Bilingual infants excel at foreign‐language talker recognition. Issue 4 (18th December 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fecher, Natalie; Johnson, Elizabeth K.
• Is Part Of: Developmental science. Volume 22:Issue 4(2019)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2018-12-18
• Subjects: bilingualism -- cognitive development -- infant speech perception -- language acquisition -- talker recognition; Developmental psychology -- Periodicals; Psychology, Comparative -- Periodicals; 155
• DOI: 10.1111/desc.12778
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1363-755X

Abstract

Abstract: Bilingual and monolingual infants differ in how they process linguistic aspects of the speech signal. But do they also differ in how they process non‐linguistic aspects of speech, such as who is talking? Here, we addressed this question by testing Canadian monolingual and bilingual 9‐month‐olds on their ability to learn to identify native Spanish‐speaking females in a face‐voice matching task. Importantly, neither group was familiar with Spanish prior to participating in the study. In line with our predictions, bilinguals succeeded in learning the face‐voice pairings, whereas monolinguals did not. We consider multiple explanations for this finding, including the possibility that simultaneous bilingualism enhances perceptual attentiveness to talker‐specific speech cues in infancy (even in unfamiliar languages), and that early bilingualism delays perceptual narrowing to language‐specific talker recognition cues. This work represents the first evidence that multilingualism in infancy affects the processing of non‐linguistic aspects of the speech signal, such as talker identity. Abstract : This study tested monolingual and bilingual 9‐month‐olds on a face‐voice matching task in an unfamiliar language. While the bilinguals were successful at learning the face‐voice pairings, the monolinguals did not succeed in the same task. This suggests that bilingualism likely affects infants' non‐linguistic (indexical) processing of speech.