TY - JOUR
T1 - Voulez-vous jouer avec moi? Twelve-month-olds understand that foreign languages can communicate
AU - Vouloumanos, Athena
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank all the parents and infants who participated in our study. We thank the members of the NYU infant cognition and communication lab, especially Christopher Cantwell and Casey Pitts, Kathey Silva and Elena Luchkina. This project was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01HD072018 .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2018/4
Y1 - 2018/4
N2 - Infants understand that speech in their native language allows speakers to communicate. Is this understanding limited to their native language or does it extend to non-native languages with which infants have no experience? Twelve-month-old infants saw an actor, the Communicator, repeatedly select one of two objects. When the Communicator could no longer reach the target but a Recipient could, the Communicator vocalized a nonsense phrase either in English (infants’ native language), Spanish (rhythmically different), or Russian (phonotactically different), or hummed (a non-speech vocalization). Across all three languages, native and non-native, but not humming, infants looked longer when the Recipient gave the Communicator the non-target object. Although, by 12 months, infants do not readily map non-native words to objects or discriminate most non-native speech contrasts, they understand that non-native languages can transfer information to others. Understanding language as a tool for communication extends beyond infants’ native language: By 12 months, infants view language as a universal mechanism for transferring and acquiring new information.
AB - Infants understand that speech in their native language allows speakers to communicate. Is this understanding limited to their native language or does it extend to non-native languages with which infants have no experience? Twelve-month-old infants saw an actor, the Communicator, repeatedly select one of two objects. When the Communicator could no longer reach the target but a Recipient could, the Communicator vocalized a nonsense phrase either in English (infants’ native language), Spanish (rhythmically different), or Russian (phonotactically different), or hummed (a non-speech vocalization). Across all three languages, native and non-native, but not humming, infants looked longer when the Recipient gave the Communicator the non-target object. Although, by 12 months, infants do not readily map non-native words to objects or discriminate most non-native speech contrasts, they understand that non-native languages can transfer information to others. Understanding language as a tool for communication extends beyond infants’ native language: By 12 months, infants view language as a universal mechanism for transferring and acquiring new information.
KW - Communication
KW - Infant cognitive development
KW - Language acquisition
KW - Non-native language
KW - Speech perception
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.01.002
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.01.002
M3 - Article
C2 - 29358091
AN - SCOPUS:85041334584
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 173
SP - 87
EP - 92
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
ER -