title: Children Increase Their Sensitivity to a Speaker's Nonlinguistic Cues Following a Communicative Breakdown.
abstract: Bilingual children regularly face communicative challenges when speakers switch languages. To cope with such challenges, children may attempt to discern a speaker's communicative intent, thereby heightening their sensitivity to nonverbal communicative cues. Two studies examined whether such communication breakdowns increase sensitivity to nonverbal cues. English-speaking monolingual (n = 64) and bilingual (n = 54) 3- to 4-year-olds heard instructions in either English only or English mixed with a foreign language. Later, children played a hiding game that relied on nonverbal cues. Hearing a foreign language switch improved both monolingual and bilingual children's use of these cues. Moreover, bilinguals with more prior code-switching exposure outperformed those with less prior code-switching exposure. Children's short-term strategies to repair communication breakdowns may evolve into a more generalizable set of skills.
authors: Singapore University of Technology and Design.
authors: W Quin
authors: WQ
authors: Yow
authors: Stanford University.
authors: Ellen M
authors: EM
authors: Markman
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*