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Development in Bilingual Infants

How Do Bilingual Babies Learn Language?

By Teri Brown

For instance, Dr. Fennell would teach babies that a crown-shaped object is called a "bin" and a molecule-shaped object is called a "din," and then test them by switching the labels (e.g., the molecule is called "bin"). All babies of 14 months, both monolingual and bilingual, fail to notice this change.

"We believe what is happening is that, since they are new to word learning and making the connection between words and objects is difficult, the babies are reducing the amount of information they are encoding so that they can learn the connection between the word and object quicker," Dr. Fennell says. "The benefit is that they can get the word quickly, and there is little cost since the vast majority of words in the early lexicon do not sound alike (e.g., mommy, dog, ball, shoe). By 17 months, monolingual babies begin to be able to tell similar-sounding words apart, but bilinguals maintain this 'strategy' of holistic word learning. At 20 months, the monolinguals and bilinguals again look the same and both groups can distinguish newly learned similar-sounding words."

Previous research has shown that bilinguals are not delayed in other language milestones, such as production of first word, and they have similar-sized vocabularies as monolinguals when both languages are counted. So there are no delays in general language development.

"We think the bilinguals maintain this method of word learning because it allows them to 'keep up' with monolinguals, despite the greater amount of information (i.e., words and sounds) that they have to deal with," Dr. Fennell says. "Once again, there would not be a big cost to the bilingual since few words sound alike in early vocabulary, but the benefit of reducing the amount of [information] encoded in the word allows for more rapid word learning. We think it is simply adaptive."

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