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The effects of foreign-language exposure on infants’ understanding of conventional properties of language

Abstract

The present study examined whether foreign-language experience in infancy influences the development of understanding that word meanings are shared across speakers of the same language. Thirteen-month-old infants with regular exposure to English (the exposed group) or with very little exposure (the monolingual group) participated in a violation-of-expectation task. First, the infants watched two speakers alternately singing nursery rhymes in Korean. Then one of the speakers provided a novel label (panu) for one of two novel objects. In the following test trials, the other speaker used the same label (panu) to refer to the same object (same-object event) or a different one (different-object event). Monolingual infants looked at the different-object event longer than at the same-object event, while exposed infants looked about equally. These results suggest that exposure to a foreign language can influence early understanding of the conventional nature of language.

keywords
Submission Date
2016-07-15
Revised Date
2016-08-21
Accepted Date
2016-08-30

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