Effects of Speech Practice on Fast Mapping in Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 929-941 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pui Fong Kan ◽  
Neeraja Sadagopan ◽  
Lauren Janich ◽  
Marixa Andrade

Purpose This study examines the effects of the levels of speech practice on fast mapping in monolingual and bilingual speakers. Method Participants were 30 English-speaking monolingual and 30 Spanish–English bilingual young adults. Each participant was randomly assigned to 1 of 3 practice conditions prior to the fast-mapping task: (a) intensive speech practice, (b) moderate speech practice, or (c) no practice. In a fast-mapping experiment, each participant was briefly exposed to novel objects and their corresponding novel words. Participants' knowledge of the target novel words was assessed immediately after the exposures. Results There were significant effects of speech practice on fast mapping for both monolingual and bilingual adults. It is important to note that participants' language experience also played a role in their fast-mapping performance. Conclusion The findings suggest that speech practice, interacting with language experience, facilitates the processes for fast mapping.

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (04) ◽  
pp. 883-895 ◽  
Author(s):  
MILIJANA BUAC ◽  
AURÉLIE TAUZIN-LARCHÉ ◽  
EMILY WEISBERG ◽  
MARGARITA KAUSHANSKAYA

In the present study, we examined the effect of speaker certainty on word-learning performance in English-speaking monolingual (MAge = 6.40) and Spanish–English bilingual (MAge = 6.58) children. No group differences were observed when children learned novel words from a certain speaker. However, bilingual children were more willing to learn novel words from an uncertain speaker than their monolingual peers. These findings indicate that language experience influences how children weigh cues to speaker credibility during learning and suggest that children with more diverse linguistic backgrounds (i.e., bilinguals) are less prone to prioritizing information based on speaker certainty.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn W. Brady ◽  
Judith C. Goodman

Purpose The authors of this study examined whether the type and number of word-learning cues affect how children infer and retain word-meaning mappings and whether the use of these cues changes with age. Method Forty-eight 18- to 36-month-old children with typical language participated in a fast-mapping task in which 6 novel words were presented with 3 types of cues to the words' referents, either singly or in pairs. One day later, children were tested for retention of the novel words. Results By 24 months of age, children correctly inferred the referents of the novel words at a significant level. Children retained the meanings of words at a significant rate by 30 months of age. Children retained the first 3 of the 6 word-meaning mappings by 24 months of age. For both fast mapping and retention, the efficacy of different cue types changed with development, but children were equally successful whether the novel words were presented with 1 or 2 cues. Conclusion The type of information available to children at fast mapping affects their ability to both form and retain word-meaning associations. Providing children with more information in the form of paired cues had no effect on either fast mapping or retention.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 649-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZOHAR EVIATAR ◽  
HAITHAM TAHA ◽  
VIKKI COHEN ◽  
MILA SCHWARTZ

ABSTRACTWe tested children attending bilingual Hebrew–Arabic kindergartens on a fast mapping task. These early sequential bilinguals included those with Hebrew as their home language and those with Arabic as their home language. They were compared to monolingual Hebrew and Arabic speakers. The children saw pictures of unfamiliar objects and were taught pseudowords as the object names that followed typical Hebrew, typical Arabic, or neutral phonotactics. Memory, phonological, and morphological abilities were also measured. The bilingual groups performed similarly to each other, and better than the monolingual groups, who also performed similarly to each other. Memory and the interaction between language experience and metalinguistic abilities (phonological and morphological awareness) significantly accounted for variance on the fast mapping tasks. We predicted that bilinguals would be more sensitive to phonotactics than monolinguals. Instead, we found that Arabic speakers (bilinguals and monolinguals) performed better with Hebrew-like stimuli than with Arabic-like stimuli, and no effect of phonotactics for Hebrew speakers. This may reflect the diglossia in Arabic language acquisition. The results suggest that the process of fast mapping is sharpened by multilingual experience, and may be sensitive to sociolinguistic factors such as diglossia.


