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The development of associative word learning in monolingual and bilingual infants

Title:

The development of associative word learning in monolingual and bilingual infants

Byers-Heinlein, Krista, Fennell, Christopher T. and Werker, Janet F. (2013) The development of associative word learning in monolingual and bilingual infants. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16 (1). pp. 198-205.

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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.

Divisions:Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science > Psychology
Item Type:Article
Refereed:Yes
Authors:Byers-Heinlein, Krista and Fennell, Christopher T. and Werker, Janet F.
Journal or Publication:Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
Date:2013
ID Code:980279
Deposited By: KRISTA BYERS HEINLEIN
Deposited On:17 Aug 2015 15:16
Last Modified:18 Jan 2018 17:51
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