Not a whole lot of actual news in today’s New York Times piece about “hearing bilingual.” I’ve read that the link to language is social, so kids don’t learn it by watching TV; that infants favor the languages they heard in the womb; and that bilingual speakers are better executive decision makers. What’s new, it seems, is the idea of “neural commitment” — that monolingual babies stop registering words in other languages at around 10 to 12 months.
Also kind of neat, in studies where babies were shown silent films in which people spoke different languages, 4-month-olds could tell when the language being used changed, but around 8 months, monolingual babies stopped reacting, while the bilingual kids stayed engaged. The bilinguals, the thinking goes, registered that information was still being conveyed.
Now, if someone could release data on the thinking processes of bi-sippy-cup babies, who insist on toting around twice the necessary plastic…
