ERIC Number: EJ1219242
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Jul
Pages: 6
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1467-7687
EISSN: N/A
Bilingual Infants Excel at Foreign-Language Talker Recognition
Fecher, Natalie; Johnson, Elizabeth K.
Developmental Science, v22 n4 e12778 Jul 2019
Bilingual and monolingual infants differ in how they process linguistic aspects of the speech signal. But do they also differ in how they process non-linguistic aspects of speech, such as who is talking? Here, we addressed this question by testing Canadian monolingual and bilingual 9-month-olds on their ability to learn to identify native Spanish-speaking females in a face-voice matching task. Importantly, neither group was familiar with Spanish prior to participating in the study. In line with our predictions, bilinguals succeeded in learning the face-voice pairings, whereas monolinguals did not. We consider multiple explanations for this finding, including the possibility that simultaneous bilingualism enhances perceptual attentiveness to talker-specific speech cues in infancy (even in unfamiliar languages), and that early bilingualism delays perceptual narrowing to language-specific talker recognition cues. This work represents the first evidence that multilingualism in infancy affects the processing of non-linguistic aspects of the speech signal, such as talker identity.
Descriptors: Bilingualism, Monolingualism, Infants, Speech Communication, Foreign Countries, Spanish Speaking, Cognitive Processes, Attention, Cues
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A