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Learning foreign labels from a foreign speaker: the role of (limited) exposure to a second language*

  • NAMEERA AKHTAR (a1), JENNIFER MENJIVAR (a1), ELENA HOICKA (a2) and MARK A. SABBAGH (a3)
Abstract

Three- and four-year-olds (N = 144) were introduced to novel labels by an English speaker and a foreign speaker (of Nordish, a made-up language), and were asked to endorse one of the speaker's labels. Monolingual English-speaking children were compared to bilingual children and English-speaking children who were regularly exposed to a language other than English. All children tended to endorse the English speaker's labels when asked ‘What do you call this?’, but when asked ‘What do you call this in Nordish?’, children with exposure to a second language were more likely to endorse the foreign label than monolingual and bilingual children. The findings suggest that, at this age, exposure to, but not necessarily immersion in, more than one language may promote the ability to learn foreign words from a foreign speaker.

Copyright
COPYRIGHT: © Cambridge University Press 2012
Corresponding author
Address for correspondence: Nameera Akhtar, Psychology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. e-mail: nakhtar@ucsc.edu
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[*]

We thank our research assistants, the participating families and preschools, Carmen Martinez-Sussman, Edith Gurrola, Lucia Alcala and Maureen Callanan. The research was supported by a Faculty Research Grant from the University of California, Santa Cruz Senate Committee on Research to the first author, a Cota-Robles Fellowship to the second author, and an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship (T32-HD046423) to the third author.

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Journal of Child Language
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