Bilingual and monolingual children prefer native-accented speakers

Area of Science:

• Developmental psychology
• Sociolinguistics
• Social cognition

Background:

• Children often exhibit in-group biases, favoring individuals who speak their native language without a foreign accent.
• Previous research suggested bilingual children might show fewer in-group biases than monolinguals due to varied language exposure.
• No studies had directly compared monolingual and bilingual children's responses to unfamiliar foreign accents.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate social preferences of young children towards speakers with native versus unfamiliar foreign accents.
• To determine if bilingual children exhibit greater social flexibility than monolinguals in response to language variety.
• To examine in-group biases in preschoolers based on language accent.

Main Methods:

• Compared social preferences of 5-year-old English and French monolingual children with English-French bilingual children.
• Assessed children's preferences for friendship with speakers using native-accented language versus speakers using their dominant language with an unfamiliar foreign accent.

Main Results:

• Both monolingual and bilingual preschoolers preferred native-accented speakers over speakers with unfamiliar foreign accents in their dominant language.
• Contrary to predictions, bilingual children did not show reduced in-group bias based on language variety.
• Familiarity with a language variety appears to be a stronger factor than bilingualism in social preference.

Conclusions:

• Young children, regardless of bilingualism, demonstrate strong in-group preferences for familiar language varieties.
• Bilingualism in preschoolers does not automatically confer generalized social flexibility concerning language-based social judgments.
• Familiarity and in-group affiliation significantly influence early social preferences in children.