Bilingualism Accentuates Children's Conversational Understanding

BACKGROUND: Although bilingualism is prevalent throughout the world, little is known about the extent to which it influences children's conversational understanding. Our investigation involved children aged 3-6 years exposed to one or more of four major languages: English, German, Italian, and Japanese. In two experiments, we examined the children's ability to identify responses to questions as violations of conversational maxims (to be informative and avoid redundancy, to speak the truth, be relevant, and be polite). PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In Experiment 1, with increasing age, children showed greater sensitivity to maxim violations. Children in Italy who were bilingual in German and Italian (with German as the dominant language L1) significantly outperformed Italian monolinguals. In Experiment 2, children in England who were bilingual in English and Japanese (with English as L1) significantly outperformed Japanese monolinguals in Japan with vocabulary age partialled out. CONCLUSIONS: As the monolingual and bilingual groups had a similar family SES background (Experiment 1) and similar family cultural identity (Experiment 2), these results point to a specific role for early bilingualism in accentuating children's developing ability to appreciate effective communicative responses

Bilingualism and conversational understanding in young children

The purpose of the two experiments reported here was to investigate whether bilingualism confers an advantage on children’s conversational understanding. A total of 163 children aged 3 to 6 years were given a Conversational Violations Test to determine their ability to identify responses to questions as violations of Gricean maxims of conversation (to be informative and avoid redundancy, speak the truth, and be relevant and polite). Though comparatively delayed in their L2 vocabulary, children who were bilingual in Italian and Slovenian (with Slovenian as the dominant language) generally outperformed those who were either monolingual in Italian or Slovenian. We suggest that bilingualism can be accompanied by an enhanced ability to appreciate effective communicative responses

PAPER Belief attribution in deaf and hearing infants

Abstract Based on anticipatory looking and reactions to violations of expected events, infants have been credited with 'theory of mind' (ToM) knowledge that a person's search behaviour for an object will be guided by true or false beliefs about the object's location. However, little is known about the preconditions for looking patterns consistent with belief attribution in infants. In this study, we compared the performance of 17-to 26-month-olds on anticipatory looking in ToM tasks. The infants were either hearing or were deaf from hearing families and thus delayed in communicative experience gained from access to language and conversational input. Hearing infants significantly outperformed their deaf counterparts in anticipating the search actions of a cartoon character that held a false belief about a target-object location. By contrast, the performance of the two groups in a true belief condition did not differ significantly. These findings suggest for the first time that access to language and conversational input contributes to early ToM reasoning

Mean CVT maxim scores (out of 5) in Experiment 2 for the monolinguals in Japanese (JM) and for the English-Japanese bilinguals in English (EJB-E) and Japanese (EJB-J) adjusted for verbal mental age.

<p>Mean CVT maxim scores (out of 5) in Experiment 2 for the monolinguals in Japanese (JM) and for the English-Japanese bilinguals in English (EJB-E) and Japanese (EJB-J) adjusted for verbal mental age.</p

Food preferences of mothers of Japanese monolingual children (<i>N</i> = 17) in Japan and mothers of English–Japanese bilingual children in England (<i>N</i> = 19) rated on a scale from 1 (highly unfavorable) to 9 (highly favorable).

<p>Food preferences of mothers of Japanese monolingual children (<i>N</i> = 17) in Japan and mothers of English–Japanese bilingual children in England (<i>N</i> = 19) rated on a scale from 1 (highly unfavorable) to 9 (highly favorable).</p

Mean CVT maxim scores (out of 5) in Experiment 1for the Italian monolinguals (IM) and German-Italian bilinguals (GIB) in the younger (37 to 55 months) and older (56 to 75 months) age groups.

<p>Mean CVT maxim scores (out of 5) in Experiment 1for the Italian monolinguals (IM) and German-Italian bilinguals (GIB) in the younger (37 to 55 months) and older (56 to 75 months) age groups.</p

Examples of items in the Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Politeness maxim components of the Conversational Violations Test.

<p>Examples of items in the Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Politeness maxim components of the Conversational Violations Test.</p

Useful Clinical Criteria for Identifying Neonates with Congenital Cytomegalovirus Infection at Birth in the Context of an Expanded Targeted Screening Program

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is the leading infectious cause of brain defects and neurological dysfunctions, including sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). Targeted screening in neonates failing the hearing screen is currently recommended in Italy according to national guidelines. However, SNHL may not be present at birth; also, congenital CMV (cCMV) may manifest with subtle signs other than SNHL. Therefore, the inclusion of additional criteria for cCMV screening appears clinically valuable. Starting January 2021, we have implemented expanded targeted cCMV screening at our center, with testing in case of maternal CMV infection during pregnancy, inadequate antenatal care, maternal HIV infection or immunosuppression, birthweight and/or head circumference < 10th centile, failed hearing screen, and prematurity. During the first three years of use of this program (2021–2023), 940 (12.3%) of 7651 live-born infants were tested. The most common indication was birthweight < 10th centile (n = 633, 67.3%). Eleven neonates were diagnosed as congenitally infected, for a prevalence of 1.17% (95%CI 0.48–1.86) on tested neonates and of 0.14% (95%CI 0.06–0.23) on live-born infants. None of the cCMV-infected newborns had a failed hearing screen as a testing indication. Implementation of an expanded cCMV screening program appears feasible and of clinical value