Bilingualism Accentuates Children's Conversational Understanding |
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| Authors: | Michael Siegal Luca Surian Ayumi Matsuo Alessandra Geraci Laura Iozzi Yuko Okumura Shoji Itakura |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom.; 2. Department of Psychology, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy.; 3. Department of Cognitive Sciences and Center for Mind/Brain Studies (CIMeC), University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy.; 4. School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom.; 5. Department of Psychology, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.;Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand |
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| Abstract: | BackgroundAlthough bilingualism is prevalent throughout the world, little is known about the extent to which it influences children''s conversational understanding. Our investigation involved children aged 3–6 years exposed to one or more of four major languages: English, German, Italian, and Japanese. In two experiments, we examined the children''s ability to identify responses to questions as violations of conversational maxims (to be informative and avoid redundancy, to speak the truth, be relevant, and be polite).Principal FindingsIn Experiment 1, with increasing age, children showed greater sensitivity to maxim violations. Children in Italy who were bilingual in German and Italian (with German as the dominant language L1) significantly outperformed Italian monolinguals. In Experiment 2, children in England who were bilingual in English and Japanese (with English as L1) significantly outperformed Japanese monolinguals in Japan with vocabulary age partialled out.ConclusionsAs the monolingual and bilingual groups had a similar family SES background (Experiment 1) and similar family cultural identity (Experiment 2), these results point to a specific role for early bilingualism in accentuating children''s developing ability to appreciate effective communicative responses. |
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