Degree of Bilingualism Matters: Balanced Dual Language Exposure Enhances Children’s Sensitivity to the Context of a Speaker’s Inaccuracy

• In Event: Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

Past research indicates a bilingual advantage in children’s communication skills; bilingual children outperform monolingual children in various communication tasks (e.g., Gampe et al., 2019; Yow & Markman, 2015). Current propositions suggest that bilingual children’s unique experience with interpersonal interaction is essential to enhancing their communication abilities (Wermelinger et al., 2017). To communicate effectively, one must attend to the context to situate the intentions of the interlocutor’s actions. Bilingual children who have extensive experience with people speaking different languages may show heightened sensitivity to the context. Here we examined whether the degree of bilingualism modulates bilingual children’s sensitivity to the contextual constraints on a speaker (i.e., limited information access) when evaluating reliability of the speaker.

Participants were 135 bilingual children (80 boys; Mage=53.6 months, range=44-61) who regularly heard and spoke at least two languages, with varying extent of exposure to different languages. The difference between the two predominant language exposure was calculated for each child as a proxy for the degree of bilingualism. Children were randomly assigned to one of four conditions, where the experimenter’s information access and accuracy were manipulated between conditions (Figure 1). During a history phase, a sticker was placed in one of two boxes, where the sticker was either visually accessible by the experimenter (informed condition) or not (uninformed condition). Children then watched the experimenter indicate the sticker location by pointing/gazing towards either the box with the sticker (accurate condition) or the empty box (inaccurate condition). The test phase was consistent across all conditions, where the experimenter hid a sticker in one of two opaque boxes and asked the child to find the sticker while providing a correct pointing/gazing cue. We examined whether children would follow the experimenter’s referential cues to locate the sticker in the test trials.

We conducted mixed-effect logistic regressions predicting children’s cue-following tendencies as a function of children’s age, degree of bilingualism, and the experimenter’s access to information and accuracy. Results revealed significant main effects of access and accuracy and a significant interaction between access and accuracy (all ps<.001). Importantly, we found a significant three-way interaction between bilingualism, access, and accuracy (β=3.34, p=.017). To further explore this three-way interaction, we fitted models for informed and uninformed condition separately, asking whether children with varying degree of bilingualism were differentially affected by experimenter’s accuracy. In the informed condition, only accuracy significantly predicted children’s cue-following tendencies (β=-2.84, p<.001). However, in the uninformed condition, there was a significant interaction between degree of bilingualism and accuracy (β=-1.88, p=.021); children with more balanced exposure to both languages were less affected by the experimenter’s prior accuracy in the context of limited information access, indicating sensitivity to the context as compared with those less balanced bilinguals (Figure 2).

These results suggest that more balanced dual language exposure is related to bilingual children’s flexibility in adapting their accuracy-based strategy to the context of the speaker’s behaviors. This study provides evidence that bilingual children’s unique experience in their daily language environment may lead to distinct socio-cognitive strategies in understanding the communicative partner’s intentions.

Authors

• Xiaoqian Li, Singapore University of Technology and Design
  Presenting Author

• Jia Wen Lee, Singapore University of Technology and Design
  Non-Presenting Author

• W. Quin Yow, Singapore University of Technology and Design
  Non-Presenting Author