The Dynamics of Early Bilingual Experience

这个研究项目通过研究双语父母如何帮助他们的婴儿理解和说两种语言的单词，为年幼的双语者如何学习两种语言提供了新的见解。大多数关于早期语言发展的研究只考察了儿童学习一种语言的情况，但美国有数百万儿童在成长过程中学习两种或两种以上的语言。这意味着，发展科学、语言学、早期教育、语言病理学和医学等领域对儿童如何学习交流的看法是不准确的。本研究项目通过研究双语和单语父母如何与他们的婴儿玩耍，对早期语言学习产生了更丰富和更包容的理解。该项目调查了亲子游戏的特点与儿童对语言理解的增长之间的关系。这个项目的发现提供了重要的信息，可以帮助父母、老师、语言治疗师和医生支持年轻双语者的发展。为了调查父母如何支持语言发展，项目工作人员前往家庭，记录父母与婴儿玩耍的过程。该项目还收集了父母和婴儿的语言理解能力，以及他们如何使用他们在语言中听到的不同模式。该项目的重点是墨西哥血统家庭，单语和双语家庭，因为许多美国双语者都有墨西哥血统，除了英语外还会说西班牙语。该项目分析了父母的语言、手势和动作之间的联系，以及他们如何跟随和引导婴儿的注意力。我们还分析了婴儿如何回应和引导父母的行为，以及这些行为如何影响婴儿的新兴词汇知识。本研究揭示了在单语和双语墨西哥传统家庭中发生的亲子互动的维度，以及双语者特有的特征。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This research project provides new insights into how young bilinguals learn two languages by examining how bilingual parents helps their infants understand and say words in two languages. Most studies of early language development have examined children’s learning in only one language, but millions of children in the U.S. grow up learning two or more languages. This means that the fields of developmental science, linguistics, early education, speech-language pathology, and medicine have an inaccurate view of how children learn to communicate. This research project produces a richer and more inclusive understanding of early learning in language by examining how bilingual and monolingual parents play with their infants. The project investigates how features of parent-child play relate to children’s growing understanding of language. The findings from this project provide important information that may help parents, teachers, speech-language therapists, and doctors support the development of young bilinguals. To investigate how parents support language development, project staff travels to families’ homes to record parents while they play with their infants. The project also collects measures of parents’ and infant’s language understanding and how they use different patterns that they hear in the language. The project focuses on Mexican heritage families, monolingual and bilingual, because many American bilinguals have Mexican heritage and speak Spanish in addition to English. The project analyzes links between parents’ language, their gestures and actions, and how they follow and guide their infants’ attention. We also analyzes how infants respond to and guide parents’ behaviors, and how these may influence the emerging vocabulary knowledge of infants. This research reveals dimensions of parent-infant interactions that occur across monolingual and bilingual Mexican heritage families and also features that are specific to bilinguals.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.