ArticleDevelopmental science2019
Bilingual toddlers' comprehension of mixed sentences is asymmetrical across their two languages.
Article in Developmental science, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Asymmetrical Effects of Language Mixing in Bilingual Children's Word Learning.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Patterns of Mother, Father, and Child Code-Switching and Links With Child Language Development.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2026Article
- Language Contact in Bilingual Brains: Formal Features in the Mental Representation of English-Spanish Bilingual Children.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Parental Language Mixing in Montreal: Rates, Predictors, and Relation to Infants' Vocabulary Size.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Revisiting perceptual sensitivity to non-native speech in a diverse sample of bilinguals.Infant behavior & development · 2024Article
- Bilingual children's comprehension of code-switching at an uninformative adjective.Language development research · 2023Article
- Combining Languages in Bilingual Input: Using Experimental Evidence to Formulate Bilingual Exposure Strategies.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2023Review
- Patterns of language switching and bilingual children's word learning: An experiment across two communities.Translational issues in psychological science · 2023Article
- Mixed-Language Input and Infant Volubility: Friend or Foe?Bilingualism (Cambridge, England) · 2023Article
- Peekbank: An open, large-scale repository for developmental eye-tracking data of children's word recognition.Behavior research methods · 2023Article
- Bilingual toddlers show increased attention capture by static faces compared to monolinguals.Bilingualism (Cambridge, England) · 2023Article
- Does code-switching influence novel word learning?Developmental science · 2023Article
- LANGUAGE EXPOSURE PREDICTS CHILDREN'S PHONETIC PATTERNING: EVIDENCE FROM LANGUAGE SHIFT.Language · 2022Article
- iCatcher: A neural network approach for automated coding of young children's eye movements.Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies · 2022Article
- Effects of language mixing on bilingual children's word learning.Bilingualism (Cambridge, England) · 2022Article
- Fine-tuning language discrimination: Bilingual and monolingual infants' detection of language switching.Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies · 2021Article
- Efficient Estimation of Children's Language Exposure in Two Bilingual Communities.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2021Article
- Processing of Code-Switched Sentences in Noise by Bilingual Children.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2021Article
- Assessing the Evidence for Asymmetrical Switch Costs and Reversed Language Dominance Effects - A Meta-Analysis.Journal of cognition · 2021Review
- Dónde está la ball? Examining the effect of code switching on bilingual children's word recognition.Journal of child language · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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Abstract
In bilingual language environments, infants and toddlers listen to two separate languages during the same key years that monolingual children listen to just one and bilinguals rarely learn each of their two languages at the same rate. Learning to understand language requires them to cope with challenges not found in monolingual input, notably the use of two languages within the same utterance (e.g., Do you like the perro? or ¿Te gusta el doggy?). For bilinguals of all ages, switching between two languages can reduce the efficiency in real-time language processing. But language switching is a dynamic phenomenon in bilingual environments, presenting the young learner with many junctures where comprehension can be derailed or even supported. In this study, we tested 20 Spanish-English bilingual toddlers (18- to 30-months) who varied substantially in language dominance. Toddlers' eye movements were monitored as they looked at familiar objects and listened to single-language and mixed-language sentences in both of their languages. We found asymmetrical switch costs when toddlers were tested in their dominant versus non-dominant language, and critically, they benefited from hearing nouns produced in their dominant language, independent of switching. While bilingualism does present unique challenges, our results suggest a united picture of early monolingual and bilingual learning. Just like monolinguals, experience shapes bilingual toddlers' word knowledge, and with more robust representations, toddlers are better able to recognize words in diverse sentences.
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