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Language Experience Is Associated with Infants' Visual Attention to Speakers
Natsuki Atagi1, Scott P Johnson2
1Department of Child and Adolescent Studies, California State University, Fullerton, CA 92831, USA.
Brain Sciences
|August 23, 2020
Summary
Bilingual infants shift attention to speakers more when unfamiliar languages are spoken. This effect, related to language familiarity, was not observed in monolingual infants, suggesting language experience influences infant attention during conversations.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Infants' early social-linguistic experiences shape their attention to faces.
- Limited understanding exists on how infants attend to speakers during conversations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how monolingual and bilingual infants attend to speakers in a conversational context.
- To determine if infants' visual attention is modulated by familiarity with the spoken language.
Main Methods:
- Recorded eye movements of 15-to-24-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants.
- Infants watched video clips of speakers conversing in familiar or unfamiliar infant-directed languages.
- Analysis focused on visual attention shifts relative to speech onset.
Main Results:
- Bilingual infants showed increased visual attention shifts to speakers before speech onset when an unfamiliar language was used, compared to a familiar language.
- Monolingual infants did not exhibit this differential attention shift based on language familiarity.
- Findings suggest language familiarity influences attentional orienting in bilingual infants.
Conclusions:
- Infants' familiarity with spoken language, influenced by their language experiences, modulates visual attention to speakers during conversations.
- Bilingualism may play a role in how infants process and attend to linguistic input from unfamiliar languages.
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