ERIC Number: EJ1219217
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Jul
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1467-7687
EISSN: N/A
The Impact of Bilingual Environments on Selective Attention in Infancy
Comishen, Kyle J.; Bialystok, Ellen; Adler, Scott A.
Developmental Science, v22 n4 e12797 Jul 2019
Bilingualism has been observed to influence cognitive processing across the lifespan but whether bilingual environments have an effect on selective attention and attention strategies in infancy remains an unresolved question. In Study 1, infants exposed to monolingual or bilingual environments participated in an eye-tracking cueing task in which they saw centrally presented stimuli followed by a target appearing on either the left or right side of the screen. Halfway through the trials, the central stimuli reliably predicted targets' locations. In Study 2, the first half of the trials consisted of centrally presented cues that predicted targets' locations; in the second half, the cue--target location relation switched. All infants performed similarly in Study 1, but in Study 2 infants raised in bilingual, but not monolingual, environments were able to successfully update their expectations by making more correct anticipatory eye movements to the target and expressing faster reactive eye latencies toward the target in the post-switch condition. The experience of attending to a complex environment in which infants simultaneously process and contrast two languages may account for why infants raised in bilingual environments have greater attentional control than those raised in monolingual environments.
Descriptors: Bilingualism, Infants, Monolingualism, Eye Movements, Cues, Visual Stimuli, Expectation, Cognitive Processes, Attention Control, Child Development
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (NIH)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: R01HD052523