Precursors to perspective taking: Examining monolingual and bilingual infants' attention to social cues

美国近25%的儿童在双语家庭中长大，其中许多人说西班牙语。双语幼儿注意到社会线索，感知情绪和面孔不同于在单语家庭长大的幼儿。双语接触也会改变他们学习的灵活性，他们如何沟通，以及他们何时开始接受他人的观点。这些差异可能是由于语言，记忆和感知系统在发育早期的专业化程度较低，并且一个系统的早期修改会影响其他系统的后期发展。拟议中的研究将确定双语和单语儿童的社会交往如何发展。这些发现可用于制定更有效的早期教育教学策略。然后，早期教育者将能够利用这些发现来利用保护因素，奖励孩子强大的沟通技巧和灵活性。以前的研究没有考虑系统如何随着时间的推移而发展。拟议的研究将弥补研究中的这一差距。研究人员将使用眼动追踪任务来检查9个月大的婴儿的情绪和语言处理。由于面部处理涉及灵活切换到适当的线索，他们还将检查婴儿的记忆灵活性。婴儿将在15个月时进行跟踪和重新测试，包括凝视转换任务、观点采择任务和社会沟通清单。早期双语者在面孔加工和灵活性学习方面的差异与后期的社会交际能力有关。最大限度地发挥双语儿童的优势的做法可以加强整个学生群体中的沟通和更广泛的学习。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

Almost 25% of children in the US grow up in bilingual homes, many of whom speak Spanish. Bilingual toddlers attend to social cues and perceive emotions and faces differently than toddlers growing up in monolingual homes. Bilingual exposure also alters how flexibly they learn, how they communicate, and when they begin to take the perspectives of others. These differences are likely due to the fact that language, memory, and perception systems are less specialized early in development, and early modifications in one system affect the later development of other systems. The proposed studies will identify how social communication develops in bilingual and monolingual children. These findings could be used to develop more effective teaching strategies for early education. Early educators will be then able to use these findings to capitalize on protective factors rewarding children for strong communication skills and flexibility. Prior studies have not considered how systems develop across time. The proposed studies will bridge that gap in the research. The researchers will use eye tracking tasks to examine emotion and language processing in 9-month-olds. Because face processing involves flexible switching to appropriate cues, they will also examine the infants’ memory flexibility. The infants will be tracked and retested at 15 months on a gaze switching task, a perspective-taking task, and a social communication inventory. It is predicted that early bilingual differences in face processing and flexible learning will be related to later social communication skills. Practices that maximize the strengths of bilingual children could enhance communication and broader learning within the entire student population.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.