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1 results

  • 24 - Dual Language Exposure and Early Learning

  • from Part V - Language
  • Edited by Jeffrey J. Lockman, Tulane University, Louisiana, Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda, New York University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Infant Development
    Published online:
    26 September 2020
    Print publication:
    13 August 2020, pp 661-684

  • Summary

    With close to 7,000 languages in use around the world today (Lewis, Simons, & Fennig, 2009) and only 195 countries (United Nations, 2018), being completely monolingual is quite rare as multilingualism is often the norm (Grin, 2004). Looking through the research literature, however, it would appear as though bilinguals are a unique population with distinct advantages or disadvantages from monolinguals. Spear (1984) proposed that what infants of all species learn and remember at any time in development is determined by the ecological challenges posed by their current environment and the survival value of responding successfully to them. Learning trajectories of monolingual and bilingual children are more similar than different, with differences reflecting the bilingual brain’s adaptations to the surrounding linguistic conditions. The rate and ease at which children learn language is surprising, as language acquisition is a very complex task, with infants having to quickly learn how to identify patterns within a continuous string of speech sounds (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996).