around age 2. Combined with work demonstrating that lexical–semantic relations affect early comprehension, production, and learning, this emerging area of research suggests that scientists and practitioners would benefit from more comprehensive theories of language learning that include not only vocabulary development, but also the development of lexical–semantic networks.

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“…In early lexical development children prefer to assign novel words to objects that do not yet have names. This means that two different words are often interpreted to refer to two different objects (Markman, Wasow, & Hansen, ; but see Bilson, Yoshida, Tran, Woods, & Hills, ). Mutual exclusivity has been shown to influence word‐object associations and this is related to a preference for labeling novel objects with novel words (e.g., Mather & Plunkett, , ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feature Biases in Early Word Learning: Network Distinctiveness Predicts Age of Acquisition

Engelthaler

Hills

2016

Cognitive Science

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Do properties of a word's features influence the order of its acquisition in early word learning? Combining the principles of mutual exclusivity and shape bias, the present work takes a network analysis approach to understanding how feature distinctiveness predicts the order of early word learning. Distance networks were built from nouns with edge lengths computed using various distance measures. Feature distinctiveness was computed as a distance measure, showing how far an object in a network is from other objects based on shared and non-shared features. Feature distinctiveness predicted order of acquisition across all measures; words that were further away from other words in the network space were learned earlier. The best distance measures were based only on non-shared features (object dissimilarity) and did not include shared features (object similarity). This indicates that shared features may play less of a role in early word learning than non-shared features. In addition, the strongest effects were found for visual form and surface features. Cluster analysis further revealed that this effect is a localized effect in the object feature space, where objects' distances from their cluster centroid were inversely correlated with their age of acquisition.Together, these results suggest a role for feature distinctiveness in early word learning.

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Semantic facilitation in bilingual first language acquisition

Cited by 61 publications

References 64 publications

Labels or Concepts? The Development of Semantic Networks in Bilingual Two‐Year‐Olds

Labels or Concepts? The Development of Semantic Networks in Bilingual Two‐Year‐Olds

The Development of Lexical–Semantic Networks in Infants and Toddlers

Feature Biases in Early Word Learning: Network Distinctiveness Predicts Age of Acquisition

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