Yow W Quin, Li Xiaoqian
Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372, Singapore.
Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372, Singapore.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2018 Feb;166:635-651. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.09.019. Epub 2017 Nov 8.
Experiences living in a community where people share more than one language may affect children's strategies to selective learning. Language mixing may be one type of speakers' characteristics that bilingual children, but not monolingual children, use to evaluate speakers. A total of 120 English-speaking monolingual (n = 40) and English-Mandarin bilingual (n = 80) 4- and 5-year-olds heard a pair of speakers each tell a story either with or without language mixing and indicated their preferences for either speaker in friendship, explicit judgment, and novel label endorsement. Bilingual children, but not their monolingual counterparts, preferred the single-language speaker to the language-mix speaker across different test questions. Our findings suggest that social relevance in the larger communicative context may contribute to the development of children's social preferences and selective learning based on certain characteristics of the speakers.
生活在一个人们使用多种语言的社区中的经历可能会影响儿童的选择性学习策略。语言混合可能是双语儿童(而非单语儿童)用来评估说话者的一种说话者特征。共有120名4岁和5岁的英语单语儿童(n = 40)以及英-汉双语儿童(n = 80),他们分别听一对说话者讲述一个故事,其中一个说话者讲故事时使用或不使用语言混合,然后孩子们要在友谊、明确判断和新标签认可方面表明他们对其中一个说话者的偏好。在不同的测试问题中,双语儿童(而非他们的单语同龄人)更喜欢只说一种语言的说话者,而不是使用语言混合的说话者。我们的研究结果表明,在更大的交流背景下的社会相关性可能有助于儿童基于说话者的某些特征发展出社会偏好和选择性学习。