Bilingual toddlers show increased attention capture by static faces compared to monolinguals

Abstract

Bilingual infants rely differently than monolinguals on facial information, such as lip patterns, to differentiate their native languages. This may explain, at least in part, why young monolinguals and bilinguals show differences in social attention. For example, in the first year, bilinguals attend faster and more often to static faces over non-faces than do monolinguals (Mercure et al., 2018). However, the developmental trajectories of these differences are unknown. In this pre-registered study, data were collected from 15- to 18-month-old monolinguals (English) and bilinguals (English and another language) to test whether group differences in face-looking behaviour persist into the second year. We predicted that bilinguals would orient more rapidly and more often to static faces than monolinguals. Results supported the first but not the second hypothesis. This suggests that, even into the second year of life, toddlers’ rapid visual orientation to static social stimuli is sensitive to early language experience.

Effects of environmental diversity on exploration and learning: The case of bilingualism.

“…In combination, the evidence converges on the suggestion that bilingually exposed infants demonstrate fundamentally distinct patterns of attentional allocation compared with monolingually exposed infants, disengaging more readily from familiar stimuli and orienting preferentially to novel stimuli. An even more recent investigation suggests that bilingually exposed infants may engage more rapidly specifically to socially relevant stimuli (Mousley et al, 2023). The study also demonstrated increased attentional switching between paired stimuli.…”

From Everyday Exposure to Pragmatic Mastery: The COME Perspective

“…Bilingual adults use gestures more often than monolingual adults (Pika et al, 2006), and bilingual children are more likely to incorporate additional information about a target object into their iconic gestures than monolingual children (Wermelinger et al, 2020). Likewise, bilingual toddlers exhibit a heightened sensitivity towards nonverbal communicative behaviour such as pointing gestures, glances, or facial information such as lip patterns (Brojde et al, 2012;Groba et al, 2018;Mousley et al, 2023), and paralinguistic behaviour such as tone of voice (Yow & Markman, 2011a). Furthermore, when monolingual 3-year-olds were exposed to a bilingual-like experience via instructions in their native language (English) mixed with a foreign language (Japanese), they interpreted nonverbal means more like bilinguals (Yow & Markman, 2016).…”