BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

A bilingual advantage in 54-month-olds’ use of referential cues in fast mapping

Yow, W.Q. and Li, X. and Lam, S. and Gliga, Teodora and Chong, Y.S. and Kwek, K. and Broekman, B.F.P. (2017) A bilingual advantage in 54-month-olds’ use of referential cues in fast mapping. Developmental Science 20 (1), e12482. ISSN 1363-755x.

[img]
Preview
Text
16098.pdf - Author's Accepted Manuscript
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial.

Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract

Research has demonstrated a bilingual advantage in how young children use referential cues such as eye gaze and pointing gesture to locate an object or to categorize objects. This study investigated the use of referential cues (i.e., eye gaze) in fast mapping in three groups of children that differed in their language exposure. One hundred and seven 54-month-old children who were English monolinguals (n=29), English-Mandarin bilinguals (n=48), and English-Mandarin bilinguals with exposure to a third language (i.e., trilinguals, n=31) were assessed with a wordlearning task using two types of tests – a referent test and a mutual exclusivity test. During the task, following the gaze of an adult speaker was needed to be able to indicate the correct referent of a novel word at test. All three groups of children demonstrated successful word learning in explicit selection of and implicit looking time toward the target object during testing. However, bilingual and trilingual children outperformed their monolingual peers in both types of tests when they were asked to explicitly select the correct objects. These findings suggest positive effects of bilingualism on children’s use of referential cues in fast mapping.

Metadata

Item Type: Article
Keyword(s) / Subject(s): bilingualism, referential cues, fast mapping, mutual exclusivity, eye-tracking
School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
Research Centres and Institutes: Brain and Cognitive Development, Centre for (CBCD)
Depositing User: Administrator
Date Deposited: 24 Nov 2016 09:41
Last Modified: 25 Jul 2025 01:13
URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/16098

Statistics

6 month trend
775Downloads
6 month trend
472Hits

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

Archive Staff Only (login required)

Edit/View Item
Edit/View Item