Voulez-vous jouer avec moi? Twelve-month-olds understand that foreign languages can communicate.

ABSTRACT: Infants understand that speech in their native language allows speakers to communicate. Is this understanding limited to their native language or does it extend to non-native languages with which infants have no experience? Twelve-month-old infants saw an actor, the Communicator, repeatedly select one of two objects. When the Communicator could no longer reach the target but a Recipient could, the Communicator vocalized a nonsense phrase either in English (infants' native language), Spanish (rhythmically different), or Russian (phonotactically different), or hummed (a non-speech vocalization). Across all three languages, native and non-native, but not humming, infants looked longer when the Recipient gave the Communicator the non-target object. Although, by 12 months, infants do not readil

SUBMITTER: Vouloumanos A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5801064 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature