Does infant speech perception predict later vocabulary development in bilingual infants?

Publication date: September 2019Source: Journal of Phonetics, Volume 76Author(s): Leher SinghAbstractOne of the most significant transitions reported in infant psychological development is perceptual narrowing whereby infants orient towards their native language. In monolingual infants, the progress made by infants in perceptual narrowing positively predicts later vocabulary size. The relationship between infant speech perception and later language development has not been thus far reported in bilingual populations. The present study investigated infant speech perception in relation to later vocabulary development in a prospective longitudinal study of bilingual infants over the first three years of life. Our study revealed three primary findings. First, unlike monolingual infants, bilingual infants demonstrated a positive correlation between native and non-native phonetic discrimination. Second, native speech perception at 10–11 months predicted single-language (English) vocabulary at 2 years, but not second language (Mandarin), nor total conceptual vocabulary. Third, infants with a native language orientation relative to a non-native orientation in phonetic discrimination at 10–11 months tended towards higher English vocabulary scores at 3 years of age. When placed in the context of prior research with monolingual infants, results with bilingual infants point to distinct relationships between native and non-native speech perception in infancy, but to a similar c...
Source: Journal of Phonetics - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research