Poster #11 - Word Learning Through Infant’s Interaction with English Monolingual vs. English-Spanish Bilingual Parents

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

Early word learning is a collaborative process in which infants learn to construct meaning through interactions with social partners, most notably their mothers. Maternal speech has been considered as one of the critical aspects of high-quality of mother-infant interaction, that is strongly correlated with child’s word learning and further literacy achievement (Vernon-Feagans, 2013). However, word acquisition could be dynamically more complex for infants growing up in the dual-language home circumstances. Bilingual infants need to learn mapping two different words to a single object, that require them to develop attentional flexibilities and more efficiently utilize social cues, such as eye gaze, gesture, and speech to infer mother’s intentions during interaction ( Yu & Ballard, 2007). For instance, bilingual infants have shown advanced attentional shifting skills as early as aged seven months (Byers‐Heinlein & Werker, 2009; Kovács & Mehler, 2009). To better understand the learning mechanism of word acquisition in infancy, the current study aims to investigate the role of maternal speech in word learning by comparing mother-infant interaction in English monolinguals versus English-Spanish bilinguals. In specific, we hypothesized two potential impacts of maternal speech on mother-infant interaction and its consequential learning: 1) bilingual infants have more eye gazing shifting to the target object when mothers name target words; and 2) the complexity of utterance (e.g., code-switching usage) accounts for less word learning progress in bilingual infants. To achieve our goal, this study is currently recruiting 40 typically developing infants with their mothers (20 English monolingual vs. 20 English-Spanish bilingual) in the greater Houston area. Both infant and mother are asked to wear head-mounted cameras with eye tracking system, which are used for recording participant’s attention allocation during a seven-minute play session in a laboratory setting. During their play, moms are asked to teach a list of words given a box of infant-friendly toys. Following the play session, Infants then take a word learning test on the Tobii monitor. infant’s looking patterns in response to speech signals are measured as their attentional preferences. The preliminary analysis included 11 mother-infant dyads, including 6 English-monolingual (Mean age = 12.5 months, SD = 1.02) and 5 English-Spanish bilingual infants (Mean Age = 13.1 months, SD = 1.32). Bilingual infants were dominantly exposed to English. There were no statistically difference in maternal education (χ2 = 3.01, p = .33), or annual income (χ2 = 2.39, p = .67). During the play session, bilingual mothers had significantly less utterances (t(11) = 2.92, p = .01) and less target words during their interactions with infants (t(11) = 3.61, p = .00). 8.2% of utterances involved code-switching. Bilingual infants had more eye gazing shifting to the target object after mother’s naming, but it was not statistically different, t(11) = 1.36, p = .10. In addition, there were no group difference in the accuracy of word learning test, t(11) = -.38, p=.71). Further recruitment will include more balanced bilingual mothers, and analysis will practice linear regression model for assessing the role of complexity of utterance in word learning outcomes when group size increases.

Authors

• Lichao Sun, University of Houston
  Presenting Author

• Hanako Yoshida, University of Houston
  Non-Presenting Author