Does bilingual experience affect early visual perceptual development?
Visual attention and perception develop rapidly during the first few months after birth, and these behaviors are critical components in the development of language and cognitive abilities. Here we ask how early bilingual experiences might lead to differences in visual attention and perception. Exper...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2014-12-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01429/full |
| _version_ | 1819090978457255936 |
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| author | Christina eSchonberg Catherine M Sandhofer Tawny eTsang Scott P Johnson |
| author_facet | Christina eSchonberg Catherine M Sandhofer Tawny eTsang Scott P Johnson |
| author_sort | Christina eSchonberg |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Visual attention and perception develop rapidly during the first few months after birth, and these behaviors are critical components in the development of language and cognitive abilities. Here we ask how early bilingual experiences might lead to differences in visual attention and perception. Experiments 1-3 investigated the looking behavior of monolingual and bilingual infants when presented with social (Experiment 1), mixed (Experiment 2), or nonsocial (Experiment 3) stimuli. In each of these experiments, infants’ dwell times (DT) and number of fixations to areas of interest (AOIs) were analyzed, giving a sense of where the infants looked. To examine how the infants looked at the stimuli in a more global sense, Experiment 4 combined and analyzed the saccade data collected in Experiments 1-3. There were no significant differences between monolingual and bilingual infants’ DTs, AOI fixations, or saccade characteristics (specifically, frequency and amplitude) in any of the experiments. These results suggest that monolingual and bilingual infants process their visual environments similarly, supporting the idea that the substantial cognitive differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in early childhood are more related to active vocabulary production than perception of the environment. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-21T22:32:25Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-8a5a6b3a780f405ebd30f1959b9f4253 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-21T22:32:25Z |
| publishDate | 2014-12-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-8a5a6b3a780f405ebd30f1959b9f42532022-12-21T18:48:02ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782014-12-01510.3389/fpsyg.2014.0142993684Does bilingual experience affect early visual perceptual development?Christina eSchonberg0Catherine M Sandhofer1Tawny eTsang2Scott P Johnson3University of California, Los AngelesUniversity of California, Los AngelesUniversity of California, Los AngelesUniversity of California, Los AngelesVisual attention and perception develop rapidly during the first few months after birth, and these behaviors are critical components in the development of language and cognitive abilities. Here we ask how early bilingual experiences might lead to differences in visual attention and perception. Experiments 1-3 investigated the looking behavior of monolingual and bilingual infants when presented with social (Experiment 1), mixed (Experiment 2), or nonsocial (Experiment 3) stimuli. In each of these experiments, infants’ dwell times (DT) and number of fixations to areas of interest (AOIs) were analyzed, giving a sense of where the infants looked. To examine how the infants looked at the stimuli in a more global sense, Experiment 4 combined and analyzed the saccade data collected in Experiments 1-3. There were no significant differences between monolingual and bilingual infants’ DTs, AOI fixations, or saccade characteristics (specifically, frequency and amplitude) in any of the experiments. These results suggest that monolingual and bilingual infants process their visual environments similarly, supporting the idea that the substantial cognitive differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in early childhood are more related to active vocabulary production than perception of the environment.http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01429/fullCognitionLanguagePerceptionbilingualismdevelopmentInfancy |
| spellingShingle | Christina eSchonberg Catherine M Sandhofer Tawny eTsang Scott P Johnson Does bilingual experience affect early visual perceptual development? Frontiers in Psychology Cognition Language Perception bilingualism development Infancy |
| title | Does bilingual experience affect early visual perceptual development? |
| title_full | Does bilingual experience affect early visual perceptual development? |
| title_fullStr | Does bilingual experience affect early visual perceptual development? |
| title_full_unstemmed | Does bilingual experience affect early visual perceptual development? |
| title_short | Does bilingual experience affect early visual perceptual development? |
| title_sort | does bilingual experience affect early visual perceptual development |
| topic | Cognition Language Perception bilingualism development Infancy |
| url | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01429/full |
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