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Language experience and preschoolers' foreign word learning*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2016

JENNIFER MENJIVAR  and
NAMEERA AKHTAR
JENNIFER MENJIVAR
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
NAMEERA AKHTAR*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
*
Address for Correspondence: Nameera Akhtar, Psychology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064nakhtar@ucsc.edu
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Abstract

Four-year-old English speakers (N = 48) who were monolingual, bilingual, or regularly exposed to a second language were taught what they were told were foreign labels for familiar and novel objects. When task demands were low, there was no difference in word learning among the three groups. However, when task demands were higher, bilinguals learned more words than monolingual children, and exposed children's performance fell between the two. These findings indicate that the bilingual word learning advantage seen in adults may begin as early as the preschool years.

Keywords

bilingual advantageword learningpreschool childrenforeign word learning
Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , May 2017 , pp. 642 - 648
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by a Faculty Research Grant awarded to Nameera Akhtar by the Committee on Research of the University of California, Santa Cruz. We would like to thank the families who participated and all of the undergraduate research assistants who assisted with data collection.

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