A multi-lab study of bilingual infants: Exploring the preference for infant-directed speech.

Krista Byers‐Heinlein ,Connor Waddell,Liquan Liu,Mikołaj Hernik,Megha Sundara,Michael C Frank,Adriel John Orena,Janet F Werker,Samantha Durrant,Judit Gervain,Leher Singh,Jessica E Kosie,Linda Polka,Claire Noble,Anna Brown,Meghan Mastroberardino,Ágnes Melinda Kovács,Christopher T Fennell,Alexis K Black,Victoria Mateu,Caterina Marino,Shila Kerr,Naomi Havron,Nivedita Mani,Christina Bergmann,Stephanie Wermelinger,J Kiley Hamlin,Hilary Killam,Anja Gampe,Kelsey Klassen,Casey Lew‐Williams ,Mélanie Söderström ,Christine Potter ,Melanie Schreiner ,Angeline Tsui ,M Julia Carbajal ,Anne Caroline Fiévet ,Nayeli Gonzalez‐Gomez

doi:10.1177/2515245920974622

Abstract

From the earliest months of life, infants prefer listening to and learn better from infant-directed speech (IDS) than adult-directed speech (ADS). Yet, IDS differs within communities, across languages, and across cultures, both in form and in prevalence. This large-scale, multi-site study used the diversity of bilingual infant experiences to explore the impact of different types of linguistic experience on infants' IDS preference. As part of the multi-lab ManyBabies 1 project, we compared lab-matched samples of 333 bilingual and 385 monolingual infants' preference for North-American English IDS (cf. ManyBabies Consortium, 2020: ManyBabies 1), tested in 17 labs in 7 countries. Those infants were tested in two age groups: 6-9 months (the younger sample) and 12-15 months (the older sample). We found that bilingual and monolingual infants both preferred IDS to ADS, and did not differ in terms of the overall magnitude of this preference. However, amongst bilingual infants who were acquiring North-American English (NAE) as a native language, greater exposure to NAE was associated with a stronger IDS preference, extending the previous finding from ManyBabies 1 that monolinguals learning NAE as a native language showed a stronger preference than infants unexposed to NAE. Together, our findings indicate that IDS preference likely makes a similar contribution to monolingual and bilingual development, and that infants are exquisitely sensitive to the nature and frequency of different types of language input in their early environments.

Highlights

384 monolingual infants tested in 17 labs in seven countries
We investigated whether links between bilingualism and infant-directed speech (IDS) preference were mediated by socioeconomic status (SES)
We used a collaborative, multilab (N = 17 labs) approach to gather a large data set from infants who were either 6 to 9 or 12 to 15 months old and growing up bilingual (N = 333 bilingual infants in the final sample) and a lab-matched sample of 384 monolingual infants from the same communities

Summary

Introduction

The tested infants were in two age groups: 6 to 9 months. We found that bilingual and monolingual infants both preferred IDS to ADS, and the two groups did not differ in terms of the overall magnitude of this preference. NAE as a native language, greater exposure to NAE was associated with a stronger IDS preference These findings extend the previous finding from ManyBabies 1 that monolinguals learning NAE as a native language showed a stronger IDS preference than infants unexposed to NAE. Our findings indicate that IDS preference likely makes similar contributions to monolingual and bilingual development, and that infants are exquisitely sensitive to the nature and frequency of different types of language input in their early environments. Infants tune their attention to IDS, preferring to listen to IDS over adult-directed speech (ADS) at birth

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion