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The development of associative word learning in monolingual and bilingual infants Byers-Heinlein, Krista; Fennell, Christopher T.; Werker, Janet Feldman, 1951-

Abstract

Children growing up bilingual face a unique linguistic environment. The current study investigated whether early bilingual experience influences the developmental trajectory of associative word learning, a foundational mechanism for lexical acquisition. Monolingual and bilingual infants (N=98) were tested on their ability to learn dissimilar-sounding words (lif and neem) in the Switch task. Twelve-month-olds from both language backgrounds failed to detect a violation of a previously taught word-object pairing. However, both monolinguals and bilinguals succeeded at 14-months, and their performance did not differ. The results indicate that early bilingual experience does not interfere with the development of the fundamental ability to form word-object associations, suggesting that this mechanism is robust across different early language environments.

Item Metadata

Title
The development of associative word learning in monolingual and bilingual infants
Creator
Byers-Heinlein, Krista; Fennell, Christopher T.; Werker, Janet Feldman, 1951-
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Date Issued
2013-01
Description
Children growing up bilingual face a unique linguistic environment. The current study investigated whether early bilingual experience influences the developmental trajectory of associative word learning, a foundational mechanism for lexical acquisition. Monolingual and bilingual infants (N=98) were tested on their ability to learn dissimilar-sounding words (lif and neem) in the Switch task. Twelve-month-olds from both language backgrounds failed to detect a violation of a previously taught word-object pairing. However, both monolinguals and bilinguals succeeded at 14-months, and their performance did not differ. The results indicate that early bilingual experience does not interfere with the development of the fundamental ability to form word-object associations, suggesting that this mechanism is robust across different early language environments.
Subject
Word learning; Infant development; Language acquisition; Bilingualism
Genre
Article; Postprint
Type
Text
Language
eng
Date Available
2019-12-24
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
DOI
10.14288/1.0387325
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/72993
Affiliation
Arts, Faculty of; Non UBC; Psychology, Department of
Citation
Byers-Heinlein, K., Fennell, C.T., & Werker, J.F. (2013). The development of associative word learning in monolingual and bilingual infants. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16(1), 198-205.
Publisher DOI
10.1017/S1366728912000417
Peer Review Status
Reviewed
Scholarly Level
Faculty
Rights URI
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository
DSpace

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International