Photo by Daniel Cheung on Unsplash

Today, English is the dominant language that houses many scientific terms such as dinosaur, oxygen, and immune system. Thanks to the evolution of language, we’ve come to know them as part of the English vocabulary despite their origins from a variety of languages such as Latin, French, and German.

Around the world, there have been attempts to describe scientific terms in local languages. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, for instance, translates to bisaatsinsiimaan which means ‘beautiful plantings’ in the native American language Blackfoot or Siksiká. ‘Immune system’ is translated to amasosha omzimba in Zulu, meaning ‘bodily soldiers’, a translation that makes use of an analogy to describe the clinical term.

What does this mean for communities that don’t speak English? How then can scientific ideas be shared?

While it may ‘make sense’ to come up with descriptions and translations in local languages, others have found that it might be more efficient to simply make something up in that language, such as the British Sign Language sign for DNA instead of fingerspelling “deoxyribonucleotide”.

For science communicator and Zulu-speaking Sibusio Biyela, the challenge in science communication is not just about understanding scientific terms in a foreign language, but also in translating them to a local language. The word ‘dinosaur’, for instance, came from a Greek word that means ‘terrible lizard’. It would be odd and inaccurate when translated as it is, so he opted for isilwane sasemandulo which means ‘ancient animal’. Biyela points out that simply translating scientific terms shouldn’t be the goal—choosing the right words to describe them might be more useful and efficient when communicating scientific concepts.

English is the world’s dominant scientific language, yet it has no word for the distinctive smell of cockroaches.

As we think about scientific terms that exist in English, what about words that can’t be directly translated into English or other languages? Do the same rules apply? Most of the time, they’re borrowed into another language and stay that way, such as the gelatinous ‘agar’ or ‘agar-agar’, ‘feng shui’, and ‘pyjama’. And while these words have been borrowed into another language, some words remain in their own, such as ngilu, a Malay word to describe the shivers we get when we hear the sound of scraping metal, and Orangutan, which is a species of primate native to Southeast Asia. Did you know that Orangutan directly translates to ‘Jungle Person’ in Malay?

Can you think of other loanwords or words that cannot be directly translated into another language? Are there any Red Dot words that don’t have a direct English translation?

‘What happens if you have no word for dinosaur’ also talks about what it means for communities that don’t have words to describe certain smells, taste, and colours. What does this imply about their perceptions of the world? Read it all in the original article here: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200116-what-happens-when-you-have-no-word-for-dinosaur

Read this article on the evolution of scientific language: https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-10-06/how-did-english-become-language-science

Read more about Biyela’s works here: https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/decolonizing-science-through-sci-comm

BLIP Lab is recruiting families with children from ages 0-4 years for our upcoming Baby Talk-a-thon! Sign up here: https://ntuhss.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_868i1NIkpvf00QK

More information about our Talk-a-thon: https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/blip/baby/talkathon/

This article was written by our research assistant Shaza and edited by lab manager Fei Ting.

As the COVID-19 outbreak continues across the world, it has inevitably led to the closure of schools and education centers.  Children are expected to continue their learning remotely through virtual engagements and digital tools with their teachers. This shift from traditional physical lessons have caused certain anxiety in adults as they worry about juggling between work from home and supporting their children in this new way of learning.

Many popular press coverage often highlight studies showing associations between hours of “screen time” and negative outcomes. Many parents grew concerned about their children’s use of media and technology, as they worry about how the sudden exposure to screen time might affect their child’s learning. For example, some studies show that media exposure during preschool or toddlerhood could be detrimental to children’s language and literacy skills because it may displace other language-enhancing activities like shared reading with parents and creative play with siblings (Clarke & Kurtz-Costes, 1997).

How much of this is true? 

It may be useful to note that previous studies were only testing for linear relations and may miss out meaningful associations that manifest as quadratic relations. A linear association predicts whether an increase/decrease in A is correlated with an increase/decrease in B while quadratic associations may not be as straightforward. In a longitudinal study by Rebecca Ansley Dore and colleagues (2020), they found that pre-school children with moderate media usage had the largest language gains, while both the lowest and the highest levels of media usage are associated with lesser language gains.

