Kovács Agnes Melinda, Mehler Jacques
Cognitive Neuroscience Sector, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, Via Beirut 4, 34014 Trieste, Italy.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Apr 21;106(16):6556-60. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0811323106. Epub 2009 Apr 13.
Children exposed to bilingual input typically learn 2 languages without obvious difficulties. However, it is unclear how preverbal infants cope with the inconsistent input and how bilingualism affects early development. In 3 eye-tracking studies we show that 7-month-old infants, raised with 2 languages from birth, display improved cognitive control abilities compared with matched monolinguals. Whereas both monolinguals and bilinguals learned to respond to a speech or visual cue to anticipate a reward on one side of a screen, only bilinguals succeeded in redirecting their anticipatory looks when the cue began signaling the reward on the opposite side. Bilingual infants rapidly suppressed their looks to the first location and learned the new response. These findings show that processing representations from 2 languages leads to a domain-general enhancement of the cognitive control system well before the onset of speech.
接触双语输入的儿童通常能毫无明显困难地学习两种语言。然而，尚不清楚处于语言前阶段的婴儿如何应对不一致的输入，以及双语环境如何影响早期发育。在三项眼动追踪研究中，我们发现，从出生起就接触两种语言的7个月大婴儿，与匹配的单语婴儿相比，其认知控制能力有所提高。单语婴儿和双语婴儿都学会了对语音或视觉提示做出反应，以预期屏幕一侧会有奖励，但是当提示开始表明奖励在屏幕另一侧时，只有双语婴儿成功地重新引导了他们预期的目光。双语婴儿迅速抑制了他们看向第一个位置的目光，并学会了新的反应。这些发现表明，在语言开始之前，处理两种语言的表征会导致认知控制系统在一般领域得到增强。
