Novel Word Learning in Bilingual and Monolingual Infants: Evidence for a Bilingual Advantage.
Previous studies revealing that monolingual and bilingual infants learn similar sounding words with comparable success are largely based on prior investigations involving single-feature changes in the onset consonant of a word. There have been no investigations of bilingual infants' abilities to learn similar sounding words differentiated by vowels. In the current study, 18-month-old bilingual and monolingual infants (n = 90) were compared on their sensitivity to a vowel change when learning the meanings of words. Bilingual infants learned similar sounding words differing by a vowel contrast, whereas monolingual English- and Mandarin-learning infants did not. Findings are discussed in terms of early constraints on novel word learning in bilingual and monolingual infants.
National University of Singapore.
Leher
L
Singh
National University of Singapore.
Charlene S L
CSL
Fu
National University of Singapore.
Zhi Wen
ZW
Tay
University of Delaware.
Roberta Michnick
RM
Golinkoff
D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism