Bilingual benefits in education and health

Speech-language pathologists' perceptions of childhood bilingualism

The value of learning multiple languages has increased in the past 20 years. Despite this, some professionals continue to provide misinformation about bilingualism to many families around the United States, resulting in recommendations of implementing a monolingual approach for children. This study investigated the perceptions held by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) regarding childhood bilingualism. A total of 320 SLPs completed a survey stating their perceptions on childhood bilingualism for typically developing children and children with disabilities. Based on the number of responses, 292 participants were analysed quantitatively utilising a binary logistic regression to identify whether SLPs thought childhood bilingualism was advantageous or neutral, while incorporating the predictors of bilingual status and bilingualism education received. Additionally, a qualitative content analysis was conducted on 173 participants' responses to an open-ended question about their perceptions on childhood bilingualism. Results revealed that SLPs' bilingual status did not predict the probability of an advantageous perception for typically developing children, but it did for children with disabilities; however, SLPs who had received bilingualism education had a higher probability of having advantageous perceptions in both populations. Qualitative results revealed the use of appraisals related to multiple themes. This study served to understand the thoughts of SLPs in relation to the education they are providing to parents and the services they are providing to different populations - whether it be typically developing children or children with disabilities. There are implications for bilingual and cultural-linguistic education to be implemented across graduate programmes to ensure that optimal services are provided to the diverse groups in our case loads.

Shared Multimodal Input Through Social Coordination: Infants With Monolingual and Bilingual Learning Experiences

A growing number of children in the United States are exposed to multiple languages at home from birth. However, relatively little is known about the early process of word learning—how words are mapped to the referent in their child-centered learning experiences. The present study defined parental input operationally as the integrated and multimodal learning experiences as an infant engages with his/her parent in an interactive play session with objects. By using a head-mounted eye tracking device, we recorded visual scenes from the infant’s point of view, along with the parent’s social input with respect to gaze, labeling, and actions of object handling. Fifty-one infants and toddlers (aged 6–18 months) from an English monolingual or a diverse bilingual household were recruited to observe the early multimodal learning experiences in an object play session. Despite that monolingual parents spoke more and labeled more frequently relative to bilingual parents, infants from both language groups benefit from a comparable amount of socially coordinated experiences where parents name the object while the object is looked at by the infant. Also, a sequential path analysis reveals multiple social coordinated pathways that facilitate infant object looking. Specifically, young children’s attention to the referent objects is directly influenced by parent’s object handling. These findings point to the new approach to early language input and how multimodal learning experiences are coordinated socially for young children growing up with monolingual and bilingual learning contexts.

Adquisición y Recuerdo de Palabras Emocionales en Población Monolingüe y Bilingüe

La memoria emocional alude al efecto que poseen las emociones sobre la formación de recuerdos. En personas que utilizan un segundo idioma, este efecto presenta resultados controversiales. El objetivo de este trabajo fue indagar el posible efecto de la emoción en los procesos de memoria en personas adultas bilingües (BL) y monolingües (ML). Participaron 49 sujetos quienes codificaron una lista de palabras en español (ML y BL) o en inglés (BL) indicando valencia y arousal para cada una. Inmediatamente y siete días después, se evaluó su recuerdo libre y reconocimiento. Los resultados indicaron que para aquellos sujetos que codificaron los estímulos en español (ML y BL) las palabras fueron calificadas con una mayor carga emocional que para aquellos participantes que las codificaron en inglés (BL). Además, el grupo ML presentó mayor cantidad de intrusiones que ambos grupos BL. Se concluye que existen factores particulares en el procesamiento de la información emocional que modulan el recuerdo emocional en BL y ML.