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[johnslat]

Hearing Bilingual: How Babies Sort Out Language

By PERRI KLASS, M.D.

Once, experts feared that young children exposed to more than one language would suffer �language confusion,� which might delay their speech development. Today, parents often are urged to capitalize on that early knack for acquiring language. Upscale schools market themselves with promises of deep immersion in Spanish � or Mandarin � for everyone, starting in kindergarten or even before.

Yet while many parents recognize the utility of a second language, families bringing up children in non-English-speaking households, or trying to juggle two languages at home, are often desperate for information. And while the study of bilingual development has refuted those early fears about confusion and delay, there aren�t many research-based guidelines about the very early years and the best strategies for producing a happily bilingual child.

But there is more and more research to draw on, reaching back to infancy and even to the womb. As the relatively new science of bilingualism pushes back to the origins of speech and language, scientists are teasing out the earliest differences between brains exposed to one language and brains exposed to two.

Researchers have found ways to analyze infant behavior � where babies turn their gazes, how long they pay attention � to help figure out infant perceptions of sounds and words and languages, of what is familiar and what is unfamiliar to them. Now, analyzing the neurologic activity of babies� brains as they hear language, and then comparing those early responses with the words that those children learn as they get older, is helping explain not just how the early brain listens to language, but how listening shapes the early brain.

Recently, researchers at the University of Washington used measures of electrical brain responses to compare so-called monolingual infants, from homes in which one language was spoken, to bilingual infants exposed to two languages. Of course, since the subjects of the study, adorable in their infant-size EEG caps, ranged from 6 months to 12 months of age, they weren�t producing many words in any language.

Still, the researchers found that at 6 months, the monolingual infants could discriminate between phonetic sounds, whether they were uttered in the language they were used to hearing or in another language not spoken in their homes. By 10 to 12 months, however, monolingual babies were no longer detecting sounds in the second language, only in the language they usually heard.

The researchers suggested that this represents a process of �neural commitment,� in which the infant brain wires itself to understand one language and its sounds.

In contrast, the bilingual infants followed a different developmental trajectory. At 6 to 9 months, they did not detect differences in phonetic sounds in either language, but when they were older � 10 to 12 months � they were able to discriminate sounds in both.

�What the study demonstrates is that the variability in bilingual babies� experience keeps them open,� said Dr. Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington and one of the authors of the study. �They do not show the perceptual narrowing as soon as monolingual babies do. It�s another piece of evidence that what you experience shapes the brain.�

The learning of language � and the effects on the brain of the language we hear � may begin even earlier than 6 months of age.

Janet Werker, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, studies how babies perceive language and how that shapes their learning. Even in the womb, she said, babies are exposed to the rhythms and sounds of language, and newborns have been shown to prefer languages rhythmically similar to the one they�ve heard during fetal development.

In one recent study, Dr. Werker and her collaborators showed that babies born to bilingual mothers not only prefer both of those languages over others � but are also able to register that the two languages are different.

In addition to this ability to use rhythmic sound to discriminate between languages, Dr. Werker has studied other strategies that infants use as they grow, showing how their brains use different kinds of perception to learn languages, and also to keep them separate.

In a study of older infants shown silent videotapes of adults speaking, 4-month-olds could distinguish different languages visually by watching mouth and facial motions and responded with interest when the language changed. By 8 months, though, the monolingual infants were no longer responding to the difference in languages in these silent movies, while the bilingual infants continued to be engaged.

�For a baby who�s growing up bilingual, it�s like, �Hey, this is important information,� � Dr. Werker said.

Over the past decade, Ellen Bialystok, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, has shown that bilingual children develop crucial skills in addition to their double vocabularies, learning different ways to solve logic problems or to handle multitasking, skills that are often considered part of the brain�s so-called executive function.

These higher-level cognitive abilities are localized to the frontal and prefrontal cortex in the brain. �Overwhelmingly, children who are bilingual from early on have precocious development of executive function,� Dr. Bialystok said.

Dr. Kuhl calls bilingual babies �more cognitively flexible� than monolingual infants. Her research group is examining infant brains with an even newer imaging device, magnetoencephalography, or MEG, which combines an M.R.I. scan with a recording of magnetic field changes as the brain transmits information.

Dr. Kuhl describes the device as looking like a �hair dryer from Mars,� and she hopes that it will help explore the question of why babies learn language from people, but not from screens.

Previous research by her group showed that exposing English-language infants in Seattle to someone speaking to them in Mandarin helped those babies preserve the ability to discriminate Chinese language sounds, but when the same �dose� of Mandarin was delivered by a television program or an audiotape, the babies learned nothing.

�This special mapping that babies seem to do with language happens in a social setting,� Dr. Kuhl said. �They need to be face to face, interacting with other people. The brain is turned on in a unique way.�


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/health/views/11klass.html?_r=1

Regards,
John

[Guy Courchesne]

Interesting stuff! My daughter is 2 years, 3 months and has been raised in a bilingual environment (Spanish and English). I couldn't say exactly when she started differentiating the languages, but she is now using both easily, though not always in the right context. I speak both languages to her while her mother speaks mostly English to her. Most of her other inputs are in Spanish. We still get a lot of mixed language from her, like Mommy, quiero the dress rosa.