Photo taken from ‘Characteristics of Children’s Media Use and Gains in Language and Literacy Skills’ (Dore, Logan, Lin, Purtell & Justice, 2020)

This graph shows the association between weekly media use and language gains. Each vertical or standing line along the X-axis (at the bottom) represents one child. A quadratic graph such as this one suggests that the relationship between performance on a language learning task (in this case, the WJ Picture Vocabulary Task) and how much media a child used is not as straightforward or ‘linear’ as we may think it is!

Surprisingly, children’s literacy and language skills were not hindered by the proportions of media time exposure, but rather moderate amounts of media usage might even be useful for their language growth.

On the other hand, families who limit media use to extremely low levels may not be replacing that time with other joint literacy activities such as shared reading and singing of nursery songs, and this in turn may lead to poorer language growth.

This suggests that media use may have a negative effect on language growth, but only if it inhibits caregiver-child interaction and caregiver language input. This means that joint media engagement may moderate the association between children’s media use and language skills.

Hence, if working parents are too busy with their work, screen time may still offer learning opportunities for children, improving their receptive vocabulary, comprehension, and communicative skills. Even the actions of touchscreen scrolling may develop a toddler’s fine motor skills, which is important for them to perform important tasks such as feeding themselves, writing and more (Bedford et al., 2016).

Although family literacy interventions such as shared reading and singing still play an important role in the language acquisition of the children, the results of this study shows that media usage does not necessarily hinder a child’s language and literacy skills. With moderation, it may even value-add to the child’s learning. What great news for busy parents!

This article was written by our intern Yanlin and edited by lab manager Fei Ting and research assistant Shaza.

BLIP Lab is currently recruiting families with children from ages 0-4 years for our upcoming Baby Talk-a-thon! Sign up here: https://ntuhss.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_868i1NIkpvf00QK

More information about our Talk-a-thon: https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/blip/baby/talkathon/

Adapted from:

Dore, R. A., Logan, J., Lin, T.-J., Purtell, K. M., & Justice, L. (2020, August 10). Characteristics of Children’s Media Use and Gains in Language and Literacy Skills. Frontiers. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02224/full#h3 

Other references:

Bedford, R., Saez de Urabain, I. R., Cheung, C. H. M., Karmiloff-Smith, A., & Smith, T. J. (2016, July 11). Toddlers’ Fine Motor Milestone Achievement Is Associated with Early Touchscreen Scrolling. Frontiers. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01108/full 

Clarke, A. T., & Kurtz-Costes, B. (1997). Television Viewing, Educational Quality of the Home Environment, and School Readiness. The Journal of Educational Research, 90(5), 279–285. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.1997.10544584 

You might also be interested in “Screens and kids: is screen time bad for language development?” https://www.mpi-talkling.mpi.nl/?p=1277&lang=en

The Talk Together Study was designed to create a rich collection of parent-child speech interactions in a fully online environment. With COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing measures in place, the BLIP team had to find different ways to collect naturalistic parent-child speech interactions since we couldn’t have parents and children coming down to our lab.

Close to 150 parent-child pairs volunteered to take part in our micro-longitudinal* randomized control* study, where parents completed a series of online surveys about their language environment as well as video call sessions which included sharing a wordless picture storybook with their child.

Screengrab from a video call with parent and child  

The wordless picture storybook, created by our lab director Prof Suzy Styles, was about a little Orangutan who got caught in a storm. Parents were asked to read the book to their child in their own words and in any language(s) they’re comfortable with. They seem to really enjoy the storybook! Read ‘Little Orangutan: What A Scary Storm!’ by Dr Suzy Styles here: https://doi.org/10.21979/N9/MJMFXV

Recently, we published an article in Frontiers detailing our online data-collection methods used in the Talk Together Study. In ‘Creating a Corpus of Multilingual Parent-Child Speech Remotely: Lessons Learned in a Large-Scale Onscreen Picturebook Sharing Task’, we discussed the methods we used, and the lessons learned during adapting and running the study which cover nine domains of research design, monitoring and feedback. Some notable points from our paper are that Singaporean parents are: 

1. Interested in finding out how to engage their child verbally
2. More likely to be recruited online via parent forums and Facebook groups
3. Comfortable with doing an experiment procedure over Zoom with a researcher 
4. More likely to complete surveys that are online and easily accessible 

We hope that this report provides some insight into ways researchers can conduct studies of a similar nature.

Read our full report here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.734936/full

Over the past few weeks, we’ve also given out some extra gifts to 15 families via a Lucky Draw! Head over to our Facebook page where we’re posting some delightful photos of our lucky Junior Scientists with their prizes: http://facebook.com/bliplabntu

If you’ve missed the chance to participate in our Talk Together Study, you might be interested in our upcoming Baby Talk-a-thon! We’re recruiting families with children from ages 0-4 years. Sign up here: https://ntuhss.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_868i1NIkpvf00QK

More information about our Talk-a-thon: https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/blip/baby/talkathon/

*A randomized control study uses randomized control trials (RCT) where participants were randomly placed in either an intervention or control group. Participants in the intervention group were given tips to enhance parent-child interactions across 4 weeks, while participants in the control group were given general information about parent-child interactions.

*A longitudinal study is a study that takes place over a period of time. Our Talk Together Study is considered micro-longitudinal as parent-child pairs were invited to take part over a course of three timepoints, with 4 weeks in between the different timepoints

As our children are at home with us during this stay-at-home period, what are the things that you can do together with your child? We’ve brought together some fun reads about language and development to inspire you with the different kinds of activities you and your child may enjoy at home 🙂

Storytelling. As children share experiences and events in their lives, it helps them develop their own sense of identity, build strong connections with people, and gain confidence and the ability to communicate ideas, fostering their language and social skills. Sharing stories in different languages can also be a great opportunity to build on their vocabulary! For example, your child can share a story about their best friend to you in English, and then share a similar or different story to Ah Gong, Kakak, or Paati in Mandarin Chinese, Malay, Tamil, or any other language(s) your child knows.

Read more about how storytelling can help build resilience in children: https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/blip/how-does-storytelling-help-build-resilience-in-children/

Check out this article on reading aloud: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200917-the-surprising-power-of-reading-aloud

Let’s colour some cells! Our lab director Suzy J Styles has created a fun colouring sheet that introduces five different types of brain cells and the way they interact with each other. As your child colours their way through, discover together what these cells look like and what they do. What’s more, we even have them in various languages!

You can find the free and downloadable colouring sheet(s) here: https://researchdata.ntu.edu.sg/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.21979/N9/0IEIPV

Music, singing, and language development. In the early years, a child’s brain is growing and developing important new connections. Singing is a way that you can enrich the language your child hears, by sharing familiar vocal routines, and linking them to actions! You can even mix it up by singing familiar childhood songs in your different mother tongue languages.

Read more about singing here: https://theconversation.com/learning-music-early-can-make-your-child-a-better-reader-106066

Is screentime bad for children? Today, children of all ages are surrounded by shiny technological gadgets, some of which even offer apps designed to teach them words, numbers, objects, and even foreign languages. This raises a question that is relevant for caregivers, researchers and policymakers: do screens help or hinder children’s overall development and, crucially, language development? As with many of these questions, the answer is: it depends.

Read the full article on how screentime can be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for children’s language development: https://www.mpi-talkling.mpi.nl/?p=1277&lang=en

Multilingual Memories. Over the past two years, we’ve gathered the childhood memories of our lab members as they recall what it was like to learn language when they were younger. One of our interns shared how his mum would make a hawker push-kart out of painted cardboard for his siblings to role-play as hawkers at home. They would learn the vocabulary of the different kinds of “food” (plastic toys) in Mandarin and sell them by talking to “customers” in Mandarin.

What about you? Do you recall how it was like when you were learning language? How is it similar or different with your child now?

Read more stories like this: https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/blip/tag/multilingual-memories/

What other activities would you recommend to other parents during this stay-at-home period? Drop us a comment on our Facebook post or follow our Facebook page for more updates on our ongoing and upcoming studies you and your child can take part in.

BLIP Lab wishes you and your family a safe and joyful weekend 🙂

Have you ever heard someone say, “I’m more left-brained”, or that “I’m more right-brained”? They might have been picturing something like this in their minds:

In actual fact, our brains don’t work this way. Evidence from brain imaging has shown time and time again that we cannot be categorically defined as left or right brain dominant (Nielson et. al., 2013). Instead, what has been observed was that certain tasks were performed in certain brain hemispheres. For example, whether we see ourselves as creative or logical, most of us process sentence structures in the left hemisphere. For patients with damage to this region, they struggle to form sentences. This is a condition known as Broca’s Aphasia.

Recent research published in 2020 by Georgetown neurology professor, Elissa L. Newport, found that infants and young children possess a superpower of sorts. And that is that they use BOTH their right and left hemispheres to process spoken sentences and their emotional affect. And this goes on until they’re about 10 or 11! This is because localisation of brain processes doesn’t happen until about age 10 or 11.

What this means is, unlike adults, if young children were to experience a neural injury, it might not necessarily mean a handicap for language learning and processing. Because they are able to use both hemispheres interchangeably, the undamaged hemisphere may compensate for the other.

This blogpost was written by our intern Raye Fion and edited by our lab manager Fei Ting.

Original article:

Children Use Both Brain Hemispheres to Understand Language, Unlike Adults – Neuroscience News. (2021). Retrieved 15 June 2021, from https://neurosciencenews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/neurosciencenews.com/language-hemispheres-children-16983/amp/?amp_js_v=a3&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fneuroscienc

Other references:

Nielsen, J. A., Zielinski, B. A., Ferguson, M. A., Lainhart, J. E., & Anderson, J. S. (2013). An evaluation of the left-brain vs. right-brain hypothesis with resting state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging. PloS one, 8(8), e71275. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0071275

There is research to support that early book reading positively influences language abilities later in life (Hafiz & Tudor, 1989). Hence, some parents read bedtime stories regularly to their young children. However, what if the child simply dislikes reading or the parent is unable to find time to read bedtime stories regularly?

Well, findings from an ethnographic case study in China suggests that language skills can be developed through music too! Specifically, popular songs can be integrated within the family as an alternative to support language learning in early childhood.

Past research studies have found that the integration of music creates a playful learning environment which is crucial in enhancing learning outcomes (Wood, 2010). It ensures that the learning process is perceived as more meaningful and a form of play (Howard, 2002). For example, children may bop their heads to the melody, sway their bodies along with the rhythm, and make sense of the story conveyed by the lyrics. As such, learning becomes more engaging compared to a grammar exercise or vocabulary drill from an assessment book.

Source: GIPHY

Listed below are just some of the numerous benefits that music contributes to language learning:

1. Discriminating between auditory stimuli (Anvari et al., 2002; Lathroum, 2011)
2. Phonemic and phonological (speech sounds) awareness (Anvari et al., 2002; Lathroum, 2011)
3. Orthographic (printed words) awareness (Dugan, 1996; Standley & Hughes, 1997)
4. Sight word identification (Register, 2001; Standley & Hughes, 1997)
5. Expansion of vocabulary (Madsen, 1991)
6. Promotes one’s comprehension ability (Colwell, 1994; Fisher, 2001)

To investigate the effects mentioned above, the researcher examined a 4 year 10 months old Chinese girl, Sarah, who does not enjoy reading books but loves listening to Chinese pop songs, watching music videos, singing and dancing to the music. During the study, home visits were conducted on an average of once every 2 weeks from Sarah’s birth until the end of the data collection period. Telephone conversations and online chats were recorded as well.

It was noted that Sarah was very drawn to music videos and at the age of 3, she was able to sing 《第一次爱的人》 (My First Lover) by Cyndi Wang and pronounce every word clearly. To determine if the vocabulary introduced by Chinese popular songs were understood by Sarah, 2 language tasks were carried out.

In the first task, Sarah was able to verbally explain 28 out of a list of 30 2-character words comprising nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. In the second task, Sarah was tested on her reading and comprehension abilities where she was asked to read a story that was 592 Chinese words long. Sarah was generally able to explain the storyline and its details using her own words.

The overall findings from this case study suggest that music-mediated language learning can be incorporated into home language education. Song lyrics provide exposure to a wide variety of vocabulary where some may not even be used in a typical conversational dialogue. Furthermore, exposure to pop songs in the form of music videos also provides linguistic input in both audio and visual formats that can benefit the acquisition of other language skills such as:

1. Sound-form correspondence
   • E.g. when Sarah listens to a song while recognizing the Chinese characters of the lyrics
2. Text decoding
   • E.g. when Sarah relates the moving images in the music video to identified Chinese characters
3. Comprehension
   • E.g. When lyrics are decoded and Sarah tries to make sense of the moving images displayed in the music video

While the findings from this study may not be generalizable to all other children and families, this case study provides insights as to how music-mediated language learning is a potentially effective alternative to support language learning in early childhood. Therefore, for parents who have children who dislike reading books, perhaps playing the latest pop songs over the radio or watching music videos may be a better choice 😉

To read Sarah’s interview transcripts and have a peek at the language tasks conducted, find out more in the original article below:

Wang, K. (2013). The Magic of Popular Songs: A Case Study of Music Mediated Early Language Development. Canadian Social Science, 9(3), 130–138. https://doi.org/10.3968/j.css.1923669720130903.1125

This blogpost was written by our intern Jerald and edited by our lab manager Fei Ting.

References:

Anvari, S. H., Trainor, L. J., Woodside, J., & Levy, B. A. (2002). Relations among musical skills, phonological processing, and early reading ability in preschool children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 83, 111-130.
Colwell, C. (1994). Therapeutic applications of music in the whole language kindergarten. Journal of Music Therapy, 31(4), 238-247.

Dugan, M. (1996). The effect of music therapy on the pre- reading skills of children in an inclusive preschool setting. (Unpublished master’s thesis), Florida State University, Tallahassee.

Fisher, D. (2001). Early language learning with and without music. Reading Horizon, 42(1), 39-49.

Hafiz, F. M., & Tudor, I. (1989). Extensive reading and the development of language skills. ELT Journal, 43(1), 4–13. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/43.1.4

Howard, J. (2002). Eliciting children’s perceptions of play using the activity of apperception story procedure. Early Child Development and Care, 172(5), 489-502.

Lathroum, L. M. (2011). The role of music perception in predicting phonological awareness in Five- And Six- Year-Old Children. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation), University of Miami, Miami.

Madsen, S. (1991). The Effect of music paired with and without gestures on the learning and transfer of new vocabulary: Experimenter-derived nonsense words. Journal of Music Therapy, 28, 222-230.

Register, D. (2001). The effects of an early intervention music curriculum on prereading/writing. Journal of Music Therapy, 38, 239-248.

Standley, J., & Hughes, J. (1997). Evaluation of an early intervention music curriculum for enhancing pre-reading/ writing skills. Music Therapy Perspectives, 15, 79-85.

Wood, E. (2010). Developing integrated pedagogical approaches to play and learning. In P. Broadhead, J. Howard, & E. Wood (Eds.), Play and Learning in the Early Years (pp. 9-26). Singapore: Sage.

Bouba vs. kiki: Which sounds rounder, and which is spikier? According to a growing body of research, certain words may appear rounder or spikier according to the sound it makes. If you’re like most people who were asked the same question, you probably saw bouba as a ‘rounder’ word while kiki is a ‘spikier’ word. This is known as the bouba-kiki (or maluma-takete) effect. Why does this happen?

Our senses are connected. The association between sounds (made by b and o vs. k and i) and shapes (round vs. spiky) may be due to the way we say and hear these sounds, where certain sounds take a longer time to say while others can be more sudden or abrupt. Some suggest that it’s because of the way certain words ‘feel’ in our mouth. Others suggest that it’s because of how sounds indicate certain characteristics in real life. For example, in English, words for round things often have ‘round’ sounds, such as blob and bubble, while words for ‘spiky’ things often have ‘spiky’ sounds, such as prickly and perky. This may also help with language learning, where we find it easier to remember words that match what they mean!

What about words that are not in English? Our lab director, Dr Suzy Styles was recently featured in a BBC article, where she shared how this effect seems to evoke different effects  with non-English sounding words and non-English speakers. 

In a study conducted with her former PhD student Nan Shang, English and English-Mandarin bilinguals were asked to judge two different Mandarin Chinese tones applied to vowels /i/ and /u/: Tone 1 (high and steady), and Tone 4 (low and falling). English-only speakers found the Tone 1 to be ‘sharper’ and ‘spikier’ and the Tone 4 to be ‘smoother’ and ‘rounder’, while Mandarin-dominant speakers made opposing matches. Balanced English-Mandarin bilinguals showed a bivalent pattern; matching the sounds to shapes based on whether they were asked to focus on vowel sounds or tones.

In another study with linguist Dr Lauren Gawne, speakers of Syuba (a language in the Himalayas in Nepal) were presented with the typical bouba-kiki task but they did not make expected rounded vs. spiky sound-shape matches. The researchers believe that since the speech tokens used did not sound like any Syuba words, speakers did not find it as easy to decide. Just like as English speakers, we would struggle to decide if ‘ngf’ sounds ‘spiky’ or ‘round’.

What if Bouba and Kiki were people? Cognitive psychologist Dr David Sidhu and his fellow collaborators found that people with certain names can also be perceived to have ‘rounded’ or ‘spiky’ personalities. Their research found that soft-sounding names like Molly were more likely to be associated with things like being more agreeable and more conscientious, while spikier-sounding names like Kate are thought of as being more extroverted. This same effect was found in their study using French names, Benoit vs. Eric!

Forming judgments: the conclusion. When it comes to people’s personalities, however, they found that sound is not a reliable guide at all. There was no association between someone’s name and their actual personality. In an ongoing study, participants were shown videos of people with supposedly round or spiky names, but preliminary results showed that the names made no difference to their judgment of them. “As you start getting more information about the person, then that actual information about the personality is probably going to override these biases,” says Dr Sidhu. It would appear that sounds are only a small piece of the complex puzzle as we make judgments of what’s around us.

This editorial was adapted from ‘What the sound of your name says about you’ by Sophie Hardach. Click here to read the full article (10-min read): https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210430-what-the-sound-of-your-name-says-about-you.

Click here to read the original research by Nan and Dr Styles (15-min read): https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02139/full

Click here to read about Dr Styles’ and Dr Gawne’s interesting research on bouba-kiki in the Himalayas (5-min read): https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/blip/bites/bouba-kiki-in-the-himalayas/

At the Brain, Language, and Intersensory Perception Lab (BLIP), we’re interested in how learning particular languages might shape the way we experience our world, and how we use different sounds to represent meanings, and different shapes to represent sounds. Follow our Facebook page to get more bite-sized information about language and brain development, and find out how you can join us in our exciting discoveries!

Mandarin-English: “You bite already, zhè yīgè dàdòng” (You bite already, this is a big hole)

Malay-English:  “Wah, baju tu colourful-nya” (Wah, that shirt is colourful)

Tamil-English:    “Intha flower romba beautiful-la irrukku” (This flower is very beautiful)

If your child is exposed to two or more languages, you may have heard them switching between languages while talking – this is known as ‘code-switching’. Do not fret or discourage your child from doing so! There are misconceptions about why young bilingual children code-switch. Some believe that it is due to their inability to differentiate between the languages or that the children are poor at their languages.

However, that may not be the case! A study conducted in Singapore by Yow and colleagues (2018) investigated the relationship between preschoolers’ code-switching behaviour and their language competency. 5 to 6 year-old English–Mandarin bilinguals were observed during their classroom activities in Singapore childcare centres. From the observations, there was not a single child who did not code-switch! This was the case even though the teachers made efforts to only speak in one language when interacting with the children. The children were also assessed for their vocabulary knowledge. The results suggested that the number of code-switched utterances was not related to their competency in the English language. This finding is consistent with recent studies that code-switching is not a result of language incompetency. In addition, the children who code-switched more tend to produce a larger and more complex variety of Mandarin words compared to those who code-switched less (note that this bilingual population was less dominant in Mandarin).

Upon prevailing research, we re-address the misconceptions on early code-switching:

Does code-switching indicate that my child is confused between languages? No. Code-switching behaviour is not affected by the inability to differentiate their two language systems. Rather, the alternation between languages illustrates that they possess sufficient knowledge of both languages as their code-switched utterances are usually systematic and grammatical. 

Do children code-switch because of poor language competency? No. Bilingual children exhibit a good understanding of the grammatical systems of both languages. In another study, two- to four-year-old French–English bilingual children displayed code-switching patterns that were largely alike to that of their adult counterparts.

“Code-switching in a multilingual environment may present bilingual children with opportunities to use both their languages in ways that a (monolingual)  language environment alone would not be able to provide them with” – Yow et al. (2018)

All in all, why is it that bilingual children code-switch?

Firstly, it relates to their social-emotional and behavioural skills. Young bilingual children may choose code-switch according to the situational context and conversation partner. Several studies have demonstrated that bilingual children are pragmatically competent and sensitive to societal standards. Family language practices also play a part in children’s code-switched utterances. For example, your child may learn from you to use more Malay words with Nenek (grandmother in Malay). Bilingual children also code-switch for fun! It’s their way of “playing” with their languages. 

Secondly, the behaviour of code-switching by children allows them to engage both their languages more often, and particularly the weaker language. Numerous studies have found that bilingual children aged between two to six years code-switch to substitute their lexical gaps and improve their weaker language. By achieving so, they utilise the grammatical structure and words they have acquired in their stronger language when they do not have the translation equivalents. Parents should encourage their children’s regular use of both languages, even when it involves switching consistently between the two languages.

Adapted from:

Yow, W., Tan, J., & Flynn, S. (2018). Code-switching as a marker of linguistic competence in bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 21(5), 1075-1090. doi:10.1017/S1366728917000335 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728917000335

This blogpost was written by our intern Nadia Alya and edited by our lab manager Fei Ting.

Photo of Letter Blocks by Amador Loureiro on Unsplash

Infant-directed speech (IDS) – or commonly referred to as ‘baby talk’, ‘motherese’, ‘fatherese’, ‘parentese’ – reflect a caregiver’s instinctively singy-songy way of talking to infants. More specifically, this kind of speech is usually higher in pitch, slower in pace, more exaggerated in pronunciation and more enthusiastic-sounding. The speech is intentionally embellished and enunciations are overstressed to highlight the difference between the syllables and words that most adults would easily be able to distinguish in normal, ‘un-babified’ speech (adult-directed speech; ADS). 

In a way, adult speakers of a language can, without much thought, break down continuous speech into meaningful phrases and words. Babies, however, don’t have this automatic capacity to distinguish these boundaries yet. Imagine going to a foreign country not knowing what language they speak. If you try to eavesdrop in a conversation, it may prove difficult to make sense of where one word ends and another starts. 

Whatyouhearmaysoundsomethinglikeasinglewordgoingonandonwithoutaforeseeableend. This is what babies hear, or at least we have pretty good reason to believe this is what they hear. Despite also being continuous speech, baby talk differs in that the boundaries between words are often more highlighted so WWordsMmmaaayySsSsounddDddLllliiikkeeeEeThiiIisssSsss making it easier for babies to learn language as they develop. It’s not a wonder why babies would show a preference for baby talk.

Infant-directed speech (IDS) can help infants learn language because they receive speech sounds at a slower rate and more varied patterns of pronunciations, which allows infants to more easily identify cues of boundaries between words. In fact, past research has shown that the more IDS a child is exposed to, the better they remember words from before and more easily learn new ones.

Nonetheless, much of the knowledge regarding the benefits of baby talk were from research with monolingual babies, most of which were of English speakers. Until recently, we understood very little how these findings may apply to bilingual (and multilingual) communities. We have yet to confirm whether these benefits are the same across babies of monolingual and bilingual communities. We can start by asking if the preference shows similar patterns between these two groups. One may ask the following questions:

1. Does the preference for baby talk develop in similar ways between monolingual and bilingual babies?
2. What, if any, is the influence of the infant’s language background on their preference for baby talk? Does it differ for baby talk in their native vs non-native language?
3. And finally, how do we know if the preference for baby talk is unique to specific languages, but not others?

The final point is most relevant to Singapore given its diverse linguistic environment. The vast majority of infants in Singapore will grow up bilingual, with English and at least one of the many mothertongues spoken by caregivers and others living in this Little Red Dot. If a child grows up being exposed to English and Malay, would their preference for baby talk differ with a child exposed to English and Mandarin, or English and Tamil? What about a child who grows up in a predominantly non-English household (e.g. immigrant families, interracial couples)?

To address these three questions, Krista Byers-Henlein of Concordia University enlisted international researchers from 17 labs to conduct a large-scale examination of IDS preference among bilingual and monolingual infants. They wanted to find out if bilingual infants show a preference of IDS over ADS the same way monolingual infants do.

Now, you may be wondering, how do researchers determine an infant’s preference for IDS or ADS? They can’t speak that well yet to be able to tell you. Researchers who study infant populations leverage on an interesting observation about babies: they stare at things they find interesting. With that in mind, Krista Byers-Henlein and colleagues measured in their respective labs how long their baby participants looked when presented with IDS or ADS on an eye-tracking device. To do so, infants were exposed to English in IDS and ADS simultaneously, and were observed to see which one they prefer. The longer they looked at videos of one kind of speech indicated a stronger preference. Across four continents and seven countries, the research study collated results from a total of 333 bilingual and 384 monolingual infants to put this question to the test. That’s a lot of babies!

The multilab study revealed intriguing results. First, the findings indicate both monolingual and bilingual infants showed similar patterns of strong preference for IDS over ADS. Second, their preference for English IDS was influenced by their prior exposure to English. This suggests that an infant’s stronger preference for IDS may have something to do with what language they are often exposed to, which commonly coincides with their native language. Finally, and most interestingly, the relationship between an infant’s degree of bilingualism (i.e. relative exposure to each language during early development, e.g. 50% English and 50% Mandarin/Malay/Tamil) and IDS preference was complex. Though their exposure to English speech influenced their preference for English IDS, the degree of bilingualism itself did not influence IDS preference. This again emphasises the specific role of the language environment. With greater exposure to, say, English, the greater the sensitivity an infant will show towards English IDS.

Taken together, bilingual infants, as with monolingual infants, do prefer baby talk over non-baby talk. That being said, the language context the infant is exposed to, including the kinds of languages and the relative amount of exposure to each language, plays an important role. This may be more important for bilingual infants exposed to multiple languages, often at the same time.

Fun Fact: one of the labs that was involved in this study is a lab in the National University of Singapore, so you can be confident that these results can be applied to our local linguistic environment!

This editorial was adapted from ‘A Multilab Study of Bilingual Infants: Exploring the Preference for Infant-Directed Speech’ by our intern Jan Paolo and edited by our lab manager Fei Ting.

Original article:

Byers-Heinlein, K., Tsui, A. S. M., Bergmann, C., Black, A. K., Brown, A., Carbajal, M. J., … & Wermelinger, S. (2021). A Multilab Study of Bilingual Infants: Exploring the Preference for Infant-Directed Speech. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 4(1), 2515245920974622. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2515245920974622

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