Attentional processes in infant bilinguals

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Nearly all experimental work in infant language development focuses on monolinguals. Yet, due to immigration, official language policies, and cultural norms, many Canadian infants are raised in a bilingual environment. The initial task of learning two languages from birth is potentially not an easy one. Due to their simultaneous exposure to two languages, each with different sound inventories, bilingual infants may process speech information differently than monolinguals at the earliest stages. The current research examines bilingual infants’ attention to phoneme changes and the amount of detail in phoneme representations. Phonemes are the smallest meaningful sound units in a language (e.g., the vowels in bit and bet). Previous research showed that bilingual infants may not notice when certain phonemes change (bit to bet), yet monolinguals will notice the same change. A recent hypothesis is that bilingual infants have rich phoneme representations, but are numb to phoneme changes because they often experience such small alterations via accented speech (e.g., hearing Dad produce English words with a French accent) and cognates (hearing similar sounding words across their languages, like “bank” and “banque”). Or, bilingual infants may indeed have less detailed mental representations of phonemes. I propose multiple studies using various methods in order to examine bilinguals’ attention to phoneme changes and their phoneme representations. First, we will determine if bilingual infants are more successful than monolinguals at identifying words produced in a different accent. Second, we will test bilingual infants in a discrimination task that does not require a “surprise” reaction to a phoneme change, which should facilitate their performance. Finally, we will examine bilingual infants’ physiological reactions to phoneme changes. We will observe their neural reactions (via brain wave monitoring) and their heart rates, as both these measure are related to attention. We may see reactions at basic physiological levels not seen at the overt behavioural level. The above set of experiments will significantly add to the scarce literature on bilingual speech perception and will inform researchers of how bilingualism and its associated factors affect fundamental processes like basic perception of and attention to speech in the earliest stages of development. We also seek to validate one of the very few hypotheses that specifically address infant bilingual speech perception. Through studies with bilingual infants, we can gain a deeper understanding of language development in all infants. Further, the findings emerging from these studies can have practical implications for parents and educators by revealing how young bilinguals acquire and attend to language sounds.