It's been fascinating watching her learn.

[jpvanderwerf2001]

Interesting article. Thank you, John.
Like Guy, my 3 and 1/2 year-old son has been raised in a bilingual home. My wife is Russian and I am American. We speak mostly English at home (90%)--and I only use English with him; but we live in Russia, so most input language is Russian. What's interesting is that I do not remember ever having heard my son mix the languages like Guy's daughter; I'm not sure why that would be--perhaps because I have never used Russian with him? Another intriguing point is that he seems to know many more words and concepts in English, but can string sentences together more effectively in Russian. I might take some credit for the former, as I am a language teacher, and made a concerted effort to read to him often and expose him to as much English as possible; I was definitely cognizant of his being in Russia, and worked hard for him to have a native-like base in English (as best as I could of course). In the end, however, I'm not too concerned about it, and recognize that he is in an enviable position in terms of language.
We're having our second soon, we'll see how he turns out...

[Sigma]

Thanks for posting the article. It was quite interesting for me, because my 6-month old son is being raised in a multi-lingual home as well.

I'm Canadian, so I speak English to him, my wife is Macedonian, and she speaks Macedonia to him, as well as English. He will be learning Czech, because we live in the Czech Republic and plan on sending him to a Czech pre-school (we live in a small city). Our friends will also speak Czech to him.

It'll be interesting to see how his language developes as he gets older since he'll be exposed to three languages.

Does anyone else have experience with little children being exposed to three languages?

[MotherF]

I recommend all interested parties check out the blog http://www.multilingualliving.com/ you can find them on Facebook as well. Good articles, and some discussion (Though no where as active as here.) My children started off mixing a lot when they first learned to speak, but as they began to spend significant amounts of time with monolinguals the mixing stopped when in monolingual company.
Sigma my children get rather minimul exposure to a third langauge, but have never met a person who is monolingual in that language since all the locals use Spanish as well so I have no way to gage how much of that language they have actually acquired. Unfortunately, I'm not optimisitic that they will learn it.

[naturegirl321]

I'll be speaking Spanish and English to my daughter and she'll learn Korean.

[Qaaolchoura]

According to a professor I had, a child needs to have 1/4 of their linguistic input from a given language to develop proficiency in the language, which means it's generally very easy to raise a child trilingual if A. each parent speaks a different language and B. the language of the child's friends is different from the language either parent speaks.

So if naturegirl were to speak only English, her husband were to speak only Spanish, and they're living in Korea and the children have Korean friends, her children will absolutely be trilingual. And when you've raised a child trilingual, it becomes much easier for them to pick up additional languages than it would be for a native monolingual.

And yes, there is absolutely no evidence of ill effects from childhood multilingualism, and a good deal of evidence of the benefits of adult multilingualism, but old myths die hard.

~Q

[igorG]

I myself have done plenty of research on what to do or what not to do with my two kids. They both are bilingual (Chinese, English).

There are three crucial points to follow;
1) Exposure to the languages from the third month of pregnancy till your child speaks better than you
2) Error correction from the day your kids begin talking
3) Motivation

A healthy bilingual environment can more likely be created in a healthy family where both parents contribute/cooperate well. Ohterwise, your kid(s) may lose that motivation or the error correction may not work efficiently. Kids listen when they like listening.

A healthy bilingual environment can morel likely be created in a , to kids, interesting place. Kids like playing and so appropriate decoration, toy selection enhances the kids' exposure, motivation and then correcting any language errors is much easier through games too.

Lastly, learning process may also easier occur through varieties of media and computers, CDs, DVDs etc that have a great importance in kids' bilingual development.

I almost forgot to mention that paying for some expensive schools may not sometimes be the best choice as, in some instances, some kids get discouraged or illprepared. Parents and the immediate environmnet such as neighbors may be the most important people in the kids' development and progress. This means that parenting is a full time job for both, mothers and fathers. Don't just leave it to grandparents! Many of them are likely tired and so they won't probably be able to keep up with the kids' questioning, running around or temper tantrums.

[naturegirl321]

[Qaaolchoura]

[naturegirl321]

[Qaaolchoura]

[MotherF]

Naturegirl, I too want to wish you well, this will be a tough transition, transitioning to being a mother is tough, a single mother, more so.

Don't worry about your child mixing languages unless that child is over 5 and still do it. It's completely natural for a child to mix languages early in life, especially when in Bilingual company. If you are a bilingual person, you probably mix languages yourself when in bilingual company, but know not to do it in monolingual company. You daughter will figure that out too.

[santi84]

I speak English exclusively to my son but live in a francophone area (and my husband is French). So far, all I'm hearing is "bhafoilaewiosdadjsdkjsafijkad" (he's 16 months) but it will be interesting to see his progress.

I've had a few comments about his speech being "behind" (ridiculous) however I think I'll have the last laugh in a few years

[igorG]

You will most likely have the last laugh. Kids that start with 2-3 languages, to my knowledge, start talking later. Perhaps, the reason being is that kids have to sort out the words first, or may be there are too many of the words to process first. If your kid begins talking at one and half but speaks two languages well enough it is much better than a kid that starts talking at one but in one language only.