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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
Infants can rapidly learn words in a foreign language.
Ranka Bijeljac-Babic1, Khatijah Nassurally, Mélanie Havy
1Université Paris Descartes, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS, Paris, France. Ranka.Bijeljac-Babic@parisdescartes.fr
Infant Behavior & Development
|July 17, 2009
Summary
Infants can learn new words regardless of language. Twenty-month-old French learners successfully acquired novel English or French words, demonstrating early bilingual language acquisition capabilities.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Early language acquisition is crucial for cognitive development.
- Understanding cross-linguistic influence in infants informs theories of language learning.
- Bilingualism in early childhood offers cognitive advantages.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if 20-month-old infants can learn words in a foreign language.
- To determine if infants' native language influences their ability to learn new words in a second language.
- To explore the role of object manipulation in early foreign language word learning.
Main Methods:
- An object manipulation task was employed to assess word learning.
- Twenty-month-old infants learning French were exposed to new words.
- Novel words were presented in either English or French by a bilingual speaker.
Main Results:
- Infants successfully learned new words in both English and French conditions.
- Performance did not differ significantly between the native and foreign language learning tasks.
- Early exposure facilitated word acquisition irrespective of the language.
Conclusions:
- Twenty-month-old infants demonstrate the capacity for foreign language word learning.
- Infants' ability to learn new vocabulary is not limited by their native language.
- This study supports the idea that early exposure aids second language acquisition.
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