DLL infants can discriminate their two languages from early infancy, though within-language contrast discrimination trajectories show mixed findings¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · review r3 · q2
Currency · newest study 2014 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2019: baselines and conditions change

Subclaims¶

q2 i? At four months, DLL and monolingual infants do not differ in ability to discriminate between two different languages. → Hammer 2014 q2 i? Some studies find a U-shaped pattern in which DLL infants fail to discriminate within-language contrasts at eight months before re-emerging at twelve months; other studies find DLL infants maintain discrimination. → Hammer 2014 (2)

Evidence¶

Hammer 2014¶

Hammer, C. S., Hoff, E., Uchikoshi, Y., Gillanders, C., Castro, D., & Sandilos, L. E. (2014). The Language and Literacy Development of Young Dual Language Learners: A Critical Review. Early childhood research quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2014.05.008

q2 · i? · review · r3

The review reports, citing Bosch and Sebastián-Gallés (2001), that Spanish monolingual, Catalan monolingual, and Spanish-Catalan DLL infants showed no differences in language discrimination at four months of age.

"Bosch and Sebastián-Gallés (2001) found no differences among Spanish monolingual infants, Catalan monolingual infants, and Spanish-Catalan DLL infants’ abilities to discriminate Spanish from Catalan at four-months of age."

Hammer 2014 (2)¶

Hammer, C. S., Hoff, E., Uchikoshi, Y., Gillanders, C., Castro, D., & Sandilos, L. E. (2014). The Language and Literacy Development of Young Dual Language Learners: A Critical Review. Early childhood research quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2014.05.008

q2 · i? · review · r3

The review reports that some studies (Bosch & Sebastián-Gallés, 2003; Burns et al., 2007; Sundara et al., 2008) found a U-shaped discrimination pattern, while others found DLL infants maintained discrimination, possibly when the two languages are rhythmically different (Sundara & Scutellaro, 2011).

"This U-shaped developmental pattern, one in which discrimination is evident at four months, not at eight months, and then reemerges at twelve months, has been found in more than one study"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Young DLLs have two separate phonological and grammatical language systems early in life — related
• The review identifies pervasive methodological problems in DLL research, including inconsistent DLL definitions and SES-bilingualism confounding — related
• Prosodic and sound-level features of child-directed speech support infants' phoneme discrimination, word segmentation, and word learning — related