Impact of bilingualism on infants’ ability to learn from talking and nontalking faces

To probably overcome the challenge of learning two languages at the same time, infants raised in a bilingual environment pay more attention to the mouth of talking faces than same-age monolinguals. Here we examined the consequences of such preference for monolingual and bilingual infants’ ability to...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Fort, Mathilde, Ayneto, Alba, Escrichs, Anira, Sebastián Gallés, Núria
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Institución:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repositorio:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:10230/47865
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10230/47865
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/lang.12273
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Audiovisual
Learning
Attention
Early language acquisition
Infancy
Bilingualism
Talking faces
Descripción
Sumario:To probably overcome the challenge of learning two languages at the same time, infants raised in a bilingual environment pay more attention to the mouth of talking faces than same-age monolinguals. Here we examined the consequences of such preference for monolingual and bilingual infants’ ability to perceive nonspeech information coming from the eyes or the mouth region of talking faces. Using a learning procedure, we recorded 15-month-olds’ and 18-month-olds’ gaze while watching, at each trial, a speaker producing a sentence systematically followed by a nonspeech movement (eyebrow raise vs. lip protrusion). Differences were obtained for infants in the eyebrow-raise condition. While 15-month-old monolinguals and 18-month-old bilinguals learned to anticipate the eyebrow-raise movement before its appearance, 15-month-old bilinguals did not (i.e., they continued to look at the mouth region). Thus, bilingualism appears to impact not only how infants explore talking faces but also how they learn from them.