Monolingual and bilingual infants’ word segmentation abilities in an inter‐mixed dual‐language task

Orena, Adriel John; Polka, Linda

doi:10.1111/infa.12296

Cited by 23 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Second, we chose to block exposure to each language rather than interleave the two languages. Recent work with both infants and adults suggests that multiple transitions between languages can alert learners to the presence of multiple structures (Orena & Polka, ; Polka, Orena, Sundara, & Worrall, ; Zinszer & Weiss, ), although related work found that infants’ learning was better with long blocks relative to interleaved stimuli (Gonzales et al, ). Third, our exposure phase was 1.5 min for each language.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistical learning of multiple speech streams: A challenge for monolingual infants

Benitez

Bulgarelli

Byers‐Heinlein

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

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Language acquisition depends on the ability to detect and track the distributional properties of speech. Successful acquisition also necessitates detecting changes in those properties, which can occur when the learner encounters different speakers, topics, dialects, or languages. When encountering multiple speech streams with different underlying statistics but overlapping features, how do infants keep track of the properties of each speech stream separately? In four experiments, we tested whether 8‐month‐old monolingual infants (N = 144) can track the underlying statistics of two artificial speech streams that share a portion of their syllables. We first presented each stream individually. We then presented the two speech streams in sequence, without contextual cues signaling the different speech streams, and subsequently added pitch and accent cues to help learners track each stream separately. The results reveal that monolingual infants experience difficulty tracking the statistical regularities in two speech streams presented sequentially, even when provided with contextual cues intended to facilitate separation of the speech streams. We discuss the implications of our findings for understanding how infants learn and separate the input when confronted with multiple statistical structures.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistical learning of multiple speech streams: A challenge for monolingual infants

Benitez

Bulgarelli

Byers‐Heinlein

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Second, we chose to block exposure to each language rather than interleave the two languages. Recent work with both infants and adults suggests that multiple transitions between languages can alert learners to the presence of multiple structures (Orena & Polka, 2019;Polka, Orena, Sundara, & Worrall, 2016;Zinszer & Weiss, 2013), although related work found that infants' learning was better with long blocks relative to interleaved stimuli (Gonzalez et al, 2015). Third, our exposure phase was 1.5 minutes for each language.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistical learning of multiple speech streams: a challenge for monolingual infants

Benitez¹,

Bulgarelli²,

Byers‐Heinlein³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Language acquisition depends on the ability to detect and track the distributional properties of speech. Successful acquisition also necessitates detecting changes in those properties, which can occur when the learner encounters different speakers, topics, dialects, or languages. When encountering multiple speech streams with different underlying statistics but overlapping features, how do infants keep track of the properties of each speech stream separately? In four experiments, we tested whether 8-month-old monolingual infants (N = 144) can track the underlying statistics of two artificial speech streams that share a portion of their syllables. We first presented each stream individually. We then presented the two speech streams in sequence, without contextual cues signaling the different speech streams, and subsequently added pitch and accent cues to help learners track each stream separately. The results reveal that monolingual infants experience difficulty tracking the statistical regularities in two speech streams presented sequentially, even when provided with contextual cues intended to facilitate separation of the speech streams. We discuss the implications of our findings for understanding how infants learn and separate the input when confronted with multiple statistical structures.

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“…Bilingual infants have to learn and represent the linguistic properties of two language systems that sometimes conflict with one another (e.g. Gervain & Werker, ; Orena & Polka, ). To date, growing research in the field has revealed competencies that are both comparable and different between monolingual and bilingual infants (see Höhle, Bijeljac‐Babic, & Nazzi, for a recent review).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What do bilingual infants actually hear? Evaluating measures of language input to bilingual‐learning 10‐month‐olds

Orena¹,

Byers‐Heinlein

Polka³

2019

Developmental Science

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Examining how bilingual infants experience their dual language input is important for understanding bilingual language acquisition. To assess these language experiences, researchers typically conduct language interviews with caregivers. However, little is known about the reliability of these parent reports in describing how bilingual children actually experience dual language input. Here, we explored the quantitative nature of dual language input to bilingual infants. Furthermore, we described some of the heterogeneity of bilingual exposure in a sample of French–English bilingual families. Participants were 21 families with a 10‐month‐old infant residing in Montréal, Canada. First, we conducted language interviews with the caregivers. Then, each family completed three full‐day recordings at home using the Language Environment Analysis recording system. Results showed that children’s proportion exposure to each language was consistent across the two measurement approaches, indicating that parent reports are reliable for assessing a bilingual child’s language experiences. Further exploratory analyses revealed three unique findings: (a) there can be considerable variability in the absolute amount of input among infants hearing the same proportion of input, (b) infants can hear different proportions of language input when considering infant‐directed versus overheard speech, (c) proportion of language input can vary by day, depending on who is caring for the infant. We conclude that collecting naturalistic recordings is complementary to parent‐report measures for assessing infant’s language experiences and for establishing bilingual profiles.

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Monolingual and bilingual infants’ word segmentation abilities in an inter‐mixed dual‐language task

Cited by 23 publications

References 39 publications

Statistical learning of multiple speech streams: A challenge for monolingual infants

Statistical learning of multiple speech streams: A challenge for monolingual infants

Statistical learning of multiple speech streams: a challenge for monolingual infants

What do bilingual infants actually hear? Evaluating measures of language input to bilingual‐learning 10‐month‐olds

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