Language Experience Is Associated with Infants’ Visual Attention to Speakers
Abstract
Early social-linguistic experience influences infants’ attention to faces but little is known about how infants attend to the faces of speakers engaging in conversation. Here, we examine how monolingual and bilingual infants attended to speakers during a conversation, and we tested for the possibility that infants’ visual attention may be modulated by familiarity with the language being spoken. We recorded eye movements in monolingual and bilingual 15-to-24-month-olds as they watched video clips of speakers using infant-directed speech while conversing in a familiar or unfamiliar language, with each other and to the infant. Overall, findings suggest that bilingual infants visually shift attention to a speaker prior to speech onset more when an unfamiliar, rather than a familiar, language is being spoken. However, this same effect was not found for monolingual infants. Thus, infants’ familiarity with the language being spoken, and perhaps their language experiences, may modulate infants’ visual attention to speakers.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Aug 13, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.3390/brainsci10080550
Entities
People
- Natsuki Atagi
- Scott P Johnson
Organizations
- Foundation for the National Institutes of Health