Bilingual Infants Excel at Foreign-Language Talker Recognition

Autor/inn/en	Fecher, Natalie; Johnson, Elizabeth K.
Titel	Bilingual Infants Excel at Foreign-Language Talker Recognition
Quelle	In: Developmental Science, 22 (2019) 4, (6 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1467-7687
DOI	10.1111/desc.12778
Schlagwörter	Bilingualism; Monolingualism; Infants; Speech Communication; Foreign Countries; Spanish Speaking; Cognitive Processes; Attention; Cues; Canada + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Bilingualismus; Infant; Toddler; Toddlers; Kleinkind; Ausland; Cognitive process; Kognitiver Prozess; Aufmerksamkeit; Stichwort; Kanada
Abstract	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. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01