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Updated: Jul 6, 2026

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
Published on: April 19, 2017
Bilingualism in infancy: first steps in perception and comprehension.
Janet F Werker1, Krista Byers-Heinlein
1Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada. jwerker@psych.ubc.ca <jwerker@psych.ubc.ca>
Bilingual infants use sound cues to learn two languages from birth. Research shows early bilingual language acquisition differs from monolingual acquisition, challenging linguistic theories.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Many children are raised in bilingual environments, acquiring two native languages.
- While language capacity is adaptable, bilingual acquisition presents unique challenges compared to monolingual acquisition.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review current research on preverbal bilingual infants' language acquisition.
- To understand how bilingual infants utilize acoustic information to differentiate and learn their languages.
Main Methods:
- Review of experimental studies on preverbal bilingual infants.
- Analysis of how infants process surface acoustic information for language separation and categorization.
Main Results:
- Bilingual infants actively use acoustic properties to distinguish between their two languages early in development.
- Infants demonstrate sophisticated abilities in separating and categorizing linguistic input from multiple languages.
Conclusions:
- Early bilingual language acquisition is an active process involving sophisticated acoustic analysis by infants.
- Findings suggest a need to adapt existing linguistic theories to accommodate simultaneous bilingual language acquisition within a single cognitive architecture.
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