2005 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian A. Goldstein ◽  
Leah Fabiano ◽  
Patricia Swasey Washington

Purpose: There is a paucity of information detailing the phonological skills of Spanish-English bilingual children and comparing that information to information concerning the phonological skills of predominantly English-speaking (PE) and predominantly Spanish-speaking (PS) children. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between amount of output (i.e., percentage of time each language was spoken) in each language and phonological skills in Spanish-English bilingual children and PE and PS children. Method: Fifteen typically developing children, ranging in age from 5;0 (years;months) to 5;5 (mean=5;2), participated in the study. The participants consisted of 5 PE speakers, 5 PS speakers, and 5 bilingual (Spanish-English) speakers. A single-word assessment was used to gather information on phonological skills (consonant accuracy, type and frequency of substitutions, frequency of occurrence of phonological patterns [e.g., cluster reduction], accuracy of syllable types [e.g., CV, CVC, CCV, etc.]), and type and rate of cross-linguistic effects. Results: The results indicated that there was no significant correlation between amount of output in each language and phonological skills either in the Spanish skills of PS children and Spanish-English bilingual speakers or in the English skills of PE children and Spanish-English bilingual speakers. In addition, there was no significant difference in segmental accuracy, syllabic accuracy, or percentage of occurrence of phonological patterns between either the Spanish skills of PS children and Spanish-English bilingual speakers or the English skills of PE children and Spanish-English bilingual speakers. Finally, the children showed a limited number of cross-linguistic effects. Clinical Implications: Results from this study indicate no link between parent estimates of language output and phonological skill and demonstrate that Spanish-English bilingual children will have commensurate, although not identical, phonological skills as compared to age-matched PS and PE children.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 114
Author(s):  
Drew Weatherhead ◽  
Maria M. Arredondo ◽  
Loreto Nácar Garcia ◽  
Janet F. Werker

Three experiments examined the role of audiovisual speech on 24-month-old monolingual and bilinguals’ performance in a fast-mapping task. In all three experiments, toddlers were exposed to familiar trials which tested their knowledge of known word–referent pairs, disambiguation trials in which novel word–referent pairs were indirectly learned, and retention trials which probed their recognition of the newly-learned word–referent pairs. In Experiment 1 (n = 48), lip movements were present during familiar and disambiguation trials, but not retention trials. In Experiment 2 (n = 48), lip movements were present during all three trial types. In Experiment 3 (bilinguals only, n = 24), a still face with no lip movements was present in all three trial types. While toddlers succeeded in the familiar and disambiguation trials of every experiment, success in the retention trials was only found in Experiment 2. This work suggests that the extra-linguistic support provided by lip movements improved the learning and recognition of the novel words.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 471-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
TODD A. GIBSON ◽  
CONNIE SUMMERS

Polysyllabic shortening is used to maintain stress-timed rhythm in English, but used negligibly in Spanish. It is unknown how polysyllabic shortening is influenced when individuals are exposed to one language that employs it and one that does not. We calculated polysyllabic shortening for 35 functionally monolingual English-speaking adults and 19 relatively balanced Spanish–English bilingual peers who repeated English and Spanish nonwords. Results showed that speech motor patterns learned early in life might be sufficient to block cross-linguistic transfer of polysyllabic shortening despite limited language proficiency, and bilingual speakers appear to signal membership in the majority language by increasing polysyllabic shortening.


2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 73-79
Author(s):  
Sara C. Steele ◽  
Deborah A. Hwa-Froelich

Nonword repetition performance has been shown to differentiate monolingual English-speaking children with language impairment (LI) from typically developing children. These tasks have been administered to monolingual speakers of different languages and to simultaneous and sequential bilingual English Language Learners (ELLs) with mixed results. This article includes a review of the nonword repetition performance of monolingual and bilingual speakers and of internationally adopted children. Clinical implications for administration and interpretation of nonword repetition task outcomes are included.


2003 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
ESTHER ÁLVAREZ

It is a matter of debate whether the two differentiated grammatical systems in a bilingual child develop autonomously, or whether there is interdependence and in what areas (Genesee, 2001; Meisel, 2001). Extensive research is being carried out in the emergence of the two grammars, but not much attention has been given to the development of discourse in simultaneous bilinguals. This study examines longitudinal narrative data from a Spanish-English school-age simultaneous bilingual child, and, in particular, the development of character introductions in the story. The child's stories in both languages show similar degrees of appropriate use of grammatical means for discourse purposes during the period under study and inadequacies are related not to the specific language used by the child, but to semantic and syntactic factors that promote or hinder appropriateness and affect both languages equally. The child follows the characteristic style identified for each of the two languages in studies of monolingual Spanish- and English-speaking children and adults. This indicates an autonomous development. However, there is also evidence that the two styles are not as differentiated as might be expected in comparison with monolinguals. These results support the view that, although the two languages of a bilingual child develop autonomously to a great extent, there are certain aspects which develop interdependently (Genesee, 2001).


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document