Evidence of Early Language Discrimination Abilities in Infants From Bilingual Environments

TLDR

Infants from monolingual families can discriminate prosodically distinct languages shortly after birth, but discrimination of rhythmically similar languages is not yet established by two months, and it is unclear how early bilingual infants can distinguish their languages. The study aimed to assess whether 4‑month‑old bilingual infants exposed to Spanish and Catalan can discriminate between the two languages. Using a familiarization‑preference procedure, the researchers tested discrimination in bilingual infants. Bilingual infants at four months could discriminate Spanish from Catalan, with effect sizes comparable to monolingual infants, providing early evidence that bilingual language discrimination is not delayed.

Abstract

Abstract Previous research data indicate that soon after birth, infants from monolingual families can discriminate utterances drawn from languages that differ prosodically, but discrimination between rhythmically similar languages, such as English and Dutch, has not yet been established by 2 months of age. In the case of bilinguals, the question of how early they can distinguish between the languages of exposure remains unanswered. The goal of this study was to analyze language discrimination capacities in 4‐month‐old bilingual infants simultaneously exposed to 2 Romance languages belonging to the same rhythmic category, Spanish and Catalan. Using a familiarization‐preference procedure, 2 groups of bilingual‐to‐be infants showed a capacity to discriminate between these 2 familial languages. Moreover, when compared with 2 groups of infants from monolingual environments, the size of the observed effects was the same. These results can be taken as initial evidence of an early capacity to distinguish languages in simultaneous bilingual exposure, thus challenging the hypothesis that language discrimination capacities are delayed in bilinguals.