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Monolingual and bilingual infants’ word segmentation abilities in an inter‐mixed dual‐language task
Author(s) -
Orena Adriel John,
Polka Linda
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
infancy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.361
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1532-7078
pISSN - 1525-0008
DOI - 10.1111/infa.12296
Subject(s) - psychology , first language , context (archaeology) , task (project management) , text segmentation , linguistics , dual language , word (group theory) , neuroscience of multilingualism , segmentation , artificial intelligence , computer science , geography , pedagogy , philosophy , management , archaeology , neuroscience , economics
Previous studies show that young monolingual infants use language‐specific cues to segment words in their native language. Here, we asked whether 8 and 10‐month‐old infants ( N = 84) have the capacity to segment words in an inter‐mixed bilingual context. Infants heard an English‐French mixed passage that contained one target word in each language, and were then tested on their recognition of the two target words. The English‐monolingual and French‐monolingual infants showed evidence of segmentation in their native language, but not in the other unfamiliar language. As a group, the English‐French bilingual infants segmented in both of their native languages. However, exploratory analyses suggest that exposure to language mixing may play a role in bilingual infants’ segmentation skills. Taken together, these results indicate a close relation between language experience and word segmentation skills.