Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T00:40:37.962Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bilingual advantages, bilingual delays: Sometimes an illusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2014

Krista Byers-Heinlein
Krista Byers-Heinlein*
Affiliation:
Concordia University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Studying bilingualism is complicated. Baum and Titone's Keynote Article concludes with a discussion of three particularly thorny issues in bilingualism research: (a) bilinguals are not a homogeneous group, (b) bilingualism is not randomly assigned, and (c) the effects of bilingualism are often more complicated than simple advantages or disadvantages/delays. On this latter point, Baum and Titone consider how binary thinking about bilingualism as good or bad can limit the kinds of research questions that we ask. Here, I expand on this issue by showing how some apparent bilingual advantages and disadvantages can be illusory. I describe two examples of reasonable, justifiable, and prudent experimental designs that initially led to misleading conclusions about the effects of bilingualism on development. While both of these examples are drawn from research with bilingual infants, they nonetheless have implications for how we interpret the results of studies of bilingualism across the life span.

Type
Commentaries
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 35 , Issue 5 , September 2014 , pp. 902 - 905
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Albareda-Castellot, B., Pons, F., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2011). The acquisition of phonetic categories in bilingual infants: New data from an anticipatory eye movement paradigm. Developmental Science, 14, 395–401. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.00989.x CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2003). Simultaneous bilingualism and the perception of a language-specific vowel contrast in the first year of life. Language and Speech, 46, 217–243. doi:10.1177/00238309030460020801 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Byers-Heinlein, K., & Fennell, C. T. (2013). Perceptual narrowing in the context of increased variation: Insights from bilingual infants. Developmental Psychobiology, 1–18. doi:10.1002/dev.21167 Google ScholarPubMed
Fennell, C. T., & Byers-Heinlein, K. (2014). You sound like Mommy: Bilingual infants learn words best from speakers typical of their language environments. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 38, 309–316. doi:10.1177/0165025414530631 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fennell, C. T., Byers-Heinlein, K., & Werker, J. F. (2007). Using speech sounds to guide word learning: The case of bilingual infants. Child Development, 78, 1510–1525. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01080.x CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuhl, P. K., Conboy, B. T., Coffey-Corina, S., Padden, D., Rivera-Gaxiola, M., & Nelson, T. (2007). Phonetic learning as a pathway to language: New data and native language magnet theory expanded (NLM-e). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 363B, 979–1000. doi:10.1098/rstb.2007.2154 Google Scholar
Mattock, K., Polka, L., Rvachew, S., & Krehm, M. (2010). The first steps in word learning are easier when the shoes fit: Comparing monolingual and bilingual infants. Developmental Science, 13, 229–243. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00891.x CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2010). Bilingual language acquisition: Where does the difference lie? Human Development, 53, 245–255. doi:10.1159/000321282 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stager, C. L., & Werker, J. F. (1997). Infants listen for more phonetic detail in speech perception than in word-learning tasks. Nature, 388, 381–382. doi:10.1038/41102 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984). Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development, 7, 49–63. doi:10.1016/S0163-6383(84)80022-3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar