MONOLINGUAL AND BILINGUAL CHILDREN’S INTEGRATION OF

MULTIPLE CUES TO UNDERSTAND A SPEAKER’S REFERENTIAL INTENT –

THE ROLE OF EXPERIENCE IN COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES

OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Wei Quin Yow

July 2010

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/

This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/wz095zd2776

© 2010 by Wei Quin Yow. All Rights Reserved.

Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

ii

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequatein scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Ellen Markman, Primary Adviser

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequatein scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Lera Boroditsky

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequatein scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Carol Dweck

Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies.

Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education

This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file inUniversity Archives.

iii

iv

ABSTRACT

Children growing up in a dual-language environment have to constantly

monitor the dynamic communicative context to determine what the speaker is trying to

say and how to respond appropriately. Such self-generated efforts to monitor

speakers’ communicative needs may heighten children’s sensitivity to and allow them

to make better use of communicative cues to figure out a speaker’s referential intent.

Chapter 1 of this paper reviews the current models of bilingualism and literature on

the impact of growing up bilingual, including benefits to the cognitive and

communicative development of children. Chapter 2 presents a series of studies to

examine how the experience of growing up bilingual may foster children’s ability to

integrate multiple cues to understand a speaker’s referential intent, and how the

experience of a communication breakdown of a bilingual nature may increase

children’s sensitivity to communicative cues. Overall, results provide evidence that

growing up in a bilingual environment facilitates a more sophisticated understanding

of the demands in a communicative context and support the hypothesis that children’s

self-generated efforts to cope with communicative challenges heighten their sensitivity

to a speaker’s communicative intent and foster their cognitive and linguistic

development.

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I want to express my immense gratitude to my advisor,

Ellen Markman. I have worked with many different people in the past (corporate

bosses and professors), and Ellen is truly an exceptional mentor. She is my greatest

source of inspiration in pursuing the highest quality research in psychology. Thank

you, Ellen, for your professional advice, intellectual guidance, and unwavering

support in both academic and personal aspects of my life at Stanford.

I cannot have a more wonderful group of committee members: Carol Dweck,

Lera Boroditsky, Anthony Wagner, and Kenji Hakuta. Your encouraging feedback

and comments are exceptionally helpful in guiding my dissertation research. Thank

you, Anthony, in particular, for your guidance and support through my years at

Stanford.

This dissertation will not be possible without the support of my fellow

graduate students and lab members, Allison Master, Luke Butler, Sarah Gripshover,

Taylor Holubar, and Carissa Romero. Thank you Allison, especially, for always being

there for me when I needed you, be it a listening ear, insights about research, or

occasional personal assistance. Thank you Frances Chen, too, for the continuing

support and help even after you have graduated from Stanford. I am grateful to many

of my research assistants who have helped in various parts of this dissertation work,

for without them, none of this awesome research would be available, particularly

Hannah Jaycox, Jake Wachtel, Holly Rogers and Adrienne Sussman. I am also

grateful to the children and parents who participated in my research, and to the

vi

teachers and staff of Bing Nursery School. I am thankful to many staff from the

Psychology Department, especially Maureen Sullivan and Beth McKeown for your

wonderful assistance and support throughout the years. I am thankful too, to the Tan

Kah Kee Postgraduate Scholarship and the Stanford Graduate Research Opportunity

Fund, for their financial support towards my dissertation research.

Last but not least, to Angie and Zoe, whose smile, laughter, hugs and kisses

have given me unquantifiable amount of strength and determination to complete this

journey, and to my indispensable family network: Dad (Jin Yan), Mom (Chue Chun),

Dad-in-law (Siew Jin), Mom-in-law (Gui Keok), Yi Pin, Wei Meng and Wei Chui.

Life is not the same without you all.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Introduction……………………………………………………... 1

Bilingual Language Representation and Processing. …… 5

Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism………………………. 13

Sensitivity to Socio-Communicative Cues……………… 37

Integrating Multiple Cues and Maintaining Communicative

Effectiveness………………………………..………... 54

Chapter 2 Present Research……………………………………………. 65

Study 1…………………………………………………… 65

Study 2…………………………………………………. 74

Study 3…………………………………………………. 79

Study 4…………………………………………………. 86

Study 5…………………………………………………. 98

Chapter 3 General Discussion………………………………………………. 112

Summary of Findings…………………………………… 112

Self-generated Efforts to Maintain Communicative

Effectiveness…………………………..……………. 115

Conclusions………………………………………………. 116

Chapter 4 References………………………………………………………… 120

Appendices……………………………………………….. 120

List of References…………………………………………. 124

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Mean scores and standard deviations (in parentheses) of Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), Digit-Span task (DS), and Day-Night task (DN) in Study 1…………………………….……………….. 71

Table 2 Means and standard deviations of correct responses (out of 2) in Study

1 and 2……………………….……………………….…..…. 73 Table 3 Mean scores and standard deviations (in parentheses) of Peabody

Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), Digit-Span task (DS), and Day-Night task (DN) in Study 3……………………………………..…. 83

Table 4 Means and standard deviations of correct responses (out of 2) in Study

3………………………….……………….………………… 85 Table 5 Mean scores and standard deviations (in parentheses) of Peabody

Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), Digit-Span task (DS), and Day-Night task (DN) in Study 4…………………………………..……. 91

Table 6 Means and standard deviations of 1st-mentioned character responses

(out of 4) in Study 4…….………………………………….... 94 Table 7 Means and standard deviations (in parentheses) of correct responses

(out of 2) in Study 5…………………………….…………... 107

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1 Screenshots from Study 1………………………………………… 67 Figure 2 Screenshots from Study 2………………………………………… 76 Figure 3 Screenshots from video clips (Study 3)…………………………. 81 Figure 4 Screenshots from Study 4………………………………………... 89 Figure 5 Set-up of Study 5 Part One……..………………………………… 100 Figure 6 Set-up of Study 5 Part Two.………………………..…..………… 101 Figure 7 Schematic representation of the four types of test trials in Study 5

Part Two………………………………………………..………… 102

1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

One in three people in the world regularly uses multiple languages in everyday

life (Wei, 2000) and more than half of the world’s population is proficient in two or

more languages (Bhatia & Ritchie, 2004). For example, in Europe, nearly 50% of the

27-bloc’s citizens are capable of speaking at least two languages. It is projected that

in the European Union about one-third of the urban population under 35 will soon

consist of ethnic minorities with a language background different than that of the

majority (Extra & Yagmur, 2004; Romaine, 2004). Findings from the 2000 census

confirm that the U.S. has a fast-growing population that speaks English at home less

frequently, with California leading the way. The U.S. Department of Education

estimates that 8.4% of children in grades K-12 are English Language Learners (ELLs),

representing a 79% increase from the previous decade (Zehler et al., 2003). In

California, by the year 2035, it is expected that over 50% of children enrolled in

kindergarten will have grown up speaking a language other than English (García,

McLaughlin, Spodek, & Saracho, 1995).

Given the growing population of people who speak more than one language in

the world, it is not surprising that the number of research studies dedicated to the study

of bilingualism has also increased dramatically over the past two decades (Meisel,

2004). Much research on childhood bilingualism has been done to understand how

bilinguals represent and process different languages. They seek to understand the

2

architecture of the bilingual lexicon, in particular, how the lexicons interact with each

other in terms of conceptual representations of words (Dijkstra & van Heuven, 2002;

Grosjean, 1988, 1997; Hernandez, Li, & MacWhinney, 2005; Kroll & Stewart, 1994;

Van Heuven, Dijkstra, & Grainger, 1998). Others seek to examine how words are

accessed and how language is processed in real-time (Kolers, 1963; McCormack, 1977;

Rodriguez-Fornells, Rotte, Heinze, Nösselt, & Munte, 2002; Spivey & Marian, 1999).

There also exists an abundant amount of bilingual research that focuses on the

acquisition of literacy of bilingual children, such as phonological awareness, reading

and writing (Cisero & Royer, 1995; Geva & Wade-Woolley, 1998; Haynes & Carr,

1990; Sulzby, 1986; Teale, 1986). In addition, there is a solid representation of work

done investigating the cognitive effects of bilingualism (Bialystok & Codd, 1997;

Bialystok & Majumder, 1998; Bialystok, 1999; Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008).

While the vast research on childhood bilingualism to date focuses on language

acquisition and its cognitive effects, little is known about the interplay between the

socio-cognitive and communicative development in bilingual children. We know that

children use a range of sources of information to help them learn about the world. One

important source of information is from people around them. Observing the behavior

of others and learning about the world through them is an important form of learning

(cf. Tomasello, 2004). However, interpreting the information provided by other social

beings may be more than straightforward. For example, a point from a speaker could

mean a direct reference to an object, a particular location, or a command for an action

to be performed (e.g. Camaioni, 1993; Goodhart & Baron-Cohen, 1993; Sodian &

Thoermer, 2004; Tomasello, Carpenter, & Liszkowski, 2007). Similarly, a gaze from

3

a speaker could mean a direct reference to an object or an indication of desire and

wants (e.g. Lee, Eskritt, Symons, & Muir, 1998; Brooks & Meltzoff, 2002; for a

review, see Kleinke, 1986, and Rutter, 1984). In addition, an utterance said in a tone of

voice that is inconsistent with its contents may indicate pretense, sarcasm or a genuine

confusion (e.g. Reissland & Snow, 1996; Clark, 1994; Kreuz & Roberts, 1995;

Morton & Trehub, 2001). Hence, it is critical that children look beyond a single

aspect of communication to understand the speaker’s intent and learn how to integrate

multiple cues provided by the interlocutors and their social-linguistic environment to

function effectively in the social world (Shatz, 2007).

How would the experience of growing up in a linguistically varied

environment impact on children’s socio-cognitive and communicative development?

Growing up in a bilingual environment presents young children with unique

communicative challenges beyond those monolingual children have to cope with.

Monolingual and bilingual children alike must learn to monitor and integrate different

sources of information to communicate successfully and avoid breakdowns in

communication (e.g. Baldwin, 1995; Hollich, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2000;

Tomasello, 2003). But bilingual children face an additional challenge in

communication when, for example, an adult speaker switches to a language a bilingual

child does not understand, or when a bilingual child responds in a language that an

adult speaker does not speak. Growing up in a bilingual environment requires

bilingual children to understand interpersonal communication in a way that exceeds

the requirements for monolingual communication. For example, bilingual children

need to be more active in monitoring the dynamic communicative situation, in part, to

4

determine what language a given speaker is using, what the speaker is referring to, and

how to respond appropriately. Lanza (1997, 2001) proposed that bilingual children’s

understanding of appropriate language choices arises from similar socialization

processes of language use as those shown to influence the development of

communication skills in children (Dopke, 1992). Hence, the experience of growing

up in a bilingual environment may impact on children’s communicative competence in

understanding social interactions. Bilingual children may be pragmatically more

skilled in understanding a speaker’s intent, especially since “they are exposed to a

greater wealth of linguistic information and conversational experience than are

monolingual children” (Siegal & Surian, 2007, p.309).

In this chapter, I will first provide background research about language

representation and processing in bilinguals. Then, I will review past research on the

cognitive benefits of bilingualism, as a first step to understanding how learning an

additional language simultaneously would affect our cognitive functioning. Finally, I

will present recent research on how growing up in a linguistically varied environment

may impact on the socio-cognitive and communicative development of children.

Critically, I will argue for the hypothesis that the experience of growing up bilingual

requires practiced efforts to actively monitor the communicative situation. This in

turn fosters the ability of bilingual children to use communicative cues more

effectively than their monolingual peers in understanding a speaker’s referential

intents in various contexts.

5

Models of Bilingual Language Representation and Processing

This section reviews the various models of bilingual language representation

with the goal of understanding how bilinguals construct mental representations for

language and concepts and how the two languages are processed.

Bilingual Language Representation

How are multiple languages represented? There are two classic accounts for

the development of multiple language systems. One view is the one-language-one-

mind account, where children start off with a single language system and then proceed

to differentiate into two linguistic systems (Arnberg, 1987; Grosjean, 1982; Leopold,

1970; Saunders, 1982; Vihman, 1985, Volterra & Taeschner, 1978). According to this

model, the differentiation of this competence into discrete linguistic systems is a

developmental milestone that indicates the growth of linguistic knowledge. Evidence

of children’s language mixing is taken as an indication of an undifferentiated repository

of all linguistic knowledge.

There were several challenges to this unitary model of bilingual language

acquisition. The above interpretation of children’s language mixing may in fact be

taken as an analogy of monolingual children’s overextensions of words to refer to

similar objects. Children with two incomplete language systems may well attempt to

exploit their combined resources when specific words or structures are lacking in the

language required for current needs. According to the differentiated view of dual

6

language acquisition, children’s language representations are organized to the two

languages but the structure and terms from the other language may be selected if they

have to fill a gap in the language the child is attempting to use. For example, Deuchar

and Quay (2000) listed separate English and Spanish vocabularies for their bilingual

child subject and found that they could make unambiguous attributions when the child

combines lexicon from both vocabularies in a single utterance. Further, Petersen

(1988) found that a bilingual English-Danish child used English morphology with both

English and Danish lexicon, but never mixed Danish morphology and English lexicon.

The authors suggested that since the child’s dominant language was English, the child

used English to adapt the lexical structures in other languages to the syntactic context.

This implied that the child had the ability to distinguish between the languages, since

lexicon was freely mixed in both directions.

Although the above two classic accounts provide a basic framework in

understanding language representations in bilinguals, they can be simplistic considering

the knowledge revealed by contemporary research (e.g. Van Heuven, Dijkstra, &

Grainger, 1998) that offered alternative theoretical options on how the bilingual lexicon

could be organized, which in turn provide different predictions regarding the activation

of words from one or both languages. For example, Word Association model (Potter,

So, von Eckardt, & Feldman, 1984) posits a bidirectional link between the two

languages and another bidirectional link between the first language and conceptual

representations, suggesting that new words from the second language do not have a

7

direct link to concepts. Under this model, a child’s needs to access the meaning of a

word in another language will first activate the corresponding word form from the first

language and then access the meaning of the word. Alternatively, Concept Mediation

model posits a link between the second language and conceptual representations, but

no link between the two languages, suggesting that all words in both languages have

direct access to conceptual meaning and that accessing meaning does not involve

translation (Menenti, 2006). Kroll and Stewart (1994) proposed the Revised

Hierarchical Model (RHM) that suggests bilingual lexicons are bi-directionally

interconnected via lexical links. During second language acquisition, bilinguals learn to

associate every second language word with its first language equivalent, thus forming a

lexical-level association that remains active and strong. Stronger lexical links from the

second to first language reflect the bilingual’s ease of translation since every second

language word is mapped onto its first language equivalent, but not every first language

word is mapped onto its second language equivalent (La Heij, Hooglander, Kerling, &

Van der Velden, 1996; Potter et al., 1984). However, De Groot and colleagues

consistently find the opposite pattern: a processing speed advantage for forward

translation, especially for low-proficiency second language learners (De Groot & Poot,

1997). These opposing findings may result from differences in stimuli frequency

(Kroll & De Groot, 1997). The high-proficiency bilinguals in Kroll and Stewart (1994)

viewed many low frequency nouns (e.g., dagger, celery), and it is possible that the

advantage for backward translation may have changed with the use of high-frequency

8

nouns.

The models of bilingual language representation previously discussed focus on

second language acquisition and assume bilinguals interpret words of their weaker

language through the words of their stronger language. Whether the two language

systems would be represented differently if they were acquired simultaneously has

been rarely considered. To sidestep such shortcomings, other models attempted to

examine changes in dual language processing instead.

Bilingual Language Processing

Recent studies suggest that two languages may be active in parallel regardless

of whether a person is trying to selectively use just one language, and that words from

one language automatically activate phonologically similar words from the other

language (Grainger, 1983; Guttentag, Haith, Goodman, & Hauch, 1984; Hermans &

Lambert, 1998; Van Heuven et al., 1998). The evidence supporting the claim has been

amassed from research using a variety of tasks, including cross-language priming

(Gollan, Forster, & Frost, 1997)), cross-language Stroop interference (Brauer, 1998;

Chen & Ho, 1986), cross-language homograph recognition (Dijkatra, Grainger, & Van

Heuven, 1999), cross-language picture naming (Hermans & Lambert, 1998) and eye-

tracking picture discrimination tasks (Li, 1996; Spivey & Marian, 1999).

The Bilingual Interactive Activation model (BIA) attempts to describe how

written words are identified given findings that bilinguals’ two languages are activated

in parallel and competed for recognition (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002). It proposes

9

that different levels of processing continuously activate each other based on incoming

information, focusing in particular on how words prime each other within and between

languages. Hence, activation for this model is generally said to be bottom-up starting

from the lowest level (feature) to the highest level (language). One important

contribution of the BIA model, though, is the inclusion of top-down control processes

that modify the response output. According to this model, inhibition does not exist at

the activation (word recognition) level, but rather at the selection level (top-down

inhibition from the other language node).

While the BIA model focuses on bilingual visual word recognition, another

interactive model, the Bilingual Model of Lexical Access (BIMOLA), focuses on

spoken word recognition (Grosjean, 1988, 1997). It consists of three levels of nodes

(features, phonemes, and words) and is characterized by various excitatory and

inhibitory links within and between levels. This model allows for greater bidirectional

activation between levels of processing, and greater inhibition within levels of

processing. It also incorporates a higher level of activation that takes into

consideration contextual information such as the interlocutor’s language mode as well

as semantic and structural information. Grosjean proposed that this simultaneous

independence and interdependence acknowledges (1) bilinguals’ ability to speak in just

one language while simultaneously able to mix it with the other language, and (2)

bilinguals’ inability to prevent interference from the other language. However, the

BIMOLA assumes similar proficiency in both languages such that each language

10

influences the other with same strength.

There are also network models that posit that the second language learner

begins learning with a parasitic lexicon, a parasitic phonology, and a parasitic set of

grammatical constructs, and the second language grows out of this parasitic status over

time, relying less on first language translation equivalents and becoming a full language

in its own right when the strength of connections changes with experience

(Competition Model on dual language acquisition (Hernandez et al., 2005) and Self-

Organizing Model of Bilingual Processing model (SOMBIP) (Li & Farkas, 2002) ).

Henceforth, the two languages become open to executive control when a bilingual

engages intentionally in language transfer such as translation or language mixing.

Green (1986, 1998) went beyond the functional architecture of bilingualism to

propose a general-purpose language-processing model in an effort to account for a

variety of language phenomena. According to the model, the representation of two

languages in the bilingual mind is distinct but both languages remain active during any

language use. It is the responsibility of an inhibitory process to suppress the

nonrelevant language and allow the required one to carry out the task. Part of

children’s development in the early years may be in refining this inhibitory control so

that it effectively eliminates intrusions from the unwanted languages. If both languages

are always active, then two factors would determine their combination in children’s

early speech: the need to communicate would compel the child to recruit an alternative

lexicon that is already active when gaps are encountered in the language being used, and

11

well-developed inhibitory processes to suppress to nonrelevant language to prevent all

intrusions. This general inhibitory control model of dual language processing has

largely captured the essence of the underlying competing processes of activation

proposed by most models discussed earlier and is largely based on the assumption of

the widely accepted view that the two representational systems for bilingual are both

active even when only one of these systems is being used. Several hypotheses follow:

bilingual would need to shift attention frequently because of rapid monitoring of the

context and efficient switching between representations that are required for fluent

performance in both languages; the problem of managing competing representations

can be handled by general cognitive processes, such as attention, inhibition,

monitoring, and switching. Hence, the need to constantly use these processes in the

management of two language systems may later affect the development of the

executive functioning of bilinguals.

Many of the above models to bilingual language representation and processing

attempt to take into account important linguistic and contextual factors, but they

rarely incorporate sociopragmatic aspects of communication. For example, a bilingual

might decide to choose a word or phrase in a particular language and switch another

word or phrase in the other language later in the same sentence based on various

sociopragmatic factors, such as participants in the conversation, memory of previous

interactions, or simply unable to find the right word or phrase in the previous

language. Indeed, Kasuya (2002) found that bilingual adults follow complex linguistic

12

and social rules when navigating interactions with different people, evaluating factors

such as others’ fluency or social status when deciding which language to use. The

Sociopragmatic Psycholinguistic Processing Model (SPPL) (Walters, 2005) attempts

to integrate a psycholinguistic model of bilingual processing that includes social and

pragmatic information in bilingual speech and interaction. According to the model,

there is a range of sociopragmatic information that bilinguals have to integrate to

determine their language choice in their interaction with other speakers. This includes

social identity (individual’s social and bilingual history), context/genre (setting,

participants, genre and topic of conversation), speaker’s intentions (speaker’s wish to

convey a request, a promise, etc.), formulation (lexical formulation based on

pragmatic information and structural features, as well as discourse patterns to handle

relevance, cohesion and sequencing of information), and articulation (speech output).

For a bilingual person, these sociopragmatic aspects (e.g. identity and context) are just

as important in codeswitching as psycholinguistic aspects (e.g. lexical access).

Bilinguals have to regularly retrieve, manage, and process such sociopragmatic

information, in addition to linguistic information, to figure out what language a

speaker is using and how they should respond appropriately. Hence, the increased use

of sociopragmatic information in their regular communication may contribute to

bilinguals’ increased communicative competence in understanding social interactions.

In sum, the above models of bilingual language processing suggest that there

are at least two ways bilingualism may affect general development. The constant

control of two languages to prevent use of irrelevant language may affect the

development of executive control. Similarly, the constant need to process

13

sociopragmatic information to navigate a bilingual environment may impact on the

development of communicative competence. However, while many studies, which I

will review later, provided evidence of a bilingual advantage in executive functioning

and sensitivity to the communicative requirements of the context, what remains

largely unknown is how bilingualism may contribute to the development of advanced

communicative skills in understanding a speaker’s intent. My dissertation research

will contribute to this understanding by examining how monolingual and bilingual

children use multiple communicative cues to understand a speaker’s referential intents

in various contexts and how the experience of a communicative challenge (of a

bilingual nature) may spur children to make more effective use of communicative

cues. I will first review research that examines the impact of bilingualism on

executive functioning.

Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism

Due to the fundamental need to inhibit the unwanted language in the daily life

of a bilingual at any given time, and hence the intense practice that comes from using

these functions to control the use of the two language systems, Bialystok (2007)

proposed three hypotheses: 1) bilingual children will develop control over executive

processing earlier than monolinguals, 2) the efficiency in using these executive

processes is sustained in bilinguals through adulthood, and 3) as these executive

processes are known to first decline with normal cognitive aging, lifelong experience

and continued use of these processes for controlling the use of two language systems

will delay their decline for older bilinguals compared to monolinguals. In addition,

14

the development of executive control is argued to be related to the development of

representational theory of mind. Children who have strong executive control skills,

such as bilingual children, may have a greater capacity to attribute beliefs, desires and

perceptions as representational. I will briefly examine the evidence of such cognitive

benefits of bilingualism in turn.

Bilingual Children’s Enhanced Cognitive Control

Bialystok (1999) proposed that bilingual children need to routinely pay

attention to abstract dimensions of language that are essentially transparent to

monolingual children. They need to be aware at some level of the language that is

needed in a particular situation or with a particular speaker, and they rarely make

mistakes in selection (De Houwer, 1990; Genesee, 1989; Meisel, 1989). Hence,

bilingual children might differ from monolinguals in the development of either

analysis of representations or control of attention or both.

Several studies have found that bilingual children have an advantage in tasks

that require high levels of control due to the constant switching between languages and

efforts to stop interference from another language in communication (Bialystok &

Majumder, 1998; Bialystok, 1999; Bialystok, 2010; Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008), such

as disambiguating and resolving conflicting information (Bialystok & Martin, 2004;

Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008; Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008) and ignoring misleading

information (Bialystok & Codd, 1997; Bialystok & Shapero, 2005). Even bilingual

infants, as young as 7 months old, show an early gain in cognitive flexibility and

control (Kovacs & Mehler, 2009).

15

In a recent study examining inhibitory control of preschoolers, Martin-Rhee

and Bialystok (2008) asked 4-to-5-year-old monolingual and bilingual children to

perform a series of Simon Tasks on a computer. A red or blue square would appear

either on the left or right side of the computer screen and children were to press a left

(or right) button if a red square appeared and a right (or left) button if a blue square

appeared. When the target square appears on the same side of the correct key press, it

is a congruent trial. If the square appears on the opposite side of the correct key press,

it is an incongruent trial. Thus, in an incongruent trial, the child has to inhibit his

response to press the button on the same side of the square and press the button on the

opposite side of the square. The correct performance on the incongruent trials

required a child to ignore the position of the square and focus only on the color of the

stimulus. This additional effort increases the response time in an incongruent trial

compared to a congruent trial and is known as the Simon effect (Simon, 1969).

Martin-Rhee and Bialystok found that bilingual children performed the Simon Task

more rapidly than monolinguals, suggesting that bilingual children were more

advanced than monolinguals in cognitive functioning where they have to selectively

attend to target cues in conflicting situations.

Bialystok and Martin (2004) used the dimensional change card sort task to

examine the effect of bilingualism on cognitive processing with respect to resolving

conflicting information. The task requires children to sort a set of cards by one

dimension and then to re-sort the same cards by a different dimension (Frye, Zelazo,

& Palfai, 1995; Zelazo, Frye, & Rapus, 1996). In a typical dimensional change card

sort task, such as the color-shape game, children are presented cards with either red

16

circles or blue squares printed on it. There are two boxes one with a picture of a red

square and the other a picture of a blue circle. When they play the color game, the

child is to put all the blue pictures in the box with the blue picture on it and all the red

pictures in the box with the red picture on it. At the end of this game, children are told

to switch to the shape game, where they have to place the squares in the box with the

square on it and the circles into the box with the circle on it. The same target pictures

remain on the sorting boxes. Past studies in general found that preschoolers before the

age of five have difficulty sorting the stimulus using the new rule after they switch to

the new game (Frye et al., 1995; Jacques, Zelazo, Kirkham & Semcesen, 1999; Zelazo

& Frye, 1997; Zelazo et al., 1996). Bialystok and Martin (2004) ran a series of similar

dimensional change card sort tasks with a group of monolingual and bilingual 3- and

4-year-old children. They found that the bilingual preschoolers outperformed

monolinguals when the target dimensions were perceptual features of the stimulus,

such as the color-shape game. They argued that in addition to the challenge of

representing higher–order rule that embodies all the lower-order rules, children must

inhibit attention to a dimension that was previously valid and refocus on a different

aspect of the same stimulus. These control demands resemble the processes in which

bilingual children have been shown to excel in, such as code switching, in order to

maintain the use of appropriate languages with different language-speakers. Hence,

they concluded that bilingual children generally have better inhibitory control than

monolingual children.

In a series of eye-tracking studies, Kovacs and Mehler (2009) examined

whether 7-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants could successfully suppress

17

their previous responses (anticipatory looks to visual reward on one side) and redirect

their looks to the visual reward (now on the opposite side). During the pre-switch

phase, infants were presented with either a speech or visual cue followed by a visual

reward that always appeared on the same side of the screen. Infants had to learn that

the cue predicted the appearance of the reward in a specific location. In the post-

switch phase, infants were exposed to a different set of speech or visual cues and the

reward was presented on the opposite side of the screen. Thus, infants had to learn to

redirect their gaze from the previously valid side toward the opposite side of the

screen. They found that while both monolingual and bilingual infants learned to

respond to the cues to anticipate a reward on one side of a screen, only bilingual

infants succeeded in redirecting their anticipatory looks when the cues signaled the

reward on the opposite side. Bilingual infants could rapidly suppress their anticipatory

looks to the original location and learned the new response. Hence, they concluded

that processing two languages during the first months of life leads to a domain-general

enhancement of the cognitive control system well before language production begins.

In addition, Bialystok and Codd (1997) found that bilingual children were

better in ignoring misleading information in problem-solving tasks. Children were

asked to complete two tasks: sharing task, and towers task. In the first task, children

had to divide set of candies between two recipients, agreed that the two sets were

equal, counted one of the sets and then had to infer the number of candies in the other

set without counting. There is no misleading information associated with this task. In

the towers task, children were to build apartment buildings out of blocks and that

every block was one apartment and had one family living in it. The trick was that the

18

blocks were either standard lego blocks or duplo blocks (which were twice as large

than standard blocks). They had to count the blocks to decide which apartment

buildings had more families. The critical test was one where the two blocks consisted

of one lego tower and one duplo tower but the duplo tower was taller even though the

lego tower had more blocks. The misleading information about the height of the tower

created demands for attentional control because the height is irrelevant and must be

ignored. The authors found that there was no difference between the monolingual and

bilingual children in their ability to solve the sharing task but there was a significant

bilingual advantage in the towers task, the one children had to make judgments in the

context of perceptually misleading information. They concluded that the bilingual

children were better able to focus on the relevant information and ignore the

misleading information compared to the monolingual children.

More recently, Bialystok (2010) found that bilingual 6-year-old children were

better than monolinguals in processing complex stimuli that require executive

processing components (such as switching and updating) even when no inhibition

appears to be involved. Children were given a global-local task that demonstrated the

dominance of attending to global configuration rather than compositional detail in

perceiving spatial patterns (Navon, 1977). Children were shown a global stimulus

(either letters like H or S, or shapes like circle or squares) that is constituted from

smaller letters or shapes that are either the same as (congruent trials) or different from

(incongruent trials) the larger letter or shape. The task was to identify either the global

or local stimulus. Global level information was usually processed faster and more

accurately than local information interferes with identification of the local elements

19

(e.g. Colombo, Freeseman, Coldren & Frick, 1995; Dukette & Stiles, 1996; Feeney &

Stiles, 1996; Tada & Stiles, 1996). They found that bilingual children completed the

tasks more rapidly than monolinguals, and this speed advantage was found not only

the conflict conditions (e.g. incongruent trials), but also congruent trials that were not

considered to involve conflict. The authors suggested that in congruent trials, no

inhibition was required, but there were other demands, such as maintaining two

response sets, and switching between trial types in the mixed block, were handled

better by bilinguals. Hence, the authors concluded that bilingual children are

developing control over a broad range of executive processes, not only inhibition and

conflict resolution.

Bilingual Adults’ Sustained Advantage in Cognitive Control

Would bilingualism accord the same advantages found in children to adults

who are at the peak of their attentional and cognitive control abilities? Bialystok,

Craik, and Ruocco (2006) and Bialystok (2006) found small differences in a dual-task

processing and a conflict task respectively between bilingual and monolingual

university students, while Bialystok, Craik, and Ryan (2006) revealed only relatively

modest advantage of bilinguals in comparison to monolinguals in tasks tapping

various components of the executive control system. Recently, more studies have

found a reliable advantage of bilinguals in executive and attentional control

(Bialystok, Craik, & Luk, 2008; Costa, Hernandez, & Sebastian-Galles, 2008;

Emmorey, Luk, Pyers, & Bialystok, 2008; Bialystok & Feng, 2009).

20

Bialystok, Craik, and Ruocco (2006) had monolingual, unbalanced bilingual

(moderate use of second language) and balanced bilingual adults (Experiment 1)

participated in a dual-task classification study. Participants were required to sort

simultaneously visual and auditory stimuli into two category domains: letters or

number (LN) and animals or musical instruments (AM). The visual stimuli were

presented as images on a computer and participants were to press a button indicating

one of the categories. The auditory task was presented through the computer’s

speakers and participants were to respond verbally to each auditory stimulus. The

condition was called related when both modalities presented the same domain. The

condition was called unrelated when the modalities presented different domains.

Results revealed that bilinguals had the highest scores and the monolinguals with the

lowest scores, and the unbalanced group in between and not different from either of

them, but this difference was found only in the LN visual task (both related and

unrelated). The researchers concluded that there was a bilingual advantage in

inhibitory control but not more skilled in a complex response switching task involving

the AM domain.

Bialystok (2006) used the Simon task to investigate the hypothesis that

bilingualism would boost the performance of certain cognitive control tasks. In the

Simon task, similar to the Martin-Rhee and Bialystok (2008) study with children,

participants were asked to learn a rule that connects each of two stimuli to a response

key. In Bialystok (2006), participants were to complete a square task and an arrow

task. In the square task, they were to press the left key if they see a green square and

the right key if they see a red square. Red and green squares were presented on the

21

screen on either the right or left side of the display, and participants were to respond

correctly as quickly as possible. When the stimulus position and the response key were

on opposite sides, such as a green square on the right side of the screen, it should take

the participants longer to respond to the color of the stimulus. Similarly, in the arrow

task, participants were shown a directional arrow that was presented either on the right

or left side of the computer display. The rule was to press the key showing which way

the arrow is pointing, so participants should be faster to respond when an arrow

appeared on the same screen position as its directional indication than when it

appeared in the opposite position. The difference in response time to resolve the

conflict between the position and response key is the Simon effect. In Bialystok

(2006), monitoring and switching were manipulated in both tasks by creating different

numbers of inter-trial switches that occurred in each block of trials, such that blocks

that contained many inter-trial switches should take consistently longer to perform

than comparable blocks that contained fewer inter-trial switches. A switch trial is one

in which the response is different from that required on the previous trial. The need for

frequent changes in response requires more vigilance and more monitoring, thereby

increasing the general processing demands. Bialystok (2006) found that there were

few differences between the two language groups in their performance on these two

tasks except one condition: bilinguals responded significantly faster than monolinguals

in the most difficult version of the arrows task - the block of trials with many inter-

trial switches. The author concluded that the bilinguals demonstrated their advanced

control in executive processing in the condition with the greatest demand on executive

processing.

22

As part of a study to examine the cognitive effects of bilingualism on aging,

Bialystok, Craik, and Ryan (2006) conducted a task based on the anti-saccade effect

(Munoz, Broughton, Goldring, & Armstrong, 1998; Roberts, Hager, & Heron, 1994).

Like the Simon task, the anti-saccade task measures the ability of participants to

overcome a prepotent response by intentionally applying a rule. It requires participants

to resist the automatic responses to follow gaze direction of eyes in a schematic face

when directed to a flashing object (Friesen & Kingstone, 1998; Zorzi, Mapelli,

Rusconi, & Umilta, 2003). There were two conditions in Bialystok et al. (2006)

study’s: 1) eyes straight – where a schematic face looking straight ahead appeared on

the screen, after which the eyes turned red or green in color, and 2) gaze shift – where

the eyes also shifted direction to ‘gaze’ either left or right when they changed color,

looking either towards or away from the position in which the target would appear. If

the eyes were green, the participant had to press a response key on the same side of the

display as a target asterisk that appeared half a second after the eye color cue, and if

the eyes were red, the participant had to press they key on the opposite side of the

target. In the gaze shift condition, the additional eye gaze cue introduced complexity

to the task. The key assumption was that there is a prepotent tendency to

automatically follow the direction of the eye gaze cue. This second condition should

demand greater intentional resources to overcome a misleading directional cue, since

the green eyes would automatically attracted attention to the side of the correct

response key while the opposite response must be executed when the eyes were red.

Hence, the most difficult combination was when the green eyes looked away from the

target, misleading the participant to the opposite side, or when the red eyes looked

23

towards the target, again directing attention to the incorrect response position. The

authors found an advantage for the bilingual adults in the most difficult condition

only, which was the gaze shift trials where green eyes looked away from the target or

red eyes looked towards the target. Both monolingual and bilingual adults performed

equally in all other conditions. They concluded that there were few processing

differences between monolingual and bilingual young adults on executive control

tasks, but the bilingual advantage in the most difficult conditions suggested that

bilinguals were better in exerting extra controlled efforts when processing demands

increase.

Costa, Hernandez, & Sebastian-Galles (2008) examined whether bilingualism

would aid conflict resolution in a larger domain. They proposed that the constant

control of speech production of two languages in bilingual adults exerts general effects

on their attentional network, which included alerting, orienting and executive control.

They asked monolingual and bilingual speakers to perform a multidimentionality

Attentional Network Task (ANT) developed by Fan, McCandliss, Sommer, Raz, and

Posner (2002). The task is a combination of a cue reaction time task (Posner, 1980)

and a flanker task (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974). Participants were asked to indicate

whether a central arrow pointed to the right or left. This arrow was presented along

with four flanker arrows, two on each side, pointing to the same (congruent trials) or

different direction (incongruent trials) than the target arrow. Responses should be

slower for incongruent than for congruent trials, reflecting the extra time required to

resolve the conflict between the target stimulus and the irrelevant flanker information.

24

In addition, to incorporate the alerting network, an alerting cue was presented before

the target stimulus. Hence, responses should be faster when the target is preceded by

an alerting cue than when it is not. As for the orienting network, a cue would appear

that signal the position in the screen where the target stimulus would appear, where

responses should be faster when the cue signals the spatial location of the target than

when it did not. The results revealed that bilingual participants were not only faster in

performing the task, but also more efficient in the alerting and executive control

networks. In particular, bilinguals benefited more by the presentation of an alerting

cue, and were also better at resolving conflicting information. The bilinguals

experienced a reduced switching cost between the congruent and incongruent types of

trials compared to monolinguals. The authors concluded that bilingualism indeed

exerts an influence in the attainment of efficient attentional mechanisms by young

adults that are supposed to be at the peak of their attentional capabilities.

Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki and Howerter (2000) proposed that the

executive functioning tasks often used in cognitive studies such as the ones reviewed

earlier are not exactly equivalent in the sense that different executive functions

contribute distinctively to performance on these tasks. They selected multiple tasks

that tap three executive functions separately as frequently postulated in the literature a)

shifting between sets or tasks, b) updating and monitoring of working memory, and c)

inhibition of prepotent responses (p. 54). They found that the three target functions

are distinguishable yet they measure the same underlying executive functioning

ability. But even among the inhibition of prepotent tasks, Friedman and Miyake

(2004) identified three subcomponents for this executive functioning ability: prepotent

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response inhibition, resistance to response-distractor inhibition, and resistance to

proactive interference. While the studies reviewed earlier showed some modest

evidence of bilingual adults’ enhanced inhibitory control, a wider range of measures

corresponding to various aspects of executive functioning might reveal significant

differences better. In one of my work-in-progress study with college-age adults, I

selected two tasks for each of the three components of inhibitory control as reported

by Friedman and Miyake. Young monolingual and bilingual adults were asked to

complete six different tasks. For “Prepotent” tasks: Go/No-Go and Antisaccade; for

“Distractor” tasks: Stroop and Flanker; and for “Proactive interference” tasks:

Sternberg and Task-switching. The Go/No-Go task (Menon, Adleman, White, Glover,

& Reiss, 2001) involves participants seeing a series of letters and responding with a

key press to every letter except the letter “X” to which they were to withhold response.

The Antisaccade task (Hallett, 1978) involves participants to try to suppress the

reflexive saccade toward a cue that flashes on one side of the computer screen and

instead look in the opposite direction to identify the target. The Stroop task (Stroop,

1935) requires participants to name the color in which color words and neutral letter

strings were printed and not reading the color words. The Flanker task (Eriksen &

Eriksen, 1974) requires participants to identify the direction of a middle arrow

amongst neighboring arrows either pointing to the same or opposite direction as the

middle arrow. The Sternberg task (Sternberg, 2006) presents participants with 4

different letters and after a brief retention period, a probe is presented and participants

have to respond as to whether the probe matches any of the items in the memory set.

The Task-switching task (Monsell, 2003) presents participants with a letter-number

26

pair during each trial and requires participants to either identify whether the number in

the pair is an odd or even number, or whether the letter in the pair is a vowel or

consonant. Preliminary analyses revealed a robust main effect of language group in

reaction times, where bilingual adults were significantly faster than monolinguals

across all the six tasks. There was no significant difference in error rates between the

two language groups. This suggests that bilinguals’ constant experience in switching

between languages and efforts to stop interference from another language in

communication confers an extensive advantage in speed of processing in general

inhibitory control tasks.

Protective Function of Bilingualism in Elderly

Executive processes that include monitoring, attention and control are the first

abilities to decline with normal cognitive ageing, with slower and less efficient control

over these functions as one age (McDowd & Shaw, 2000; Park, 2000; Rabbitt, 1965).

It follows then, that the continuous use of language control and switching by the

bilinguals could delay the decline of these cognitive functions. There are three

studies claiming evidence for this protective effect. The first used the Simon task,

described earlier, where participants were asked to learn a rule that connects each of

two stimuli to a response key, such as pressing the left key if they see a green square

and the right key if they see a red square. The squares could appear on the left or right

side of the screen, creating a congruent effect when the green square appears on the

left and incongruent effect when the green square appears on the right. Bialystok,

Craik, Klein, and Viswanathan (2004) compared the performance of monolingual and

27

bilingual adults between 30 and 80 years old. There were two age groups of

participants: one group between the ages of 30 and 60 years old, and the other 60 years

old and beyond. The authors found that bilinguals in the younger age group were

consistently faster in the task compared to monolinguals of the same age. For those

who were 60 years old and beyond, they showed significant increases in reaction time

for each decade of age. Importantly, the increase in reaction time was slower for

bilinguals, so as age increased, the difference between the monolinguals and bilinguals

widened as well. It appears, therefore, that bilingualism helps reduce the rate in which

these cognitive processes declined. However, the bilingual advantage in the task

reflected an overall speed advantage in both congruent and incongruent trials, even

though they had a significant lower Simon effect. In addition, the monolingual and

bilingual participants were from different countries: monolingual participants were

English speakers from Canada, and bilingual participants were either Tamil–English

bilinguals from India or English-Cantonese bilinguals from Hong Kong. Although

the authors did show that these populations of monolinguals and bilinguals did not

differ in various measures of intelligence, it remains plausible that cultural differences

may have been an important factor affecting the conclusions of the study.

In Bialystok, Craik, and Ryan (2006)’s study discussed earlier, they conducted

an anti-saccade test with both the eyes straight and gaze shift conditions on a group of

participants between 60 and 70 years old, half of whom were bilingual. As was found

with the young adults (described earlier), monolinguals and bilinguals responded just

as fast in the simplest pro-saccade condition - when green eyes looked straight ahead.

However, the bilinguals were significantly faster on the anti-saccade straight eye

28

condition, such that they pressed the key on the opposite side of the display faster than

the monolinguals when the eyes turned red. When the gaze direction was added in the

more complex version of the task, bilinguals were faster than monolinguals in all

related conditions. The authors suggested again that executive control functions had

been protected by the participants’ bilingual experience.

Past research has provided evidence for protection against dementia by

education, occupational status, mentally stimulating leisure activities, and premorbid

intelligence (Fratiglioni, Paillard-Borg, & Winblad, 2004; Staff, Murray, Deary, &

Whalley, 2004; Valenzuela & Sachdev, 2006). Bialystok, Craik, and Freedman

(2007) proposed that the lifelong use of two languages constituted a type of mental

activity that helps protect the onset of dementia, since bilingualism has been

previously shown to enhance cognitive control and attention in children and adults.

Hence, this experience of constant practice in controlling the use of two languages

would further protect elderly from cognitive decline in the context of dementia.

Bialystok et al. (2007) selected 184 patients who were diagnosed with dementia, of

which 51% were bilingual. They found that bilinguals showed symptoms of dementia

4 years later than monolinguals. Additionally, the rate of decline in Mini-Mental State

Examination (MMSE) scores (a questionnaire typically used to screen for cognitive

impairment) over the 4 years following the diagnosis was the same for a subset of

patients in the two groups, suggesting “a shift in onset age with no change in rate of

progression” (p. 459). Despite this impressive finding, one should be cautious about

establishing a strong causal relationship between lifelong bilingualism and onset delay

in dementia. First, the data were gathered retrospectively from clinical records.

29

Second, there was a certain degree of subjectivity in the estimating age of onset of

dementia. Third, there was a risk of potentially delaying the first visit and hence

increasing the age at which the diagnosis was made due to a lack of objectivity on the

part of patients and their families in deciding when to seek help.

Hence, intense practice in controlling the use of two languages may yield

cognitive benefits in terms of early development of executive control abilities in

children, preservation of such advantages through adulthood, and possible provision of

protective effects from cognitive decline in normal aging. Similarly, effects of

executive control in development may have strong impact on the development of

representational theory of mind, such that children who have strong executive control

skills, such as bilingual children, may have a greater capacity to attribute beliefs,

desires and perceptions as representational.

Advanced Development in Representational Theory-of-Mind

It has been argued that the development of executive functioning is strongly

related to the development of representational theory of mind (Carlson & Moses,

2001; Carlson, Moses, & Hix, 1998; Moses, 2001; Moses, Carlson, & Sabbagh, 2004).

Theory of mind (ToM) is an understanding of a person’s own and other individuals’

mental states (e.g. emotion, attention, beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge).

While nonrepresentational ToM appear to occur as young as 2 years old,

representational ToM has been widely shown to develop later around 4-5 years of age

(Bartsch & Wellman, 1995; Flavell, 1999; Gopnik & Wellman, 1994).

Nonrepresentational ToM refers to simple conception of emotions, perceptual

30

experience or attention, or even understanding beliefs, thoughts and desires, but they

do not require one to mentally represent them. Representational ToM refers to the

ability to attribute beliefs, desires and perceptions as representational, that is, what we

want, see, or belief is not the thing itself but the thing as represented. Traditionally, 3-

to 4-year-old preschoolers are found to have difficulty in understanding others’

representational mental states. For example, in a classic ToM task that taps into

children’s ability to attribute false belief (to recognize that others can have beliefs that

are wrong), children are told or shown a story where two dolls, Sally and Anne are

playing with a marble (Wimmer & Perner, 1983). The dolls put away a marble in a

box and then Sally leaves. Anne takes the marble out and plays with it again and after

that, puts it away in a different box. Sally returns and the child is then asked where

Sally will look for the marble. Three- to 4-year-old children typically are not able to

answer the question correctly (that Sally will look in the first box where she put the

marble) until about 5 years of age (see Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001, for a

review). To successfully pass the task, a child must be able to understand that other

people’s mental representation of the situation can be different from their own (since

the child knows where the marble is hidden and Sally cannot know since she did not

see it hidden there). In another example that examined children’s ability to

distinguish between appearance and reality, Flavell and his associates have shown that

3-to-4-year-old children have difficulty in representing that a deceptive object (such as

a sponge that looks like a rock) can appear to be one thing when it really is something

else (Flavell, Flavell, and Green, 1983; Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1986). Children

were asked what they believe to be the contents of a box that looked as though it

31

contained candy called “Smarties”, which actually contained pencils (Gopnik &

Astington, 1988). After the child guessed that “Smarties” were inside the box, they

were shown that the box in fact contained pencils. The experimenter then re-closed

the box and asked the child what he or she thought another person, who had not been

shown the true contents of the box would think is inside. The child passes the task if

she responds that the person will think that there are “Smarties” in the box but fails the

task if the child responds that the person will think that the box contains pencils.

Gopnik and Astington (1998) found that children passed this test at around age 4 to 5.

Yet another classic perspective-taking task that requires representational ability is

Piaget’s three mountain problem in which the child views a realistic scale model

containing three toy mountains and then has to choose a photograph corresponding to

what another person sees when looking at it from a different angle (Piaget & Inhelder,

1956). The task requires the child’s ability to choose a presentation of his own view

and views of the experimenter seated opposite and to the side of the child. Children

generally do well at this task around 4-5 years of age (Flavell, Everett, Croft, &

Flavell, 1981; Light & Nix, 1983; Masangkay et al. 1974).

One argument put forward by several researchers is that children’s

development of representational ToM is strongly influenced by their inhibitory control

skills. According to the performance change account, preschoolers fail false-belief

tasks because they fail to inhibit a prepotent tendency to report the salient reality.

Hence as children’s executive skills develop to process these task demands, they begin

able to express their otherwise latent ToM understanding. Training and practice on

tasks that require inhibition actually did improve children’s performance on

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representational ToM tasks (Kloo & Perner, 2003). Therefore, proponents of the

performance change account of ToM and executive function argued that

developmental progression in domain-general cognitive control would provide crucial

abilities that are necessary for representing other people’s mental states (Flavell &

Miller, 1998; Carlson et al., 1998).

Since these tasks require children to be able to selectively attend to certain

aspects of a representation (such as what Sally could not have known), discard the

distracting or misleading information and make a correct response, it follows then, that

bilingual children who have better inhibitory control would perform better in such

representational ToM tasks than monolingual children. Indeed, Bialystok and Senman

(2004) found that compared with monolingual children, bilingual children performed

better on appearance-reality tasks (see Kyuchukov & Villiers, 2009, for contradictory

evidence). 4- to 5-year-old children were presented four items: a sponge that looked

like a rock, a crayon box that contained Lego blocks, a book shaped like a snowman,

and a bowl with a picture of a happy face on the inside bottom covered with a red

cellophane film. Questions were asked about each object following the procedure

used by Gopnik and Astington (1988). After asking each child to guess the contents

or identity of the objects, the real contents or function were revealed and each child

was asked what he or she thought each of the object was when he or she first saw it,

what he or she thought a puppet who had not seen the hidden contents or functions

think it is, and what he or she thought it really is. The first two questions were

considered as appearance questions because the correct answer requires a description

of the perceptual parts of the object. The last question was represented as a reality

33

question because the correct answer is the real functional identity of the object. While

both monolingual and bilingual children performed equally well in the appearance

questions, bilingual children performed better on the reality questions.

Alternative to the performance change account, the competence change

account postulates that experience with many opportunities to reflect discrepancy

between reality and abstract mental states helps children develop theory-of-mind

abilities (Brown, Donelan-McCall, & Dunn, 1996). Mental states are abstract terms

that are not immediately transparent, especially when they do not correspond with the

true state of affairs (as in the false-belief tasks). In support of this account, Melot and

Angeard (2003) found that brief training on mental state reasoning (such as giving

feedback on performance in the standard representational ToM task) did improve

children’s performance on ToM tasks. Hence, children growing up in a bilingual

environment who often encounter situations where they gain additional experience

about conflicting mental representations could make them more aware of a difference

between their own mental contents and the monolingual others. Hence, this account

would predict that bilinguals’ experience with differing mental contents in language-

switch situations might give them an advantage in solving representational ToM tasks.

In an attempt to disentangle these two accounts, Kovacs (2009) set to compare

3-year-old monolinguals and bilinguals on a standard representational ToM task, a

modified ToM task and a control task that involved physical reasoning. In the

standard ToM task, children were told the story of a boy who puts his chocolate in a

cupboard and in his absence his mother moved it into another cupboard. Children

were asked where the boy would look for the chocolate upon returning to the room.

34

The modified ToM task simulated a language-switch situation that bilinguals often

encounter. The children were given a scenario about a monolingual and bilingual

puppet wanted to buy ice cream. There were two stands, one selling ice cream and the

other sandwiches. The ice-cream vendor then announced in the language that the

monolingual puppet did not speak that he had run out of ice cream but that the

sandwich vendor still had some. The foreign language phrase was translated and

pointed out that the monolingual puppet did not understand what the vendor said.

Children were asked where the monolingual puppet would go to buy ice cream.

Kovacs argued that if the competence change account is true, that language-switch

experience in mental representation is important to the understanding ToM in

bilinguals, bilingual children should selectively performed better in the modified task.

In contrast, if bilinguals have an advantage in ToM tasks due to better executive

functioning, bilingual children should outperform monolinguals on both ToM tasks,

since the inhibitory demands are similar. Kovacs found that bilingual children

showed an advantage on both ToM tasks, suggesting that bilingual children better

ToM skills were associated with their more advanced executive functions gained from

constant monitoring and selecting languages, supporting the performance change

account. However, Kovacs did not adequately explain why the bilingual children had

to selectively perform better in the modified ToM task if the competence change

account is true. In fact, the competence change account would also predict the same

results what she had found: bilingual children should be better in both tasks too, since

both tasks required children to understand and represent the mental states of others.

As the competence change account proposes that the additional experience about

35

conflicting mental representations makes the bilingual children more aware of a

difference between their own mental states and the others, regardless whether the

situation involves a language-switch situation or not, this should indeed predict better

performance in both the modified ToM (where the language-switch situation

resembles the bilingual linguistic environment) and the standard ToM (where it also

requires children to understand the mental states of others).

Hence, part research suggests that children’s inhibitory control skills are

associated with the understanding of representation ToM, such that bilingual children,

who tend to have a higher level of control skills, also tend to perform better in

representation ToM tasks compared to monolingual children. However, bilingual

children’s more advanced ToM development could also be due to their greater

awareness of the ways in which the linguistic knowledge and beliefs of others can

differ from their own (Goetz, 2003). In fact, there should be a clearer distinction

between representational and nonrepresentational ToM development here. Young

children can understand simple emotions, attention, beliefs, thoughts and desires while

not requiring one to mentally represent them (also known as nonrepresentational

theory of mind; Bartsch & Wellman, 1995; Flavell, 1999). Young children can

understand simple desires and intentions, seeing people as connected to existing things

in the world and real events, before they begin to appreciate how other people’s

behavior are affected by their beliefs and desire. For example, research has found that

infants actively and spontaneously track cues (such as pointing, eye gaze, tone of

voice) to others’ referential intentions and use them to draw inferences about word

meanings (Akhtar, 2005; Baldwin et al., 1996; Dunham, Dunham, & Curwin, 1993;

36

Shatz, 1994; Tomasello, 1999). In fact, there is more to theory of mind than the false

belief and appearance-reality distinction tasks (see Bloom & German, 2000, for a

review). For example, young children can attribute goals to others (Csibra, Gergely,

Biro, Koos, & Broackbank, 1999; Gergely, Nadasdy, Csibra, & Biro, 1995;

Woodward, 1998). They can imitate and complete intended actions of others

(Carpenter, Akhtar, & Tomasello, 1998; Meltzoff, 1995). They can use eye gaze as a

cue to what someone is attending to when they use a new word (Baldwin, 1991).

They can modify their behavior depending whether or not other people possess a given

belief (O’Neill, 1996). They can identify a speaker’s intention to guide their initial

references about meaning and reference and their subsequent detailed understanding

of word meaning (Jaswal, 2004). Hence, “important developments take place in areas

as diverse as pretence…, self-recognition…, imitation…, empathy…, and internal

state language…. suggesting that infants may have already achieved some general

conceptual insight into the minds of others” (Baldwin & Moses, 1994, p.150).

Hence, while studies that were reviewed earlier largely examined how

bilingual children may have an advanced representational ToM development, little is

known about their nonrepresentational ToM development. Goetz’s suggestion that

bilingual children have a greater sensitivity to sociolinguistic interactions may

postulate an advanced trajectory in the development of ToM understanding in

bilingual children vis-à-vis monolingual children. I propose that bilingual children’s

greater need to maintain communicative effectiveness may require them to better

understand the speaker’s thoughts, intentions and desires not only in a way that is

different from the standard requirements in representational theory of minds tasks, but

37

also at a more sophisticated level than simple understanding of speaker’s emotion,

beliefs and intent, which I will discuss in greater detail in the next section of this

paper.

Sensitivity to Socio-Communicative Cues

Recent studies posit that language learning relies on children’s appreciation of

others’ communicative intentions, their sensitivity to joint visual attention and social

cues, and their desire to imitate (Baldwin, 1995; Brooks & Meltzoff, 2005; Bruner,

1983; Hollich, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2000; Tomasello, 2003; Tomasello &

Farrar, 1986). This preposition has also been extended to early speech learning and

speech production development, such that social interaction is imperative for natural

speech learning in infants (K. Bloom, 1975; K. Bloom & Esposito, 1975; Goldstein,

King, & West, 2003; Kuhl, Tsao, & Liu, 2003). However, the role of socio-pragmatic

cues in language development is much less studied in specific populations of children

who grow up learning two languages or more simultaneously. The next part of this

paper discusses how growing up in a linguistically varied environment may impact on

children’s efforts to maintain communicative effectiveness, which in turn, impact on

children’s understanding and use of communicative cues to speaker’s intentions.

Bilingual Children’s Efforts to Avoid Communication Breakdown

Bilingual children adopt strategies to avoid communication breakdown due to

language choice by constantly monitoring the dynamic communicative situation to

determine what language a given speaker is using, what the speaker is referring to and

38

how to respond appropriately (e.g. Genesee, Boivin, & Nicoladis, 1996; Genesee,

Nicoladis, & Paradis, 1995; Hakuta, 1987; Lanza, 1992; Rontu, 2007). Studies have

shown that young bilingual children can use their languages differentially and

appropriately with familiar (e.g. parents) and unfamiliar interlocutors (Comeau,

Genesee, & Lapaquette, 2003; Genesee et al., 1995; Genesee et al. 1996; Montanari,

2009; Nicholadis & Genesee, 1996; Quay, 1995; Tare & Gelman, 2010). With parents

who each spoke only one language to their child, two-year-old French-English

bilingual children used a higher proportion of the mother’s language with their mother

than with their father, and vice-versa for the father’s language (Genesee et al., 1995).

With strangers whom they had no prior experience, bilingual children demonstrated

similar sensitivity, such as using relatively more of the stranger’s language during a

free play session than they would normally (Genesee et al., 1996). Comeau et al.

(2003) also reported that bilingual children exhibited appropriate language choices

with strangers and matched their rates of language mixing with those of strangers.

2.5-year-old bilingual children were engaged with an unfamiliar interlocutor in three

successive play sessions who varied her rates of mixing from relatively low (15%) to

relatively high (40%) and back to relatively low (15%) again. These bilingual

children were sensitive to the overall rates of mixing of their interlocutor and adapted

their own rates of mixing correspondingly. A turn-by-turn analysis revealed that

bilingual children tended to switch languages in the turn after the interlocutor had

switched languages, and thus were able to achieve a rate of mixing that closely

matched that of the interlocutor. To do this successfully, the bilingual children need to

track language choices of the speakers and then alter their own language choices

39

accordingly. Petitto, Katerelos, Levy, Gauna, Tetrault, and Ferraro (2001) found

similar evidence from children learning oral and sign languages simultaneously. Such

responsiveness to the linguistic preferences or proficiency of unfamiliar speakers

reflected bilingual children’s sensitivity and competence in monitoring the

communicative situation and making on-line adjustments to accommodate the

speaker’s communicative abilities to avoid communication breakdown.

Similarly, Comeau, Genesee, and Mendelson (2007) found that bilingual

children observed speakers for feedback about the appropriateness of their language

choices. In their study, English-French 2-and-3-year-old children played with an

experimenter who used only one language with them. Each time a child used the other

language, the experimenter made requests for clarification. The experimenter also

made requests for clarification when communication breakdowns occurred for other

reasons (e.g. inaudible or incomprehensible utterance). The bilingual children

changed the language they were using whenever they used an inappropriate language

with the experimenter following a request for clarification but almost never changed

languages when the communication breakdown was due to reasons other than

language choice. Hence, these bilingual preschoolers were able to repair

communication breakdown by paying attention to the communicative context and

responded appropriately.

In addition, to maintain communicative effectiveness, one has to be able to

take the perspective of others experiencing communication difficulties. Genesee,

Tucker, and Lambert (1975) found that bilingual children were better than

monolingual children at taking the perspective of a listener into account. They asked

40

both monolingual and bilingual children from kindergarten, grade 1 and grade 2, to

explain a game to two listeners – one blindfolded and the other not. While children in

general gave more information to the blindfolded listener than they did to the sighted

listener, bilingual children significantly gave more information about the physical

aspects of the game to the blindfolded listener than the monolingual children did.

Genesee et al. concluded that bilingual children were better able to take the role of

others experiencing communication difficulties, perceive their needs, and respond to

these needs appropriately. Hence, past research indicated that bilingual children’s

constant efforts to monitor the communicative situation to avoid communication

breakdown could heighten their awareness of the communicative requirements of the

interlocutors. This, in turn, could foster socio-cognitive and linguistic development,

such as conversational skills and the more effective use of both verbal and nonverbal

communicative cues to understand a speaker’s referential intent.

Communication breakdown may also occur when common conversation rules

are violated. For example, Grice (1975, 1989) proposed that understanding of some

specific conversational rules or maxims provide the foundation for pragmatic

competence. These maxims state that speakers should ‘say no more or no less than is

required for the purpose of the (talk) exchange’ (maxims of quantity), ‘tell the truth

and avoid statements for which there is insufficient evidence (maxims of quality)’, ‘be

relevant (maxim of relation)’, and ‘avoid ambiguity, confusion and obscurity (maxims

of manner).’ Grice also discussed the need to invoke other maxims such as ‘be polite’

(maxim of politeness) to represent the nature of effective communication more fully.

41

There are three studies to date that investigated the impact of bilingualism on

children’s understanding and appreciation of messages as intended by speakers in

conversation. The first study examined whether bilingualism influences children’s

ability to use “scalar implicatures” (Siegal, Matsuo, & Pond, 2007). This arises

when a speaker uses a weak member of a scale (e.g. some), he would imply that the

stronger member (e.g. all) is not true (Guasti et al., 2005; Papafragou & Musolino,

2003). For example, the utterance “Some of the boys went to the party”, the word

some implicates “not all of the boys went to the party.” Hence, according to Grice’s

maxims of Quantity to say no more or no less than is required for effective

communication, if the speaker meant that the stronger term “all” applied, then he or

she should have used it rather than the weaker one “some”. As a test of this

understanding using scalar implicatures common to both English and Japanese,

children aged 4–6 years who were either English monolingual or English-Japanese

bilinguals heard a puppet talked about actions such as that of a teddy bear who put all

the hoops available on a pole as having put ‘‘Some of the hoops on the pole.” They

were asked whether the puppet could have described the action better. Although

having lower vocabulary (receptive) scores, the bilingual children significantly

outperformed their monolingual counterparts in showing sensitivity to the use of scalar

implicatures by identifying pragmatically inappropriate uses of the term some.

The second study aimed to address the question of whether bilingualism

confers an advantage in terms of children’s conversational understanding in a more

general sense. Siegal, Iozzi, and Surian (2009) gave Italian monolingual and

Slovenian monolingual children and Slovenian-Italian bilingual children a

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Conversational Violations Test (CVT), which involves the detection of utterances that

violate a maxim for conversation in the Gricean framework (Siegal, 2008; Surian,

Baron-Cohen, & van der Lely, 1996; Surian & Siegal, 2001). Children were shown a

movie clip in which short conversational exchanges were presented by three dolls, one

male and two female. For each episode, one of the two female dolls asked a question

to the other two dolls, which each gave an answer. One of the answers violated a

conversational maxim and the other did not. The utterances violated the first or the

second maxim of Quantity, the maxim of Quality, the maxim of Relation and the

maxim of Politeness. For example, one question on the Second Maxim of Quantity

(redundant information) was: “Who is your best friend?” and the two answers were:

“My best friend is Pietro. He wears clothes.” versus “My best friend is Pietro. He goes

to school with me.” The children were asked to ‘‘point to the doll that said something

silly or rude.” (p. 116). The authors found that despite a significantly lower

vocabulary, bilingual children were better in detecting violations of conversational

maxims than the monolingual children across all but one of the five components of the

CVT. The authors believed, though, there were unforeseen cultural and contextual

factors that might have affected the children’s responses to this specific component.

Also, there were no significant differences between the monolinguals and bilinguals

on tasks that measure executive functioning, so better executive control abilities often

found in bilingual children were not considered as the key factor in performing the

CVT, although a wider range of measures corresponding to various aspects of

executive functioning (Miyake et al., 2000) might display differences better. One

other possible explanation is that the vocabulary delay in early bilingualism might be

43

accompanied by a compensatory mechanism such that bilingual children may come to

be more attentive than monolinguals to the specific pragmatics of communication and

to use this ability to infer speakers’ messages. There was no comparison of

bilinguals’ CVT performance in both their languages and was also no direct measure

of socioeconomic status of the participants.

To address the above issues, Siegal and colleagues (2010) gave the same

Conversational Violations Test (CVT) to 3- to 6-year-old children exposed to English,

German, Italian, and Japanese. In addition, the authors explored possible cultural

differences between language groups by questioning mothers on their Japanese

identity and also food preferences. Results showed that for the German-Italian group,

bilingual children outperformed their Italian monolingual counterparts in the CVT. In

both younger (37 to 55 months) and older (56 to 75 months) age groups, the bilingual

advantage was significant on three out of the four maxim components. In the younger

children, there was no significant bilingual difference only on Quantity and in the

older children, only on Politeness. For the English-Japanese group, bilingual children

scored significantly higher than Japanese monolinguals. A strong Japanese cultural

affinity shown by both groups of mothers appeared to rule out family cultural

background as an explanation for the CVT advantage shown by English-Japanese

bilinguals. The results provided support to the proposition that exposure to more than

one language confers an advantage in children’s conversational understanding,

underscoring their ability to appreciate effective communicative responses. It is

plausible, too, that because of the constant motivation to figure out the appropriate

language choice to use in order to avoid communication breakdown, bilingual children

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gain a wider range of pragmatic knowledge to draw out the conversational

implications of a speaker’s message, and thus are able to avoid using inappropriate

alternatives in a communicative context (Blum-Kulka, 1997).

Bilingual Children’s Heightened Sensitivity to Verbal Feedback and Prompts

The bilingual children’s constant efforts to maintain communicative

effectiveness may also heighten their sensitivity to feedback cues. Bilingual children

have been shown to be better than monolingual children at picking up verbal feedback

and prompts from their communicative partner (Ben-Zeev, 1977; Cummins &

Mulcahy, 1978; Hakuta, 1987; Diesendruck, 2004).

Ben-Zeev (1977) found that bilingual children (age 5 to 9) were more sensitive

to feedback cues. She presented a classification and reclassification test to both

monolingual and bilingual children. Whenever a child perseverated by giving the

same classification twice instead of switching to another, the experimenter provided

hints in the next trial that indicated the need to reclassify. For example, if a child was

stuck on classifying into two shape categories, say, round and square, the hint set

would also include triangles, which made it difficult to classify by shape again into

two groups. She found that bilingual children picked up these hints more quickly, and,

once given feedback, corrected their mistakes faster than their monolingual

counterparts did.

In a similar vein, Cummins and Mulcahy (1978) found that bilinguals were

better able than monolinguals to use prompts to help them recognize ambiguity in

sentences. In their study, first and third grade children were shown four line drawings

45

while the experimenter read an ambiguous sentence. They had to choose the two

correct pictures representing the two interpretations of the sentence and provide an

adequate explanation of their choices. If they chose only one of two correct answers a

verbal prompt was given to see if the other correct answer could be elicited. Bilinguals

made better use of the prompts than monolinguals, and subsequently found the second

answer more often than monolinguals.

Nonverbal Communicative Cues in Understanding a Speaker’s Referential

Intents

A substantial amount of work examining the impact of bilingualism has been

done in the field of executive control (as described in earlier section) and a modest

amount of research has attempted to investigate the impact of bilingualism on the

communicative competence in children in terms of managing communicative

breakdown, conversational understanding and verbal feedback and prompts.

However, little is known about the impact of bilingualism in the use of nonverbal

communicative cues in understanding a speaker’s referential intents. We

communicate with much more than words. Understanding of social cues is critical to

interpreting people’s desires, intentions, and beliefs and plays a huge role in language

learning (Baldwin, 2000; Tomasello, 1999). In the next section of the paper, I will

review recent research that provide evidence that growing up in a linguistically varied

environment may impact on children’s sensitivity to the use of nonverbal

communicative cues, such as pointing, eye gaze and intonation, to determine a

speaker’s communicative intents.

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Nonverbal referential gestures. Growing up bilingual might make children

more tuned-in to nonverbal signals and referential gestures such as eye gaze and

pointing, especially in complex, potentially confusing situations. Growing up in a

linguistically variable environment places constant demands on bilingual children to

figure out the appropriate language choice to use and they rely in part on monitoring

cues as to their partner’s referential intent to accomplish this. This hypothesis is built,

in part, on previous results that found bilingual children’s better use of nonverbal

gestures (e.g. pointing) in understanding a speaker’s referential intent than

monolingual children, especially when the gesture was pitted against other

assumptions that children made (Yow & Markman, 2007). A well-documented

assumption in word learning is children’s propensity to resist second labels for objects.

When children are shown, say a spoon and a whisk, and asked, “Can you hand me the

gadget?” they overwhelmingly pick the whisk. There are several competing

explanations for this in the literature, but the finding itself is beyond dispute (P.

Bloom, 2000; Clark, 1988, 1990, 1997; Diesendruck & Markson, 2001; Gathercole,

1987, 1989; Markman & Wachtel, 1988; Merriman & Bowman, 1989). To distinguish

between some of these competing explanations, Jaswal and Hansen (2006) examined

whether children would readily accept a second label for the familiar object if the

speaker actually (somewhat subtly) pointed to the familiar object while asking for it.

In a control condition where no novel label was used, they found that when the

speaker pointed to or looked at the familiar object and asked, “Can you give it to me?”

children overwhelmingly selected the familiar object pointed to, thus demonstrating

that the children readily picked up the subtle point or gaze as an intention to refer to

47

the familiar object. However, when the speaker pointed to or looked at the familiar

object and requested it using a novel label, for example, “Can you give me the

blicket?” most children chose the novel object instead even though the speaker was

pointing to or looking at the other object. Thus children relied less on these referential

cues when they conflicted with their propensity to reject second labels for objects.

This pattern was even stronger when the referential gesture provided was the subtler

one (i.e. gaze vs. pointing).

Yow and Markman (2007) examined whether bilingual children may be better

able to use pointing in a context such as Jaswal and Hansen’s where the referential

cues are subtle and pitted against other assumptions children make. They found that

when young children were simply asked to “give it to me” when no label was used,

both monolingual and bilingual children overwhelmingly relied on the speaker’s point

and picked the familiar object that was pointed to, replicating Jaswal and Hansen’s

(2006) results. However, when the speaker pointed to the familiar object and

requested it using a novel label, the monolingual children were less likely to select the

familiar object even when the experimenter pointed to it, also replicating Jaswal and

Hansen’s results. In marked contrast, bilingual children relied more on the speaker’s

referential gesture in deciding how to interpret the novel label than on prior one-

object-one-label expectations when these cues were in conflict with each other. An

open question from that study, though, is whether this might be in part because

bilingual children have a weaker bias against second labels.

A second series of studies provided converging evidence that the experience of

bilingualism heightens children’s sensitivity to a speaker’s communicative intent in a

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context where a rejection of second labels does not come into play at all (Yow &

Markman, 2009a). The studies were adapted from Povinelli, Reaux, Bierschwale,

Allain, and Simon (1997) procedures where they found 2.5-year-old children having

difficulty in using referential gestures such as eye gaze to help them locate the object-

of-interest when such gestures were provided with some conflicting information. In

the standard condition of the Povinelli et al. (1997) study, the experimenter pointed to

or looked at one of two boxes while the two boxes were positioned equal distance

from him. In the body-biased condition, the experimenter sat behind one box (the

incorrect, empty box) but gestured toward the box that was farthest from him (the

correct, baited box). Povinelli et al. found that even under this more demanding body-

biased condition, children successfully located hidden rewards based on the

experimenter’s pointing. However, they had difficulty in locating the hidden rewards

when the referential gesture was eye gaze. When we adapted the above procedure

with 2- to 5-year-old monolingual and bilingual children, we found some interesting

developmental results: 1) 3- and 4-year-old bilingual children were better able than

their monolingual peers to use referential gestures to locate a hidden toy only in the

most challenging body-biased gaze condition, 2) monolingual 3- and 4-year old

children significantly chose the correct box above chance in all conditions except the

body-biased gaze condition while bilingual children were significantly better than

chance in choosing the correct box across all conditions, 3) the bilingual advantage

can be found in children as young as 2 years old across all conditions, and 4)

monolingual children had mastered this task by 5 years of age. Hence, young

bilinguals are indeed more sensitive to nonverbal referential gestures such as pointing

49

and eye gaze especially when contrasted with some conflicting information. Our

studies suggest that bilingualism facilitates the development of the understanding and

use of referential gestures.

Nonverbal paralinguistic cues. Another type of important nonverbal cues

that we often use in interpreting social meanings is paralinguistic cues (e.g. pitch,

tempo, etc.) A speaker’s feelings can be discerned both from lexical content (e.g. “I

won a trip to New York”) and paralinguistic cues. One can use the lexical content of

an utterance to depict the emotional implications directly, or express it by altering his

or her speaking rate, pitch level, pitch contours, and voice quality (Frick, 1985). For

example, happiness is usually marked by speech with high pitch, rapid tempo, large

pitch range, and bright voice quality, while sadness is marked by speech with low

pitch, slow tempo, narrow pitch range and soft voice (Scherer, 1986). Typically,

paralinguistic cues are in concordance with the emotive verbal content, such as a

happy event is described in a delightful manner. However, at times, the lexical

content and paralinguistic cues convey contradictory messages about the speaker’s

emotion, such as when a happy sentence is said in a sad voice. Past research indicated

that adults consider all available cues (Morton & Trehub, 2001; Reilly & Muzekari,

1979), but that they rely primarily on paralinguistic cues when lexical content and

paralinguistic cues conflict with each other (Argyle, Alkema, & Gilmour, 1971;

Mehrabian & Wiener, 1967; Morton & Trehub, 2001). In contrast, preschoolers

respond differently when these cues are in conflict (Friend, 2000; Friend & Bryant,

2000; Lacks, 1997; Morton & Munakata, 2002; Morton & Trehub, 2001; Solomon &

Ali, 1972). More specifically, 4-to-5-year-old children give more weight to content

50

than paralanguage when judging the speaker’s emotion, especially when the lexical

content of an utterance conflicts with the paralanguage used to express it. In Friend’s

(2000) study, 4-to-10-year-old children heard pre-recorded voice and were asked to

tell the experimenter whether the voice sounded “happy” or “mad” by pointing to one

of two schematic faces representing these emotions. The children heard “happy”

sentences such as “Oh good you got them all” and “mad” sentences such as “You’ll

never behave yourself” recorded in both happy voice and angry voice. The stimuli

were consistent if the “happy” sentences were said in a happy voice or if the “mad”

sentences were said in an angry voice. The messages were discrepant if the “happy”

sentences were said in an angry voice or if the “mad” sentences were said in a happy

voice. Three neutral utterances were presented at the beginning and the end to provide

the children with a baseline of the speaker’s voice. The children were encouraged to

use paralinguistic rather than lexical cues as the basis for their judgments. Friend

found that 4-year-olds were unable to selectively attend to paralanguage when

discrepant lexical cues were present in the recorded speech. There was a trend toward

greater attention to paralanguage when lexical and paralinguistic cues were

inconsistent in the recorded speech such that by 10 years of age, children were able to

use prosodic cues to determine the speaker’s affect even in the case of a

lexical/paralinguistic discrepancy. Similarly, Morton & Trehub (2001) asked children

and adults to judge whether a speaker was happy or sad. Participants heard forty

sentences describing happy and sad situations recorded in either a happy or sad voice.

Half of the sentences had content and paralanguage matched and half had these cues

conflicted. When the cues matched, both children and adults could accurately identify

51

happy and sad sentences. When the cues conflicted (e.g. happy situation said in sad

voice), 4-year-olds almost exclusively judged a speaker’s emotion from what she said

rather than how she sounded, in contrast to adults who overwhelming relied on how

she sounded. They concluded that young children have limited understanding of the

communicative functions of affective paralanguage.

Bilingual children with a greater need to attend to speaker’s communicative

requirements may be more willing to rely on paralinguistic cues to interpret emotion.

In our prior work with 4-year-old monolingual and bilingual children, we adapted

Morton and Trehub (2001) study using the same speech stimuli where happy and sad

situations were recorded in either happy or sad voices (half had content and

paralanguage matched and half had them conflicted) (Yow & Markman, 2009b).

Children were asked to listen carefully to the sentences presented from a computer and

decide if the speaker was feeling happy or sad by pressing pre-designated buttons that

correspond to a happy or sad face on the computer keyboard. They had four practice

trials with neutral sentences, half recorded in happy voice and half in sad voice. The

forty sentences were then presented in four blocks of ten. There were prompts in

between blocks to indicate that they had to press the “happy” button if she sounds

happy and press the “sad” button if she sounds sad. The results revealed that when

content and paralanguage matched, all children could identify happy and sad sentences

equally well. But when content conflicted with paralanguage, monolinguals relied on

content significantly more than paralanguage when judging the speaker’s emotion. In

contrast, bilingual children were more willing to use paralanguage to interpret a

speaker’s emotion even when content conflicted with paralanguage. The results

52

provided evidence that young bilingual children are better able than their monolingual

peers to tune-in to the speaker’s affective intent and utilize paralinguistic cues when

judging emotion.

We conducted a follow-up study using the same utterances preserving the

affective information but eliminating the semantic content to examine whether

monolingual and bilingual children could equally label the paralanguage in the

utterances. The same speech stimuli were low-pass filtered, eliminating most phonetic

cues and rendering the content unintelligible but preserving the affective information

transmitted by fundamental frequency and speaking rate (Rogers, Scherer, &

Rosenthal, 1971; Scherer, Koivumaki, & Rosenthal, 1972). Four-year-old

monolingual and bilingual children were asked to label the filtered speech as happy or

sad by pressing pre-designated buttons that correspond to a happy or sad face on a

computer keyboard. Results found no difference between monolingual and bilingual

preschoolers’ ability to use paralanguage to interpret a speaker’s emotion. In sum,

while both monolingual and bilingual children are equally capable of identifying

paralanguage in utterances, bilingual children are better able than their monolingual

peers to tune-in to the speaker’s affective intent and pay more attention to

paralinguistic cues when judging emotion, especially when the content of the utterance

is in conflict with the paralanguage that comes with it.

The literature reviewed thus far suggests that bilinguals represent their two

languages separately and that these two languages are active in parallel even when

only one language is currently in use. Bilinguals also frequently switch between

languages and their language choice depends on various linguistic and sociopragmatic

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factors, such as lexical access, language used in the domain, person they are speaking

with, topic of conversation, intention of the speaker/listener, etc. The literature

reviewed also suggests that the constant need to inhibit the unwanted language at any

given time by a bilingual accords beneficial effects on executive functioning over and

beyond normal maturity of cognitive abilities. This advantage of bilinguals was found

in children, adults as well as the elderly. Such cognitive benefits also extend to

children’s ability to represent others’ mental states. Studies also found that bilingual

children can pragmatically differentiate their use of each language, matching language

choice and code-switching patterns with according to context and communicative

needs of the interlocutors. There is also evidence that bilingual children have a higher

level of pragmatic competence than monolingual children as shown in their enhanced

ability to detect violations of conversational maxims. Studies also suggest that

bilingual children may have a heightened sensitivity to verbal feedback, prompts, and

nonverbal communicative cues (such as referential gestures and paralinguistic cues).

In summary, the literature suggests that the experience of growing up bilingual, the

challenges of maintaining one effective language at any one time and of figuring out

the communicative requirements of a dynamic multi-lingual context, may facilitate

young bilingual children’s sensitivity to socio-communicative cues to understand

people’s attention, intent, desires and communicative needs.

However, little is known about the impact of bilingualism on the development

of a more sophisticated aspect of communicative competence, where children need to

integrate multiple cues to interpret multiple cues to understand a speaker’s intent, and

the process in which the development of such communicative competence is

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enhanced. In the next section of this paper, I will lay out the background of several

areas in which I will frame my research question.

Integrating Multiple Cues and Maintaining Communicative Effectiveness

In the most simplistic form of communication, a speaker means exactly what

he says – every single word is a simple representation of his intent, knowledge state,

belief, or emotion. However, in most natural situations, words are just one among

many cues to the speaker’s communicative intent (Bloom, 1997; Clark, 1996; Sperber

& Wilson, 1986). An utterance can often be interpreted in multiple, potentially

conflicting ways. For example, when someone said, “It is really cold in here”, the

utterance could be taken to mean literally that the temperature in the room is low, or

implied to mean that the person is not feeling well, or even ironically to emphasize a

hot and sweltering room. Hence, successful communication requires speakers and

listeners to attend to and integrate a wide range of information including the literal

meaning of an utterance, information obtained from the linguistic and nonlinguistic

context, nonlinguistic gestures such as eye gaze and pointing, the intonation is which a

sentence is uttered and the pragmatics of the situation (e.g. Ackerman, 1986; Archer &

Akert, 1977; Clark & Gerrig, 1984; Cutler, 1974; De Groot et al., 1995; Kreuz, 1996;

for a review, see Pexman, 2005). While such sophisticated communication skills are

often found in matured communicators, such as adults, the development literature

suggests that young children typically have difficulty in attending to multiple cues to

figure out a speaker’s intent, especially when they need to be integrated with other

cues that are present in the same communicative situation.

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Integrating Eye Gaze, Semantics, and Context

Interpreting a speaker’s communicative intent can be challenging when

multiple cues have to be interpreted differently in light of other cues that co-occur

together, such as gestures, semantics and context. For example, whether a speaker is

referring to an object that she is looking at (eye gaze) depends in part on how she asks

for the object (semantics) and what is visible to her (context). In Nurmsoo and Bloom

(2008)’s Experiment 1, two novel objects were placed in a box positioned between a

speaker and a child. A screen blocked part of the speaker’s view, such that she could

only see one but not the other. In contrast, the two objects were in full view of the

child. The speaker then fixed her gaze upon the visible object and said either “There’s

the [novel-word]!” or “Where’s the [novel-word]?” The challenge of this task is that

children have to integrate multiple cues to understand which object the speaker is

referring to. The speaker’s eye gaze provides information about which object she is

looking at. The context is that she knows there are two objects, but she can see only

one but not the other. Finally, the semantics of the utterance “there” conveys

information about reference to a specific target object. So in the “there” trials,

integrating all these cues means we should expect that the speaker is referring to the

mutually visible object when she looked at it and said “there”. In the “where” trials,

the speaker provides the same eye gaze cue, the same context, but now the semantics

of the utterance is changed such that the speaker is asking “where” an object is. In this

case, then integrating all these cues means we should expect that the speaker is

actually looking for the other one that she could not see when he said “where”.

Nurmsoo and Bloom found that 4-year-olds successfully adjusted their use of

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experimenter’s eye gaze to retrieve the correct object under these two linguistic

contexts: retrieving the object that the experimenter looked at when she said “there”

and retrieving the other object that the experimenter could not see when she said

“where”. However, 2.5-year-olds were less successful in differentially using the

experimenter’s eye gaze: they were more likely to pick the visible object when the

speaker said “there” but were not more likely to pick the nonvisible object when the

speaker said “where”.

Hancock, Dunham, & Purdy (2000) suggested that as children become more

sophisticated in attending to multiple aspects of communication simultaneously, they

adjust their responses based on singular message components (e.g. words, face, voice)

to integrating the different information and responding as communicative wholes.

Such communicative skills may be developed earlier in children who regularly

experience communicative situation that demand greater attention, flexibility, and

understanding of referential intent. Monolingual and bilingual children alike must

learn to monitor and integrate multiple aspects of a communication to communicate

successfully and avoid breakdowns in communication (e.g. Baldwin, 1995; Hollich,

Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2000; Tomasello, 2003). But bilingual children

additionally have to monitor and evaluate whether they and their communicative

partners are speaking the same language. Bilingual children thus face a greater risk of

communicative failure when, for example, an adult speaker switches to a language a

bilingual child does not understand, or when a bilingual child responds in a language

that an adult speaker does not speak. The increased risk of communicative failure

places a greater demand on bilingual over monolingual children both in terms of

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cognitive load and understanding of referential intent. As such, bilingual children’s

constant efforts to maintain communicative effectiveness may foster their ability to

integrate multiple communicative cues in various contexts. Hence, the first study of

my dissertation research will seek to explore how monolingual and bilingual children

integrate multiple cues such as eye gaze, semantics (“where” vs. “there” sentences),

and context (what is visible to the experimenter) to understand a speaker’s referential

intent, using Nurmsoo and Bloom (2008)’s paradigm where children have to modulate

various cues to find a target referent as described earlier. Monolingual children, on the

other hand, may need additional information to help them understand a speaker’s

referential intent. The second part of my dissertation research will explore whether

monolingual children benefited from additional communicative cues that would guide

them in integrating multiple cues to understand the speaker’s referential intent and

help bring the monolingual children up to the performance of their bilingual peers.

Integrating Eye Gaze, Semantics, Context, and Tone of Voice

Cues such as eye gaze, semantics, and context can also be interpreted

differently along with paralinguistic cues such as intonation. For example, an

utterance can either reflect a genuine question or statement, which signals an authentic

search behavior, or a playful “I-know-where-is-it-but-let’s-see-if-you-can-find-it”

intention. Paralinguistic cues provide an important source of information to help

children decide if the speaker is playing pretend with them. In some instances a

distinctive intonation may aid children’s ability to detect the speaker’s underlying

meaning (De Groot et al., 1995). Reissland and Snow (1996) found that parents vary

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the pitch and pitch range of their speech in pretend and instructional situations with

children as young as 11-month-olds. Monolingual mothers were audio- and

videotaped in their homes while having a meal with a spoon (real situation) and while

feeding a doll with a spoon (play situation). They found that mothers spoke at a

higher pitch and broader pitch range when pretending, both when the mothers tried to

introduce the play situation and also when the infants had become active participants

in the play activities. They concluded that mothers used pitch height and pitch range

to help their infants to distinguish between play and non-play situations and continued

to use these paralinguistic cues to sustain the pretend-play engagement. Smiles may

also provide some cues to pretend behaviors. Piaget (1945/1962) claimed that “the

smile of the child is enough to show that it is perfectly conscious of pretending” (pp.

32). People rely on smiles, as well as laughter, to determine when a fight is real

versus play (Fry, 1987; Smith, 1997). More recently, Lillard and Witherington (2004)

analyzed mothers’ behaviors while they pretended to have a snack and really had a

snack and found that mothers tend to smile more when pretending, and these smiles

lasted longer on average than those in the real condition. Children might have inferred

from the smiles that the mother’s behaviors were fun and silly and not meant to be

taken seriously.

No studies to date have been conducted to examine whether children can make

use of tone of voice in conjunction with other communicative cues to determine the

speaker’s referential intent. For example, when a speaker looks at one visible novel

object and asks a searching question in a serious tone (e.g. lower pitch, frowning

eyebrows), he is indicating that the object he is looking at is not what he wants. In

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contrast, if he looks at the visible novel object and asks a searching question in a

playful manner (e.g. higher pitch, smiles), he is indicating that the object he is looking

at is indeed the one that he is searching for. Hence, part three of my dissertation

research will use a modified version of the Nurmsoo and Bloom (2008) paradigm to

investigate whether bilingual children can integrate multiple cues that involve tone of

voice, eye gaze, semantics, and context more effectively than monolinguals to

understand the speaker’s referential intent.

Integrating Gestures with Speech Internal Cues in Pronoun Interpretation

In addition to the challenge of integrating communicative cues, such as eye

gaze, semantics, context, and tone of voice, words that are context sensitive also pose

a challenge to understanding the speaker’s referential intent. Pronouns like he and

she, common in everyday speech, do not consistently map onto any referent, instead,

their meaning is determined anew each time they are used. However, most of the

time, adult listeners do not notice the ambiguity, and are quickly and easily able to

infer the speaker’s intended meaning using a variety of cues present in the speech

signal such as gender (Arnold, Eisenband, Brown-Schmidt, & Trueswell, 2000),

emphatic stress (Maratsos, 1973), and order-of-mention (Arnold, Brown-Schmidt,

Trueswell, & Fagnano, 2004). Order-of-mention refers to a tendency of adults to

interpret the first-mentioned entity, amongst others, as the referent for the ambiguous

pronoun (first-mentioned bias). This is because first-mentioned entities tend to

correlate with the likelihood that they will be referred to again in the immediate

discourse (Arnold, 1998, 2001; Arnold, & Tanenhaus, in press) and being the

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grammatical subject, first-mentioned entities also tend to be the most accessible when

interpreting pronouns (Arnold, Wasow, Losongco, & Ginstrom, 2000; Gordon, Grosz,

& Gilliom, 1993).

However, pronouns are particularly challenging for young children to interpret

because they carry relatively little lexical information, usually only about the animacy,

gender, and quantity of a referent (Arnold et al., 2007) and the use of pronouns in

discourse depends, in part, on the shared knowledge and expectations of the

interlocutors. So while adults have shown to be able to use gender and order-of-

mention information to resolve the interpretation of pronouns successfully (Arnold,

1998; Garnham, 2001; Gundel, Hedberg, & Zacharski, 1993; Stevenson, Crawley, &

Kleinman, 1994), children, on the other hand, showed successful pronoun resolution

based on gender but not order-of-mention information (e.g. Brener, 1983; Song &

Fisher, 2005; Arnold, Brown-Schmidt, & Trueswell, 2007). For example, Arnold and

colleagues (2007), examined whether adults and 4- and 5-year-old children were able

to resolve pronouns on the basis of gender information and order-of-mention.

Participants listened to a puppet (Elmo) telling simple short stories about two

characters, e.g. “Bunny is playing outside with Froggy. She wants a ball.” (p.11). The

characters were visually represented by dolls on a table and the dolls had stereotypical

either male or female appearances (in the case of adults, the characters were presented

as pictures on a computer screen). The experimenter then presented the participant

with an object (e.g. a toy ball), and asked “Can you show me who wants the ball in

Elmo’s story?” The child responded by picking up the toy and placing it in front of

one of the two character dolls while the adult answered the question by clicking on

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one of the two characters on the computer. Results showed that adults showed a

preference for the first-mentioned character in the same-gender condition and

generally chose the gender-matched pronoun in the different-gender condition, though

they still chose the first-mentioned character 23% of the time in the different-

gender/second-mention condition, showing a general first-mention bias. Children, in

contrast, while were adult-like in using gender to interpret the pronoun, showed no

tendency to prefer the first-mentioned character in the same-gender condition. Their

results suggested that by 4 years of age, children were able to use gender to guide their

interpretation of pronouns. But when two characters had the same gender, children

showed no order-of-mention bias like adults, that is, they were equally likely to choose

the first-mentioned or second-mentioned character as the referent for the pronoun.

Gestures, however, may be helpful in providing additional information that

disambiguates the interpretation of pronouns in speech. Children can detect and

process information conveyed by gesture (e.g. Church, Kelly, & Lynch, 2000; Kelly

& Church, 1997, 1998). When gestural information is provided that disambiguates

conceptual reference in speech, gesture is detected and used for interpretation (Barr,

Kelly, Church, & Lynch, 1999; Thompson & Massaro, 1994). For example, if the

spoken word for ‘ball’ was obscured (consonants are slurred so it was not clear

whether the word ‘ball’ or ‘doll’ was being said), a point to the object, ball, greatly

improved the identification of the word ‘ball’ (Thompson & Massaro, 1994). In this

context, gesture can be relied upon in communication, in addition to other information.

Indeed, Goodrich and Hudson Kam (2007) showed that co-referential localizing

gestures affected adults’ interpretation of pronouns, such that they were less likely to

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interpret an ambiguous pronoun as referring to the first-mentioned character if the

gesture was referring to the second-mentioned character. Co-referential localizing

gestures refer to gestures by speakers in a location in space when referring to an entity

and then gesture back to the same location when referring to that entity again later in

the same discourse (Kendon, 2004; McNeill, 1992; So, Coppola, Licciardello, &

Goldin-Meadow, 2005). However, no studies to date have examined the use of

gestures to help disambiguate the right referent involving the use of pronouns in

children. In part four of my dissertation research, I will use a modified version of the

Arnold et al. (2007) procedures paired with co-referential localizing gestures to

examine whether monolingual and bilingual children show an order-of-mention bias

(or lack of), and most importantly, to what extent monolingual and bilingual children

use gestures to help them identify the right referent of the pronoun.

Experience of Communication Breakdown as a Contributing Factor

One critical research question remains, however, is exactly how and what in

the bilingual process facilitates bilingual children’s precocious ability to effectively

use various communicative cues to determine a speaker’s referential intent. Growing

up in an environment where children regularly hear people speaking more than one

language may result in a greater chance of a communication breakdown. Such

communication failure may occur when a wrong language was used, either as a base

language, in mixing with another language, or failure to switch back or translate, etc.

(e.g. Grosjean, 1989). This risk of communicative failure may intensify the need of

bilingual children to avoid such communication breakdown by using cues provided by

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the speaker to ascertain the appropriate demands of the communication situation. I

propose that it is this greater need to avoid communication breakdown in the bilingual

environment that motivates children to mobilize greater effort to maintain effective

communication and in turn results in their heightened sensitivity to communicative

cues that determine a speaker’s referential intent.

To test this hypothesis, the final part of my dissertation research will explore

how the experience of a communication breakdown of a bilingual nature may increase

children’s sensitivity to communicative cues. In a bilingual environment,

codeswitching from one language to another, or language mixing, is a common

experience. Codeswitching often occurs when a word or a phrase in one language is

replaced for a word or phrase in the other language (Li, 1996). For example, in this

sentence by an English-Spanish speaker: “Dame una hamburguesa sin LETTUCE por

favor” (“Give me a hamburger without LETTUCE please”) (Heredia & Altarriba,

2001, p. 164), the Spanish word “lechuga” was replaced by the English word

“lettuce”. Hence, in the above example, a communicative failure will occur if a

Spanish listener does not understand the English word “lettuce”. In part five of my

dissertation research, I will explore whether injecting a communication breakdown of

a bilingual nature, such as the codeswitching example mentioned above, will increase

children’s sensitivity to the use of communicative cues.

In summary, while previous research suggested that bilingual children were

better able to use either a speaker’s verbal or nonverbal cues to understand the

demands of a communicative situation, my dissertation research explores how the

experience of growing up bilingual may foster children’s ability to modulate and

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integrate the use of multiple communicative cues (both verbal and nonverbal) in

various contexts. This research also provides unique insights to the communicative

process of growing up bilingual, that is, the investigation of the role of communication

breakdown, similar to that commonly experienced by bilinguals, in the development of

communicative competence in children. Importantly, this research contributes to the

understanding of cognitive development in general. It considers childhood

bilingualism as a natural experiment to examine the role of experience in developing

communicative skills needed to interpret a speaker’s communicative intent. More

specifically, Study 1 seeks to examine how monolingual and bilingual children

integrate various cues, such as eye gaze, semantics, and context of perceptual access to

figure out a speaker’s referential intent. Study 2 explores whether monolingual

children benefit from additional nonverbal information that would guide them in

integrating multiple cues to understand the speaker’s referential intent and help bring

their performance up to the level of their bilingual peers. Study 3 investigates the

extent to which monolingual and bilingual children are able to integrate additional

cues when an added complexity is introduced to the task, such as tone of voice. Study

4 extends the research to examine children’s integration of gestural cues in

interpreting ambiguous, context-sensitive words (e.g. pronouns). Finally, Study 5

seeks to examine the role of communication breakdown of a bilingual nature in

contributing to children’s effective use of communicative cues.

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CHAPTER 2

PRESENT RESEARCH

Study 1:

Integrating Eye Gaze, Context, and Semantics

The first study investigated whether there are differences between monolingual

and bilingual children in their use of various communicative cues to figure out a

speaker’s referential intent. Specifically, Study 1 requires children to integrate a

speaker’s eye gaze, context of the speaker’s perceptual access, and semantics of an

utterance in order to respond correctly to the speaker’s request. The study replicated

Nurmsoo and Bloom (2008)’s procedure with 3-year-old monolingual and bilingual

children where children saw two novel objects while the experimenter could see only

one (context). The experimenter looked at the object she could see (eye gaze) and said

either “There’s the [novel-word!]” or Where’s the [novel-word]?” (semantics).

Method

Participants. Thirty-two 3-year-old English monolingual and bilingual

children from Bing Nursery School participated in this study. Sixteen children were

monolinguals (8 males, mean age = 3.77, range = 3.39-3.96). The remaining 16 were

bilinguals (8 males, mean age = 3.68, range = 3.46-3.98).

A language questionnaire was sent to the parents via the school that asked for

information about the language first acquired by the child, the language used by the

parents and caregivers, and the amount of time (average percentage of exposure per

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week) the child was exposed to each language. Children were determined to be

bilingual if they had at least 30% exposure to one of two languages weekly. The 16

bilingual children in the study were reported to have regular exposure to another

language besides English, such as Spanish (n=7), Mandarin (n=2), Korean (n=2),

French (n=2), German, Italian, and Russian (n=1 per language) mainly either from

parents or a nanny.

Materials and procedure. Children were tested individually in a quiet room

in their preschool. We also administered the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Digit-

Span task, and Day-Night Stroop task subsequently to check whether the monolingual

and bilingual children differ in their receptive vocabulary level, short-term memory,

and inhibitory control skills.

Experimental design. The materials consisted of an opaque cardboard box (32

cm x 22 cm) and a bag of toys. The box had two compartments with a window each.

A movable screen covered one of the windows. The box was placed between the child

and the experimenter such that the child could see into both compartments but the

experimenter could only see into one through the uncovered window. There were two

familiar toys (a teddy bear and a toy car) and eight novel objects (uncommon objects

or parts of a bigger object). The four pairs of novel objects were used with four novel

labels, spoodle, nurmy, flurg, and gorp as per Nurmsoo and Bloom (2008). The target

object, its location relative to the window and the left/right position of the screen were

all counterbalanced. In the familiarization phase, the two familiar toys were placed in

each of the compartments of the box. From the child’s perspective, both toys were

visible, but from the experimenter’s perspective, only the toy in the compartment with

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the window was visible. The child was first asked to identify which toy he thinks the

experimenter could and could not see. The box was then rotated so that the child now

had the experimenter’s perspective. The child was then asked to identify which toy he

now could and could not see. In the experimental phase, there were two “there” trials

and two “where” trials, identical except for the test question. On each of the four

trials, the child explored a pair of novel objects with two adults (the experimenter and

the assistant). The experimenter turned her back while the assistant placed the objects

in the box, one in each compartment (see Figure 1). When the experimenter turned

around, she fixed her gaze on the object that she could see and asked the test question.

On “there” trials, the experimenter said, “Oh! There’s the [novel label]! There it is!”

On “where” trials, she said, “Oh! Where’s the [novel label]? Where is it?” In both

conditions, the experimenter then looked up at the child, held out her hand, and asked,

“Can I have the [novel label]?”

Figure 1. Screenshots from Study 1.

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Socio-economic status, receptive vocabulary, short-term memory, and

inhibitory control skills.

Socio-economic status (SES). To verify that the monolingual and bilingual

children were drawn from the same socioeconomic status (SES) population, we

followed the procedure reported by Buck, Small, Schisterman, Lyon & Rogers (2000),

Furth et al. (2000), Rathore et al. (2006), Ward (2008) and Westenberg, Siebelink,

Warmenhoven & Treffers (1999) and used the participants’ residential addresses to

obtain an estimated value of each family’s dwelling from an internet website that

provides real estate information such as home prices and home values

(www.zillow.com). Using this method, we then calculated the median, mean, and

variance property valuation for the monolingual and bilingual children in order to

determine whether the two groups of children differ in SES.

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test IV (Dunn & Dunn, 2007). This is a test of

receptive vocabulary where each child was to select one picture from a set of four that

depicts the word that was being spoken by the experimenter. The test continued until

the child made eight or more errors in any set of 12 items. Raw scores were converted

to standard scores using normalized tables based on age.

Digit-Span task (adapted from Wechsler, 1974). This task was adapted from

the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised as a test of short-term memory.

A list of pre-determined random numbers ranging from two to nine digits was read out

loud. Each child was to repeat all the numbers verbally in the same order. There were

two trials for each digit length. The test began with two numbers, increasing until the

child committed errors on both trials of the same digit length. The child’s digit span

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score was the total number of trials completed correctly.

Day-Night task (adapted from Gerstadt, Hong, & Diamond, 1994). This task

was adapted from the day-night task used in Gerstadt et al. (1994). It involves

instructing children to say the word “day” when they see a card depicting a nighttime

sky and to say “night” when shown a picture of the daytime sky. This task requires

remembering the two rules and inhibiting a response to the visual cues. There were

two training cards and 16 testing cards used in this study. Half of the cards showed a

yellow sun in a light blue background and half showed a white crescent moon and

stars on a black background. The instructions and presentation of cards were adapted

from Siegal, Iozzi, and Surian (2009). The experimenter first showed each child a

card with the moon and said, “We are going to play a funny game. When you see this

card I want you to say day. Can you say day?” The experimenter continued to show a

card with the sun and said, “Now, when you see this card I want you to say night. Can

you say night?” The child was then shown the first test card with the sun and asked,

“Now, what do you say when you see this card?” The child was shown a card with the

moon next and asked, “What do you say when you see this card?” If the child got

either of the first two test trials wrong, these two trials were counted as practice trials.

The child would then be told of the rules again and the test trials would start all over

again. If the child responded correctly to the first two trials, these were counted as

trials 1 and 2 and the child proceeded with the remaining trials. The total number of

correct responses was scored on a 2-16 scale.

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Results and Discussion

Preliminary analyses.

Measures of SES. In order to determine whether the monolingual and

bilingual children came from similar SES background, statistical analyses were

conducted on the ratios of the mean, median, and variance property valuation between

monolingual and bilingual children. The ratio of the median property valuation

between monolingual and bilingual children was 1: 1.03 and Mann-Whitney U-test

confirmed that these two groups of children came from the same SES backgrounds, Z

= -.83, P > .10. Analyses done on the mean values and the variances of the two

groups further confirmed that these monolingual and bilingual children were drawn

from the same SES population. The ratio of the means was 1:1.51 and t-tests showed

no significant differences between these two groups of children based on the estimated

property valuations, t(27) = -1.16, p > .10. The ratio of the variances was 1:10.81 and

the Levene test of equality in variances revealed that the variance of estimated

property valuations of the monolingual children were significantly lower than the

bilingual children, F(1,27) = 6.30, p < .05. A visual inspection of the data showed that

there were two outliers in the bilingual group. After removing the outliers, the ratio of

the variances was 1: 1.19 and the two group variances no longer differred significantly

from each other, F(1,25) = .01, p > .10 (however, note below that there was no

significant correlation in performance between SES and the experimental task).

Measures of vocabulary, memory span, and inhibitory control. The mean

scores and standard deviations for the PPVT, Digit-Span, and Day-Night Stroop tasks

are shown in Table 1. A one-way ANOVA was conducted to compare the children

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from the two language groups in these three tasks. No significant effects were found,

all ps > .10. Hence, both groups of children were virtually identical in SES, receptive

vocabulary, short-term memory and inhibitory control skills.

Mean

Age

Language

Status

Receptive Vocab.:

PPVT

Working Memory:

Digit-Span

Inhibitory Control:

Day-Night

3.77

3.68

Monolingual

Bilingual

123.54 (11.47)

117.58 (14.11)

6.29 (1.27)

6.58 (1.98)

13.07 (3.08)

11.25 (3.60)

Table 1. Mean scores and standard deviations (in parentheses) of Peabody Picture

Vocabulary Test (PPVT), Digit-Span task (DS), and Day-Night task (DN) in Study 1.

For the experimental trials, children were given a score of from 0 to 2 that

reflects the number of times they successfully selected the mutually visible object.

Preliminary analyses revealed no effect of order or gender, so they were combined in

subsequent analyses. There were no significant correlations between scores in the

experimental trials and SES, PPVT, Digit-Span, and Day-Night Stroop task (all ps >

.10).

Thus, the monolingual and bilingual children were drawn from identical SES

populations and were comparable in terms of standard measures of vocabulary, short-

term memory, and inhibitory control. Furthermore, none of these measures were

correlated with success on the experimental measures of interest.

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Main results. A 2 (condition: there vs. where) x 2 (language status:

monolingual vs. bilingual) repeated measures ANOVA was conducted (see Table 2).

There was a significant main effect of condition, where children significantly chose

the visible object more often in the “there” trials compared to the “where” trials

(F(1,30) = 25.56, p < .01). There was a marginal significant main effect of language

status, where monolingual children significantly chose the mutually visible object

more often compared to the bilingual children (F(1,30) = 4.03, p = .054). As

predicted, these main effects were modulated by an interaction between condition and

language status (F(1,30) = 5.28, p < .05). Planned comparison t-tests revealed that

while monolingual and bilingual children were equally likely to select the mutually

visible object when the experimenter said “there” (t(30) = .30, p > .10), bilingual

children were more likely to select the hidden object than monolingual children when

the experimenter said “where” (t(30) = 2.73, p < .05). Hence, as predicted, bilingual 3-

year-olds were better in integrating multiple cues, such as eye gaze, context, and

semantics when interpreting a speaker’s referential intent compared to their

monolingual peers.

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Condition Language Status Mean SD

Study 1 There Monolingual

Bilingual

1.75

1.69

0.58

0.60

Where Monolingual

Bilingual

1.38

0.69

0.72

0.70

Study 2 There

- Gesture-only

- Look-only

- Combined

Monolingual

1.56

1.75

1.44

0.63

0.45

0.63

Where

- Gesture-only

- Look-only

- Combined

Monolingual

1.31

1.63

0.75

0.70

0.50

0.68

Table 2. Means and standard deviations of correct responses (out of 2) in Study 1 and

2.

We compared performance against chance. Monolingual children were

significantly above chance in picking the visible object in the “there” trials (t(15) =

5.20, p > .001) and marginally above chance in picking the visible object in the

“where” trials (t(15) = 2.09, p = .054). For the bilingual children, they were also

significantly above chance in picking the visible object in the “there” trials (t(15) =

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4.57, p > .001) but were marginally below chance in picking the visible object in the

“where” trials (t(15) = -1.76, p = .096).

Summary. Study 1 indicated that while all children picked the visible object

equally often when the speaker said “there”, bilingual children were more likely than

monolingual children to pick the other object not looked at when the speaker said

“where”, suggesting that bilingual children were better at integrating multiple cues,

such as eye gaze, context and semantics to understand a speaker’s referential intent.

However, additional information may guide monolingual children in integrating

multiple cues to understand a speaker’s referential intent under similar demands.

Study 2 seeks to explore the kinds of additional cues that would be needed to bring 3-

year-old monolinguals up to the performance of their bilingual peers.

Study 2:

Additional Cues to Facilitate Understanding of Intent

In Study 2, I seek to explore the kinds of cues that would facilitate 3-year-old

monolinguals’ ability to integrate multiple cues to understand a speaker’s referential

intent. In addition to hearing the “there” trials as in Study 1, monolingual children

either saw an additional questioning gesture (palms faced up and raised to shoulder)

(gesture-only condition) or an extra searching look to the side of the box of the hidden

object (look-only condition), or both the questioning gesture and the extra searching

look (combined gestures condition) when they heard the experimenter said “where”.

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Method

Participants. Forty-eight monolingual 3-year-old children from Bing Nursery

School participated in this study. Sixteen of them were randomly assigned to the

gesture-only condition (8 males, mean age = 3.63, range = 3.15-3.98), 16 to the look-

only condition (7 males, mean age = 3.63, range = 3.02-3.99), and the remaining 16 to

the combined-gestures condition (8 males, mean age = 3.53, range = 3.00-3.98).

Materials. The same materials and procedures as per Study 1 were used.

Procedure. The procedures were similar to Study 1 except the experimental

phase. In the gesture-only condition, on the “where” trials, the experimenter provided

an additional questioning gesture (palms faced up and raised to shoulder) when she

said “Where’s the [novel word]?” In the look-only condition, on the “where” trials,

the experimenter provided an extra searching look to the side of the box of the hidden

object when she said “where”. In the combined-gestures condition, on the “where”

trials, the experimenter provided an extra searching look to the side of the box of the

hidden object along with the questioning gesture when she said “where” (see Figure

2). The “there” trials were the same in both conditions.

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Questioning Gesture:

Searching Look:

Searching Look + Questioning Gesture:

Figure 2. Screenshots from Study 2.

Results and discussion

As in Study 1, children were given a score of from 0 to 2 that reflects the

number of times they successfully selected the mutually visible object. A 2 (condition:

where vs. there trial) x 3 (gesture-type: questioning vs look vs combined) repeated

measures analysis of variance was conducted. There was a significant main effect of

condition, F(1,45) = 14.90, p < .001, where children significantly chose the mutually

+

+ +

+

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visible object more often in the “there” trials compared to the “where” trials (see Table

2). There was also a significant main effect of gesture-type, F(2,45) = 5.34, p < .05.

Contrasts results (K matrix) showed that children who saw the combined gestures

performed significantly better than those who saw only the extra look (p < .05) and

marginally better than those who saw only the questioning gesture (p < .10). There

was a significant interaction between condition and gesture-type (F(2,45) = 3.45, p <

.05). Children chose the correct object equally well to refer to the mutually visible

object when the experimenter said “there” (all ps > .10). However, when the

experimenter said “where”, children who saw the combined gestures performed better

than those who saw only either one (questioning vs combined: t(30) = 2.29, p < .05,

look vs combined: t(30) = 4.13, p < .001, questioning vs look: t(30) = 1.45, p > .10).

In other words, children who saw two gestures understood better the speaker’s

intention to refer to the hidden object when the experimenter asked “where” compared

to those who saw only one.

To explore whether monolingual children indeed benefited from some form of

gestures to help them understand the speaker’s intention to refer to the hidden object

and whether the additional cues could bring 3-year-old monolinguals up to the

performance of their bilingual peers, further analyses were conducted to compare the

performance of monolingual children with bilingual children (from Study 1). Results

indicated that monolingual children in Study 2 did not benefit from either the

additional questioning gesture or the extra look, and bilinguals from Study 1 who saw

no gesture still outperformed these children in the “where” trials (t(30) = -2.51, p < .05

and t(30) = -4.34, p < .001 respectively). In comparison, with two additional cues

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combined, monolingual children now became able to retrieve the hidden object when

the experimenter asked “where”, and did as well as the bilinguals in Study 1 (t(30) =

.26, p > .10). Hence, Study 1 and 2 presented evidence that bilingual children are

better able to integrate multiple communicative cues as a function of other co-

occurring cues compared to their monolingual counterparts. Further, monolingual

children need extra cues loaded on each other in a concerted effort to help them

understand a speaker’s referential intent under similar demands.

Nurmsoo and Bloom (2008) has shown, using the same procedure, that 2.5-

year-old children had difficulty in integrating multiple cues to infer a speaker’s

communicative intent and selected the object the speaker looked at regardless of the

semantics (“there” vs. “where”) used given the same social context. Nevertheless,

they found that by 4 years of age, children were successful in integrating the cues to

determine a speaker’s referential intent. The focus of Study 3 is to ask whether this

bilingual advantage would persist even among 4-year-olds who succeeded in

differentiating “there” from “where” questions in Nurmsoo and Bloom (2008), when

tone of voice, yet another source of information about communicative intent, needs to

be taken into account. Tone of voice can provide information such as whether the

speaker is serious or merely playing pretend with them (Reissland & Snow, 1996). A

related pragmatic difference signaled by tone of voice is to distinguish serious

questions about where an object is located when the speaker is trying to find

something versus a more pedagogical playful tone of voice commonly used in picture

book reading where an adult might ask a child “where” something is but the object is

mutually visible and the goal is for the child to display their knowledge.

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Study 3:

Integrating Eye Gaze, Context, Semantics, and Tone of Voice

In this study, Nurmsoo and Bloom (2008)’s procedure was again adapted to

examine whether 4-year-old children can still succeed when an additional cue, tone of

voice, needs to be integrated with the speaker’s eye gaze, perceptual access, and

semantics of the question. In both conditions speakers asked “where” an object was

but either in a serious tone of voice which indicates the speaker is sincerely wondering

where the object is or in a playful/pedagogical tone of voice that implies the speaker

knows where the object is but wants the child to reveal that knowledge. Integrating all

these cues means we should expect that the speaker is looking for the one that she

cannot see when she asks “where” in a serious, genuine manner, as in Nurmsoo and

Bloom’s study, but that the speaker is referring to the object mutually visible when she

asks “where” in a playful, pedagogical manner. We predicted that 4-year-old

bilinguals would be better than monolingual children at differentiating these two

questions. That is, monolingual and bilingual children alike should succeed at the

serious “where” questions as in the previous work but bilinguals should outperform

monolinguals when the interpretation of the question needs to be modulated by tone of

voice.

Method

Participants. Fifty-eight 4-year-old English monolingual and bilingual

children from Bing Nursery School participated in this study. Twenty-nine were

monolinguals (15 males; mean age = 4.40; range = 4.02-4.91) and 29 were bilinguals

(15 males; mean age = 4.49; range = 4.07-4.96). The language questionnaire and

80

questionnaire coding were the same as used in Study 1. The 29 bilingual children in

the study were reported to have regular exposure to another language besides English,

such as Spanish (n=11), French (n=4), Mandarin (n=4), Korean (n=3), Portuguese,

Hebrew, Japanese, Swedish, Russian, Italian, German, (n=1 per language), mainly

either from parents or a nanny.

Twenty-five adults who received introductory psychology course credit for

their participation (12 females; 13 males) were also recruited to validate the stimuli

used in the study.

Materials. To control for precise manipulation of cues, children were shown

video clips of the Study 1 procedure (see Figure 3). The same Study 1 materials were

used in the video. The procedure of the familiarization phase in the video was the

same as Study 1, where the box was introduced to the child so that the child could see

the toys from both his own and the experimenter’s perspectives. In the experimental

phase, a puppet placed pairs of novel objects in the box while an actor was away.

When the actor returned, she fixed her gaze on the object that she could see and asked

the test question “Oh! Where’s the [novel word]? Where is it?” either in a serious

manner (“serious-where” condition) or in a playful manner (“playful-where”

condition). In the “serious-where” condition, the question was asked in a

conventional, serious, questioning tone-of-voice. In the “playful-where” condition,

the question was asked in a playful, pedagogical manner, similar to how adults behave

when reading picture books to children. In both conditions, the actor then looked up,

reached out her hand, and asked, “Can I have the [novel word]?” There were two pre-

81

determined orders for each condition, counterbalanced for the target object’s location

relative to the window and the position of the window.

“Serious Condition”

Set-up Puppet hiding objects

“Playful Condition”

Figure 3. Screenshots from video clips (Study 3).

In addition, audio clips of all the test questions were abstracted from the video

files using video-audio converter software. A total of 16 audio clips were obtained.

Procedure. The adults were asked to listen to each of the audio clips in a pre-

determined random order and rate whether the speaker sounded serious or playful and

also how confident they were in each of their rating (1 = not confident at all; 5 = very

confident). This was to ascertain that the “serious-where” and “playful-where” video

clips were indeed distinguishable in their prosodic qualities.

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Children were tested individually in a quiet room in their preschool. The

videos were presented to each child on a LCD monitor. Children first saw the

familiarization video and asked to identify which toy the actor could see and which

she could not see. Next, the experimenter played each of the four videos in the

experimental phase and asked which one of the two objects the actor was looking for.

Children’s responses were recorded. This procedure was repeated until all four

experimental trials have been completed. As in Study 1, we obtained the mean,

median, and variance of property valuation from the residential addresses of the

participants. We also administered the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-IV, Digit-

Span task, and Day-Night Stroop task to the children.

Results and Discussion

Preliminary analyses.

Validation of tone of voice stimuli. Adults were given a score of from 0 to 16

that reflects the number of times they correctly rated the speaker as sounded serious or

playful. They were also given an average score of from 0 to 5 that reflects their

average confidence level in their ratings. The average total number of items correct

(out of 16) = 14.68, SD = 1.18, and the average confidence score (out of 5) = 4.10, SD

= .46, both were significantly above chance performance (all ps < .01). Adults were

able to distinguish between the “serious-where” and “playful-where” questions with

relatively high confidence.

Measures of SES. As in Study 1, in order to determine whether the

monolingual and bilingual children came from similar SES background, statistical

analyses were conducted on the ratios of the mean, median, and variance property

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valuation between monolingual and bilingual children. The ratio of the median

property valuation between monolingual and bilingual children was 1:1.11 (Z = -1.21,

P > .10), the ratio of the means was 1:1.18 (t(45) = -1.33, p > .10), and the ratio of the

variances was 1:1.04 (F(1,45) = .010, p > .10), all of which indicated that both groups

of children came from the same SES background.

Measures of vocabulary, memory span, and inhibitory control. The mean

scores and standard deviations for the PPVT, Digit-Span, and Day-Night Stroop tasks

are shown in Table 3. A one-way ANOVA was conducted to compare children from

the two language groups in these three tasks. No significant effects were found for

PPVT and Day-Night task, all ps > .10, but there was a marginal significant effect of

language status in the Digit-Span task, F(1,52) = 2.86, p = .097. Bilingual children,

on average, scored marginally higher than the monolingual children in the Digit-Span

task (however, note below that there was no significant correlation in performance

between the Digit-Span and the experimental task).

Mean

Age

Language

Status

Receptive Vocab.:

PPVT

Working Memory:

Digit-Span

Inhibitory Control:

Day-Night

4.40

4.49

Monolingual

Bilingual

120.93 (11.77)

117.40 (15.22)

6.29 (1.33)

7.12 (2.03)

11.86 (3.58)

11.38 (3.18)

Table 3. Mean scores and standard deviations (in parentheses) of Peabody Picture

Vocabulary Test (PPVT), Digit-Span task (DS), and Day-Night task (DN) in Study 3.

84

For the experimental trials, children were given a score of from 0 to 4 that

reflects the number of times they successfully selected the mutually visible object.

There were no significant correlations between scores in the experimental trials and

SES, PPVT, Digit-Span, and Day-Night Stroop task (all ps > .10).

Thus, monolingual and bilingual children were drawn from identical SES

populations and were comparable in terms of standard measures of vocabulary,

inhibitory control, with the only difference a marginal advantage in digit span.

Moreover, none of these measures were correlated with success on the experimental

measures of interest.

Main results. A univariate ANOVA was conducted with language status

(monolingual vs. bilingual) and condition (serious vs. playful) as fixed factors. There

was a significant interaction effect between language status and condition, (F(1,54) =

4.20, p < .05). No other significant effects were found. Planned comparison t-tests

revealed that bilingual children’s performance was significantly better than that of

monolingual children in the “playful-where” condition but children were equally

successful in the “serious-where” condition (t(26) = 2.16, p < .05; t(26) = .80, p > .10,

respectively) (see Table 4). As predicted, monolingual and bilingual children were

equally likely to select the hidden object when asked “where” in a serious, genuine

manner, but bilingual children were more likely than monolingual children to select

the mutually visible object when asked “where” in a playful, pedagogical manner. No

other significant effects were found.

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Condition Language Status Mean SD

Serious-Where Monolingual

Bilingual

1.73

1.33

1.39

1.35

Playful-Where Monolingual

Bilingual

1.50

2.50

1.22

1.22

Table 4. Means and standard deviations of correct responses (out of 2) in Study 3.

We also compared performance against chance. Monolingual children were at

chance picking the visible object both in the “playful” and “serious” conditions (t(13)

= -1.53, p > .10 and t(14) = -.75, p > .10 respectively). While the bilingual children

were at chance in picking the visible object in the “playful” trials, they were

marginally below chance in picking the visible object in the “serious” trials (t(13) =

1.53, p > .10 and t(14) = -1.92, p = .076, respectively).

Summary. Study 3 drew upon similar tasks as Study 1 but included an

additional cue, tone of voice, such that the speaker said “where” in either a serious,

genuine manner, or a playful, pedagogical manner. Integrating a speaker’s eye gaze,

context and semantics of the utterance and tone of voice thus implied that the speaker

was sincerely looking for the hidden object that she could not see when she asked in a

serious, genuine manner but that she wanted the child to pick the object she was

looking at when she asked in a playful, pedagogical manner. We found that while

monolingual and bilingual 4-year-old children were equally likely to select the hidden

86

object when asked “where” in a serious, genuine manner, bilingual children were more

likely than monolingual children to select the mutually visible object when asked

“where” in a playful, pedagogical manner.

The above studies provided evidence that bilingual children are more

sophisticated in using multiple cues to determine a speaker’s referential intent.

However, little is known how children would integrate communicative cues, such as

co-referential localizing gestures, with other speech internal cues (e.g. order-of

mention), in interpreting ambiguous and context-sensitive words, such as pronouns.

Previous results indicated that children showed successful pronoun resolution based

on gender information but did not show an adult-like order-of-mention bias, that is, a

tendency to interpret ambiguous pronouns as co-referential with the subject, or first-

mentioned entity (e.g. Brener, 1983; Song & Fisher, 2005; Arnold et al., 2007;

Stevenson et al.; 1994). Study 4 examines the use of gestures to help children

disambiguate the right referent involving pronouns.

Study 4:

Integrating Gestures with Speech Internal Cues in Pronoun Interpretation

Study 4 examines how children make use of communicative cues (such as co-

referential localizing gesture) with co-occurring speech cues (e.g. order-of-mention) to

infer the referent object in face of an ambiguous pronoun. A modified version of the

Arnold et al. (2007) procedures was paired with co-referential localizing gestures to

examine whether monolingual and bilingual children show an order-of-mention bias

(or lack of), and most importantly, to what extent monolingual and bilingual children

87

use gestures to help them identify the right referent of the pronoun.

Method

Participants. Thirty-two 4-year-old English monolingual and bilingual

children from Bing Nursery School participated in this study. Sixteen were

monolinguals (9 males; mean age = 4.58; range = 4.02-4.99) and 16 were bilinguals (9

males; mean age = 4.45; range = 4.02-4.94). The language questionnaire and

questionnaire coding were the same as used in Study 1. The 16 bilingual children in

the study were reported to have regular exposure to another language besides English,

such as Spanish (n=7), Mandarin (n=2), Russian (n=2), French, Italian, Thai, Japanese,

and German (n=1 per language), mainly either from parents or a nanny.

Twenty adults who received introductory psychology course credit for their

participation (9 females; 13 males) were also recruited to obtain an adult comparison

for the study.

Materials. There were 14 pairs of pictures of (cartoon) animal characters, two

pairs for warm-up trials and 12 pairs for experimental trials. The animal characters had

clothing and accessories that match their intended gender. For example, a female cat

had a pink bow on its head and a necklace around its neck, while a male pig had a

straw hat and brown-checkered white shirt. The female animal characters were: duck,

owl, reindeer, bear, bunny, kitty, chick, and mouse. The male animal characters were:

penguin, teddy, frog, panda, raccoon, bear, dog, and pig. The pictures were laminated,

size 13 cm x 13 cm each. In addition, a card-holding structure was constructed to

control for distances between pairs of pictures and between pictures and the

experimenter. The structure consisted of two 12 cm x 13 cm white boards and a 2 cm

88

by 31 cm white strip of cardboard. The two white boards were inclined backwards an

angle of approximately 45o from the child’s view and held 30 cm apart from each

other. The white strip of cardboard extended from the middle of the two white boards

towards the experimenter. These pairs of pictures remained visible to the children

throughout the trial, potentially freeing up mental resources such as working memory,

to the experimental tasks (see Ballard, Hayhoe, Pook, & Rao, 1997). This also served

as a visual reminder of the gender of the characters, which was held constant for each

pair of animals in each trial.

Procedure. Children were tested individually in a quiet room in their

preschool. Children were told that they were going to play a giving game. For each

trial, a pair of pictures was introduced to the children (e.g. “This is Miss Owl and this

is Miss Ducky) and children were asked to confirm the identity of the characters (e.g.

“So, can you tell me which one is Miss Owl…. And which one is Miss Ducky?”).

One child was excluded from the study as he failed to answer both questions correctly.

The experimenter then placed the pictures on the card-holding structure and said a

two-sentence story to the children. The first sentence of each story mentioned the two

characters doing some reciprocal action (e.g. “Miss Owl is going out with Miss

Ducky”), and a palm-up gesture was used on each of the two characters as the

experimenter spoke. Reciprocal predicates such as the above, could avoid confounds

with thematic roles that might alter the first-mentioned bias (e.g. Garvey &

Caramazza, 1974) and make first-mentioned character more accessible for reference

with pronouns (Arnold & Griffin, 2007). The second sentence of the story then

explained that one character wanted a particular item. In this instance, the same palm-

89

up gesture was used with either one or none of the two characters as the experimenter

spoke, depending on which type of trial it was. In the warm-up trials, the name of the

target character was mentioned clearly to indicate it as the target referent and the

gesture was used in consistent with the proper name (e.g. “Miss Owl/Ducky wants the

bag.”) In the experimental trials, there were three conditions: neutral, gesture-1st, and

gesture-2nd. In all three conditions, a pronoun consistent with the gender of both the

characters was used instead of the proper name (e.g. “He wants the ball.”). No gesture

was used in the neutral condition in the second sentence. The palm-up gesture was

used with the first character in the gesture-1st condition and with the second character

in the gesture-2nd condition as the experimenter spoke (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Screenshots from Study 4.

The experimenter then presented a doll-sized paper object with sticky tape

behind and asked the child, “Here it is. Can you give it to him/her?” The child

90

responded by picking up the paper object and sticking it on one of the two animal

characters. During each trial, the experimenter maintained eye contact with the child.

If the child asked for confirmation or clarification, the experimenter said “Which one

do you think wants it?”

Each session consisted of two warm-up trials and 12 experimental trials. The

animal characters and the target referent in the two warm-up trials were

counterbalanced for side. There were 16 different orders for the experimental trials.

Each order began with a trial from a different condition in a pre-determined

randomized schedule, counterbalanced for side, gender, and condition, and with the

restriction that two of the first six experimental trials must come from each of three

conditions. The orders were randomly assigned to each participant in a way that was

balanced across gender, age and language groups.

As in Study 1, we obtained the mean, median, and variance of property

valuation from the residential addresses of the participants. We also administered the

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-IV, Digit-Span task, and Day-Night Stroop task to

the children.

The adults were asked to do the exact same procedures.

Results and Discussion

Preliminary analyses.

Measures of SES. As in Study 1, in order to determine whether the

monolingual and bilingual children came from similar SES background, statistical

analyses were conducted on the ratios of the mean, median, and variance property

valuation between monolingual and bilingual children. The ratio of the median

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property valuation between monolingual and bilingual children was 1:1.03 (Z = -.15 P

> .10), the ratio of the means was 1:1.02 (t(25) = .092, p > .10), and the ratio of the

variances was 1:0.54 (F(1,25) = 2.13, p > .10), all of which indicated that both groups

of children came from the same SES background.

Measures of vocabulary, memory span, and inhibitory control. The mean

scores and standard deviations for the PPVT, Digit-Span, and Day-Night Stroop tasks

are shown in Table 5. A one-way ANOVA was conducted to compare children from

the two language groups in these three tasks. No significant effects were found for all

three tasks, all ps > .10. Hence, both groups of children were virtually identical in

SES, receptive vocabulary, short-term memory and inhibitory control skills.

Mean

Age

Language

Status

Receptive Vocab.:

PPVT

Working Memory:

Digit-Span

Inhibitory Control:

Day-Night

4.58

4.45

Monolingual

Bilingual

122.73 (10.68)

115.19 (14.12)

6.47 (1.19)

6.13 (1.89)

12.00 (2.70)

12.13 (2.68)

Table 5. Mean scores and standard deviations (in parentheses) of Peabody Picture

Vocabulary Test (PPVT), Digit-Span task (DS), and Day-Night task (DN) in Study 4.

For the experimental trials, children were given a score of from 0 to 4 that

reflects the number of times they selected the character that was first mentioned.

There were no significant correlations between scores in the experimental trials and

SES, PPVT, Digit-Span, and Day-Night Stroop task (all ps > .10).

92

Thus, the monolingual and bilingual children were drawn from identical SES

populations and were comparable in terms of standard measures of vocabulary,

inhibitory control, and short-term memory. Moreover, none of these measures were

correlated with success on the experimental measures of interest.

Main results.

Adults’ data. An omnibus repeated measures ANOVA was conducted with

condition as within-subjects factor, and gender and order as between-subjects factors.

There was no significant effect of gender and order, hence these were combined in

subsequent analyses (ps > .10). A repeated measures ANOVA was conducted with

condition as the within-subjects factor (condition: neutral vs. gesture-1st vs. gesture-

2nd). The effect of condition was significant, F(2,42) = 22.21, p < .01). Paired-sample

t-tests revealed that adults chose the first-mentioned character more when the gesture

was consistent with the first-mentioned character than when there was no gesture

(t(21) = 2.32, p < .05), or when the gesture was consistent with the second-mentioned

character (t(21) = 5.19, p < .01) (see Table 6). Adults also chose the first-mentioned

character more when there was no gesture than when the gesture was consistent with

the second-mentioned character (t(21) = 4.41, p < .05). One-sample t-tests showed

that adults chose the first-mentioned character significantly above chance when there

was no gesture as well as when the gesture was consistent with the first-mentioned

character (t(21) = 14.72, p < .05; t(21) = -10.00, p < .01 respectively). On the other

hand, adults were at chance in choosing the first-mentioned character when the gesture

was consistent with the second-mentioned character (t(21) = -.80, p > .10). Consistent

with prior results (e.g. Arnold et al., 2006), adults showed an order-of-mention bias by

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choosing the first-mentioned character in the neutral condition. Adults showed more

confidence in choosing the first-mentioned character when the experimenter’s gesture

was consistent with this bias. However, adults did not follow the experimenter’s

gesture when the gesture was targeted at the second-mentioned character consistently,

but they also did not persist in choosing the first-mentioned character either, indicating

a general awareness of the experimenter’s gesture but exhibited a sense of uncertainty

when the gesture conflicted with order-of-mention bias.

Children’s data. A 3 (condition: neutral vs. gesture-1st vs. gesture-2nd) x 2

(language status: monolingual vs. bilingual) repeated measures ANOVA was

conducted. There was a significant main effect of condition, F(2,60) = 11.90, p < .01).

Paired-sample t-tests revealed that children chose the first-mentioned character more

when the gesture was consistent with the first-mentioned character (gesture-1st

condition) than when there was no gesture (neutral condition) or when the gesture was

consistent with the second-mentioned character (gesture-2nd condition) (both ps < .01)

(see Table 6). There was a marginal significant interaction effect between language

status and condition, (F(1,60) = 3.08, p = .053). Planned comparison t-tests revealed

that bilingual children chose the second-mentioned character more than monolingual

children when the gesture was consistent with the second-mentioned character but no

difference in other conditions (gesture-2nd: t(30) = 2.01, p = .053; gesture-1st: t(30) =

.51, p > .10; neutral: t(30) = .89, p > .10). Monolingual and bilingual children were

equally likely to select the first-mentioned object either when there was no gesture, or

when the gesture was consistent with the first-mentioned character, but bilingual

children were more likely than monolingual children to select the second-mentioned

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object when the gesture was consistent with the second-mentioned character. These

results suggest that bilingual children selected the second-mentioned object more than

monolingual children likely because they were more willing to interpret the character

that the experimenter gestured at was the target referent, rather than due to a weaker

order-of-mention bias compared to monolingual children.

Condition Participants Mean SD

No-Gesture Monolingual

Bilingual

Adults

2.25

2.50

3.73

0.86

0.73

0.55

Gesture-1st Mentioned Monolingual

Bilingual

Adults

2.94

3.13

4.00

1.00

1.09

0.00

Gesture-2nd Mentioned Monolingual

Bilingual

Adults

2.31

1.56

2.23

1.08

1.03

1.60

Table 6. Means and standard deviations of 1st-mentioned character responses

(out of 4) of in Study 4.

We also compared performance against chance to examine whether children

have a first-order mention bias (neutral condition) and whether gesture was used to

identify the referent target (gesture-1st and gesture-2nd conditions). Monolingual

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children were at chance picking the first-mentioned character both in the neutral and

gesture-2nd conditions (t(15) = 1.17, p > .10 and t(15) = 1.16, p > .10 respectively), but

were significantly above chance picking the first-mentioned character in the gesture-

1st condition (t(15) = 3.76, p < .01). Monolingual children did not seem to have a

first-order mention bias (as consistent with previous studies, Arnold et al., 2006) but

gesture did help these children to identify the first mentioned character (gesture-1st

condition) but not the second mentioned character (gesture-2nd condition). Bilingual

children, on the other hand, were at chance picking the first-mentioned object in the

gesture-2nd condition (t(15) = -1.70, p > .10), but were significantly above chance

picking the first-mentioned character in the neutral and gesture-1st condition (t(15) =

2.74, p < .05 and t(15) = 4.14, p < .01 respectively). These children seemed to have a

burgeoning first-order mention bias just like adults and were able to use gesture to

pick the first-mentioned object (gesture-1st). They also showed some level of

sensitivity to the gesture, like adults, when the gesture was targeted at the second-

mentioned character.

In order to further examine whether a pre-existing bias of using order-of-

mention cues affects the use of gesture in pronoun interpretation, we grouped children

into those who did not show an order-of-mention (OM) bias (scored 2 or less out of 4

in the neutral trials) and those who showed some order-of-mention bias (scored 3 or

more out of 4 in the neutral trials). We ran a 3 (condition: neutral vs. gesture-1st vs.

gesture-2nd) x 2 (language status: monolingual vs. bilingual) repeated measures

ANOVA separately for the two groups. For the no-OM bias group, there was a

significant effect of condition (F(2,32) = 4.77, p < .05). Children chose the first-

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mentioned character significantly more when the experimenter provided a gesture with

the first-mentioned character than when the experimenter provided the gesture with

the second-mentioned character (M of gesture-1st = 2.65; M of neutral = 1.79; M of

gesture-2nd = 1.86; ps < .01). No other significant effects were found. For the OM

bias group, there was also a significant effect of condition (F(2,24) = 12.14, p < .01).

Children chose the first-mentioned character significantly more when the experimenter

provided a gesture with the first-mentioned character than when the experimenter

provided the gesture with the second-mentioned character (M of gesture-1st = 3.46; M

of neutral = 3.15; M of gesture-2nd = 2.08; p < .01). In addition, there was a significant

interaction effect between language status and condition, (F(2,24) = 4.60, p < .05).

Paired-sample t-tests revealed that while monolingual children were equally like to

choose the first-mentioned character regardless whether gesture was used or not (all ps

> .05), bilingual children significantly differentiated their choice depending on the

condition, that is, they chose the first-mentioned object more in the gesture-1st

condition and second-mentioned object more in the gesture-2nd condition (all ps <

.05).

Summary. Adults showed a strong order-of-mention bias, consistent with

other studies, choosing the first-mentioned character in the neutral condition. Gesture

seemed to confirm the use of such bias, as adults chose the first-mentioned character

more when the gesture was targeted at the first-mentioned character. Adults also

showed sensitivity to the experimenter’s gesture even when the gesture was targeted at

the second-mentioned character, but they were unsure whether to follow order-of-

mention bias or experimenter’s gesture when these cues conflicted. Children,

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monolingual and bilingual alike, too, chose the first-mentioned character more when

the gesture was targeted at the first-mentioned character than when it was not.

However, bilingual children showed more adult-like responses than monolingual

children, including a burgeoning order-of-mention bias and differentiated responses

when order-of-mention bias was conflicted with gesture. In sum, bilinguals indicated

a greater level of sensitivity to the experimenter’s gesture than monolinguals.

Studies 1, 2, 3, and 4 explored how the experience of growing up bilingual

fosters children’s ability to modulate the use of multiple communicative cues in

various contexts. However, one critical research question left unanswered is exactly

how and what in the bilingual process facilitates this precocious ability to integrate

multiple cues to determine a speaker’s referential intent. Growing up in a

linguistically varied environment increases the cognitive demands of children to

process communication appropriately, where there is a greater chance of a

communication breakdown when a speaker inadvertently switch or mix a language a

listener may not understand. Hence, the experience of a communication breakdown

of such a nature may heighten children’s sensitivity to a speaker’s communicative

cues in a bid to maintain communicative effectiveness. Study 5 serves to examine

this hypothesis.

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Study 5:

Intervention – Experiencing Communication Breakdown

Study 5 examines whether the experience of a communication breakdown may

increase children’s sensitivity to communicative cues. This is achieved by introducing

a communication challenge that is typically present in a bilingual environment (mixing

foreign words in an English utterance) to induce a state of uncertainty as to what the

speaker is talking about, and then introducing a situation where there is a need for

children to make use of a speaker’s cues in order to achieve a successful outcome. In

this latter situation, we followed the procedure in Yow and Markman (2009a) where

children were asked to locate a hidden object in one of two boxes during which an

experimenter provided a cue (pointing to or gazing at the correct box) while seated

either equidistant between the two boxes or behind the empty box. In Yow and

Markman (2009a), we found that 3- and 4-year-old bilingual children were better able

than their monolingual peers to use the experimenter’s cues to locate the hidden toy in

the most challenging condition – experimenter looked at the correct box but seated

behind the empty box (body-biased gaze trials). Hence we predicted that children who

have experienced communication challenges of a bilingual nature would perform

better than children who have not experienced such challenges in the body-biased gaze

trials only. We then followed up with the same children to examine whether such

benefit (if any) would yield similar successful outcome about one month later.

Method

Participants. Sixty-four 3- & 4-year-old English monolingual children from

Bing Nursery School participated in this study (mean age = 4.09; range = 3.16-4.97;

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32 3-year-olds; 32 males). Of the 64 children from Session 1, 5 children did not

participate in Session 2 (3 from control condition and 2 from experimental condition),

either because they were absent from school or engaged in other activities. The final

group of participants for Session 2 consisted of 59 children from Session 1 (mean age

= 4.10; range = 3.16-4.97; 29 3-year-olds; 29 males).

Materials. The materials used in the study consisted of two identical opaque

boxes (17.5 cm x 20 cm x 9 cm), a cardboard screen (50 cm x 116.5 cm), two

cardboard stands with slots for the screen (20 cm x 29 cm x 9 cm), two bags of toys

(one for each session), and a chute-like structure (21 cm x 21 cm x 25 cm). The boxes

had lids that could be easily lifted off to hide or retrieve objects. In addition, to

eliminate any sound that might be generated from the hiding process and thus give a

clue to the child where the toy could be hidden, a layer of non-skid cushion was taped

to the entire inner bottom of each box. The chute-like structure was made from an

opaque box with a sloping chute sticking out on the top and an opening on one side for

conveying things out to the floor. The inside of the chute consisted of a xylophone that

made sounds as the toy slid through the chute. The toys in the two bags, consisted of

nine items each, were chosen to fit the chute’s opening and to have sufficient variety

to maintain the child’s interest.

Design. The study consisted of two parts: setting up the game together, and

playing the hide-and-find-it game. Figure 5 and 6 presents a schematic diagram of the

set-up for each of the two parts. The first part consisted of two types of between-

subjects conditions: control and experimental conditions:

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Control condition. In the control condition, the experimenter requested the

child to help set up the game together, using a single language, English, throughout the

whole procedure.

Experimental condition. In the experimental condition, the experimenter

similarly requested the child to help set up the game together, but each request was an

English sentence mixed with some foreign words. In this study, Japanese words were

used because it was determined that none of the children in the study had prior

exposure to the language, and hence minimize any confounds due to familiarity with a

language.

Figure 5. Set-up of Study 5 Part One.

Experimenter

Child

Table

Screen

Chair

Chair

Boxes

Bag of toys

Chute

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Figure 6. Set-up of Study 5 Part Two.

The second part consisted of four types of within-subjects test trials: body-

centered with point, body-biased with point, body-centered with gaze, and body-

biased with gaze (see Figure 7):

Body-centered point trials. For body-centered point trials, the experimenter

was positioned equidistant from the two boxes, extended part of her arm and pointed

to the baited box while fixing her gaze on the marked dot. The point was made so that

the tip of her finger was approximately 25 cm from the correct box and 62 cm from

the incorrect box.

Body-biased point trials. In the body-biased point trial, the gesture was

similar to the body-centered-point trial, except that the experimenter sat directly

behind the empty box and gestured to the farther but correct box. The point was made

so that the tip of her finger was approximately equidistant from the two boxes.

Experimenter

74 cm

20 cm

Child

75 cm

35 cm

Box

Screen

X

x

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Body-centered gaze trials. For body-centered gaze trials, the position of the

experimenter was exactly the same as body-centered point trials, except that instead of

pointing with her finger, the experimenter turned her head to look along the line of

gaze toward the correct box and kept her hands either behind her back or in her lap.

Body-biased gaze trials. In the body-biased gaze trial, the gesture was the

same as the body-centered gaze trial, and the experimenter position was the same as

the body-biased point trials.

In all trials, the position of the boxes, the participant’s location and the

experimenter’s distance from the boxes remained in the same locations as described in

Yow and Markman (2009a) (see Figure 6). In addition, a small dot was marked on the

center of the table along the position of the screen to serve as a neutral location on

which the experimenter fixed her gaze in both the point trials.

Figure 7. Schematic representation of the four types of test trials in Study 5 Part Two.

Centered-Point Biased-Point

Centered-Gaze Biased-Gaze

X

X

X

X

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Procedure.

Session 1, part 1 – setting up the game. The cardboard screen, the two boxes,

the chute, and a bag of toys were placed close together on the floor of the room. The

two cardboard stands were placed on the table. The experimenter explained to the

child that they were going to play a “hide-and-find-it” game together but needed the

child’s help to set up the game. There were four such “helping” trials. For each

“helping” trial, the experimenter requested the same helping behavior twice, the first

with a distal point to the target object and the second a proximal point. For example, in

the control condition, the experimenter would say to the child, “Can you bring me the

big piece of cardboard, please?”, pointing to the cardboard, amongst other things, from

a distance, and then moving nearer to the cardboard and repeating the same request,

now pointing unambiguously to the cardboard. The “helping” trials were identical in

the experimental condition, except that the sentences were now mixed with some

foreign words (e.g. “Can you bring me the oh-ki-na, a-tsu-ga-mi, please?) Each child

was randomly assigned to either the control or experimental condition. The

experimenter thanked the child for helping and proceeded with the next helping trial.

Session 1, part 2 – playing the game. The experimenter told the child that

they were now ready to play the game together.

Warm up. During the warm up period, the experimenter asked the child to

pick a toy from the bag, placed the toy in one of the boxes while the child watched,

and then asked the child to locate the missing toy. When the child located the toy, the

experimenter explained that the toy could be placed into the chute and would make

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sounds as the toy slides through it. After one trial of warm up, the experimenter

proceeded with the actual testing.

Testing. During the actual testing, each child received eight trials within a

single session. There were two trials from each of the four trial types,

counterbalanced for side. There were four different orders. Each order began with a

trial from a different condition in a pre-determined randomized schedule. The orders

were randomly assigned to each participant in a way that was balanced across gender,

age and language groups.

The screen was always up before the start of every trial. The experimenter

asked the child to pick a toy from the bag. While seated behind the screen equidistant

from the two boxes, she hid the toy carefully to minimize any sound or movement that

might indicate the correct location of the toy. The experimenter glanced at a mirror

located at one side of the room a few times to check that the child did not peek and

could not see her hiding actions. She positioned her chair according to the trial type

(e.g. stayed seated in the center if the trial was a body-centered trial, but moved her

chair inconspicuously behind the incorrect box if the trial was a body-biased trial.)

She then checked to make sure that the child was looking at her direction before

removing the screen and asked the child “Can you find it now?” (or “Can you find it

for me now?”) and pointed to or looked at the correct box while she spoke. If the

child were not looking at the experimenter’s direction before removing the screen, she

would call out the child’s name to get his or her attention before proceeding. She held

her gestures while the child made a choice. The decision rule for the children having

made a choice was when they moved a lid on either of the boxes. Pilot trials revealed

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that most children, upon having chosen the empty box, naturally approached the

second (correct) box to retrieve the toy without prompting. So, to standardize the

procedure, all children were encouraged to retrieve the toy from the second box if the

initial box was an empty one (e.g. “Where is the toy?”) After the toy was retrieved, the

child was praised and encouraged to slide the toy into the chute. This procedure was

repeated for the remaining trials.

Session 2 – playing the game 3-4 weeks later. The same children were

brought back about 3-4 weeks later and asked to play the same game again. For

Session 2, the game was already set up and the experimenter proceeded with one

warm up trial and eight test trials in the same order the child had in Session 1.

Results and discussion

Session 1. In each of the four types of test trials, children were given a score of

from 0 to 2 that reflected the number of times they successfully selected the correct

box. Table 7 presents the average total number of times (out of 2) a child chose the

correct box in each trial type by condition. Preliminary analyses revealed no effect of

order or gender, so they were combined in subsequent analyses.

As our earlier study using a similar game procedure found that bilingual

children were performed better than monolingual children only in the most

challenging trial type: body-biased gaze trials (Yow & Markman, 2009a), we

predicted that children in the experimental condition, who experienced a

communication challenge of a bilingual nature, would also perform better than

children in the control condition in the body-biased gaze trials only.

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A 2 (type of cue: point vs. gaze) x 2 (body position: centered vs. biased) x 2

(condition: control vs. experimental) x 2 (age: 3-year-old vs. 4-year-old) repeated

measures ANOVA was conducted. There was a significant main effect of type of

cue, F(1,60) = 7.54, p < .01. Children performed better when the cue provided was a

point rather than gaze, suggesting that gaze is a more subtle communicative gesture

than the point (see Table 7). Unexpectedly, there was a significant main effect of

condition, F(1,60) = 19.54, p < .001. Children in the experimental condition who

heard a mixed utterance of English and Japanese performed better across all test trial-

types than children in the control condition who heard just English. There was also a

significant interaction between type of cue, body position and condition, F(1,60) =

4.91, p < .05. Post-hoc independent sample t-tests showed that children in the

experimental condition performed significantly better than children in the control

condition in the body-centered point and body-biased gaze trials (t(62) = 3.70, p <

.001, t(62) = 3.70, p < .001 respectively), marginal in body-centered gaze trials (t(62)

= 1.70, p < .10), but not significantly different in the body-biased point trials (t(62) =

1.17, p > .10). No other significant differences were found.

We also compared performance against chance. Children in the control

condition chose the correct box significantly above chance in the body-biased point

trials (t(31) = 3.00, p < .01), but were at chance in the other three types of trials (body-

centered point: t(31) = 1.65, p > .10; body-centered gaze: t(31) = .83, p > .10, and

body-biased gaze: t(31) = -0.30, p > .10). Again, this was unexpected, as monolingual

children in our earlier study were above chance in all trial types except the body-

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biased gaze trials. In contrast, children in the experimental condition chose the correct

box significantly above chance in all trial-types ((all ps < .001).

Point Gaze

Body-centered Body-biased Body-centered Body-biased

Session 1

Control 1.21 (.71) 1.38 (.69) 1.09 (.65) 0.97 (.61)

Experimental 1.78 (.44) 1.59 (.57) 1.41 (.57) 1.53 (.63)

Session 2

Control 1.69 (.47) 1.59 (.57) 1.52 (.51) 1.14 (.74)

Experimental 1.70 (.60) 1.60 (.62) 1.60 (.56) 1.50 (.57)

Yow & Markman (2009a)

Monolingual 1.58 (.65) 1.63 (.49) 1.58 (.50) 1.08 (.72)

Bilingual 1.71 (.46) 1.63 (.49) 1.42 (.72) 1.58 (.50)

Table 7. Means and standard deviations (in parentheses) of correct responses (out of

2) in Study 5.

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Session 2. Children were brought back for Session 2 to play the game

approximately one month later (M = 23.95 days, SD = 2.64). A 2 (type of cue: point

vs. gaze) x 2 (body position: centered vs. biased) x 2 (condition: control vs.

experimental) x 2 (age: 3-year-old vs. 4-year-old) repeated measures ANOVA was

conducted. There was a significant main effect of type of cue, F(1,55) = 8.19, p < .01.

Children performed better when the cue provided was a point rather than gaze,

suggesting again that gaze is a more subtle communicative gesture than the point.

There was a significant main effect of body position, F(1,55) = 6.66, p < .05. Children

performed better when the cue was provided in a centered position rather than in a

biased position. There was also a significant interaction effect between cue and age,

F(1,55) = 6.47, p < .05. Post-hoc t-tests showed that older children performed

similarly as the younger children when the cue was a point but were better than the

younger children when the cue was a gaze, t(57) = .92, p > .10 for point and t(57) = -

2.02, p < .05 for gaze (3-year-old: point M = 1.70, SD = .43, gaze M = 1.32, SD = .52;

4-year-old: point M = 1.59, SD = .52, gaze M = 1.57, SD = .44). No other significant

effects were found. However, planned t-tests conducted for condition by cue by

position revealed that children in the control condition were similar in performance as

children in the experimental condition for all trial types except the body-biased gaze

trials (t(57) = -2.24, p < .05; for all other trial types, ps > .10). In other words,

children in the experimental condition performed significantly better than children in

the control condition during Session 2 only in the most challenging trial type: body-

biased gaze trials. This pattern of results is similar to our earlier study where we

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found that 3- and 4-year-old bilinguals performed significantly better than

monolinguals only in the body-biased gaze trials (see Table 7).

We also compared performance against chance. Children in the control

condition chose the correct box significantly above chance in all trial types except the

body-biased gaze trials (body-centered point: t(28) = 7.89, p < .001; body-biased

point: t(28) = 5.56, p < .001; body-centered gaze: t(28) = 5.48, p < .001; body-biased

gaze trials: t(28) = 1.00, p > .10). Again, this pattern of results is similar to the

monolingual children in our earlier study. In contrast, children in the experimental

condition chose the correct box significantly above chance in all trial-types (all ps <

.001).

We also compared performance in Session 1 with Session 2 (to see if there is a

general improvement or whether the benefit specific to experimental condition

persisted beyond immediate context). A 2 (type of cue: point vs. gaze) x 2 (body

position: centered vs. biased) x 2 (condition: control vs. experimental) x 2 (time: time

1 vs. time 2) repeated measures ANOVA was conducted. There was a significant main

effect of time, F(1,57) = 12.36, p < .01. Children performed better in Session 2 than

Session 1, suggesting that all children learned and benefited from the familiarity of the

game. There was a significant interaction effect between time and condition, F(1,57)

= 7.41, p < .05. Children in the control condition performed significantly better in time

2 than time 1, whereas performance of children in the experimental condition

remained the same. No other significant effects of time were found.

In sum, preschoolers successfully used a speaker’s cues such as pointing and

gaze to locate hidden objects, but they found it generally more challenging when the

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gesture provided was gaze instead of a point. Most importantly, we found that

children who had experienced communication failure earlier were overall better able

to utilize the speaker’s cues in the context of a hiding game than children who had no

communication failure (Session 1). However, this overall advantage diminished after

one month for all trial types except the most challenging trial: body-biased gaze trials

(Session 2). In other words, children who did not experience communication failure

were now performing just as well as children who had prior experience of

communication failure in most trials, but remained relatively unsuccessful in the most

challenging trials that children at this age were previously shown to have difficulty

with. In contrast, children who had prior experience of communication failure

remained able to utilize the experimenter’s cues successfully to locate a hidden toy in

these challenging trials.

The results suggested that the experience of communication failure, at least of

a bilingual nature, may have increased children’s sensitivity to a speaker’s

communicative cues and influenced them to use these cues effectively to determine a

speaker’s communicative intent in the immediate context of the game. Note, however,

that (monolingual) children in the control condition, who did not experience

communication failure of a bilingual nature, performed worse than monolingual

children in our earlier study in most trial types (Yow & Markman, 2009a). One

possible explanation is that the experimenter’s “overly helpful” behavior during the set

up of the game in the context of a familiar language (repeated points and moved body

an attempt to disambiguate an unambiguous referent at each “helping” trial) might

have induced an expectation of the experimenter to continue such “helpful” behavior

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during the game. Therefore, it is plausible that when the experimenter did not

continue to show clear, unambiguous cues during the game, children in the control

condition were negatively affected by this “sudden” absence of supporting cues and

did not perform well across all trial types. Besides familiarity of the game, this is also

a possible reason why children in the control condition were able to perform as well as

monolingual children in our previous study in Session 2 (but not Session 1), because

they were asked to play the game without the need to help the experimenter to set up

the game.

Thus, these findings suggested that the overall impact of communication

challenge on children’s sensitivity to a speaker’s cues in Session 1 was rather transient

and fragile, as this overall level of heightened awareness was no longer distinguishing

the two groups of children’s performance after one month. Yet, most importantly,

despite an increased in familiarity of the game in Session 2, children who had prior

experiences of a communication failure (of a bilingual nature) one month ago

continued to perform better than children without such prior experience in the most

challenging trial type: body-biased gaze trials in Session 2. This result is strikingly

similar to our earlier study using the same game procedure (Yow and Markman,

2009a), where we found that 3- and 4-year-old bilinguals performed significantly

better than monolinguals only in the body-biased gaze trials. This suggests that the

experience of a communication breakdown (of a bilingual nature) plays an important

role in heightening children’s sensitivity to a speaker’s communicative cues in a bid to

maintain communicative effectiveness.

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CHAPTER 3

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The present research examined how monolingual and bilingual children differ

in their ability to integrate multiple cues to understand a speaker’s referential intent,

and how the experience of a communication breakdown may increase children’s

sensitivity to communicative cues. The research seeks to understand the contribution

of experience (growing up bilingual) in children’s cognitive development. More

specifically, I used childhood bilingualism as a natural experiment to examine the role

of experience in communicative challenges in developing skills needed to accurately

interpret a speaker’s referential intent. In this section of the paper, I first summarize

the findings I have found in my research, and then put forward an argument of the role

of experience in developing skills via self-generated efforts to cope with

communicative challenges. Finally, I will end the paper with a conclusion of this

dissertation research.

Summary of Findings

Study 1 investigated whether monolingual and bilingual children were able to

integrate a speaker’s eye gaze, context of the speaker’s perceptual access, and

semantics of an utterance in order to respond correctly to the speaker’s request. Pairs

of novel objects were placed in a speaker’s absence, such that one of the objects was

visible to both the child and the speaker, but the other one was only visible to the child

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(contextual cue). When the speaker returned, she looked at the mutually visible object

(eye gaze cue) and requested for an object using a novel label by either saying

“There’s the [novel word]!” or “Where’s the [novel word]?” (semantics cue). This task

required children to integrate the above cues to understand which object the speaker is

referring to, such that we should expect that the speaker is referring to the mutually

visible object when she looked at it and said “there”, but that the speaker is looking for

the other one that she could not see when she said “where”. Results indicated that

bilingual children were better able to modulate the use of these communicative cues as

a function of other co-occurring cues compared to their monolingual counterparts.

While all children picked the visible object equally often when the speaker said

“there”, bilingual children were more likely than monolingual children to pick the

other object not looked at when the speaker said “where”, suggesting that bilingual

children were better at integrating multiple cues, such as context, eye gaze, and

semantics to understand a speaker’s referential intent.

Study 2 examined whether additional information may guide monolingual

children to successfully integrate these cues under similar situations. Extra cues

included a questioning gesture, an extra searching look, or both the questioning

gesture and searching looking. Results indicated that monolingual children benefited

only when two cues were presented in concerted effort, but not when only one cue was

presented.

Study 3 drew upon similar tasks as Study 1 but included an additional cue,

tone of voice, such that a speaker said “where” in either a serious, genuine manner, or

a playful, pedagogical manner. Integrating the speaker’s context, eye gaze, and

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semantics of the utterance and tone of voice thus implied that the speaker was

sincerely looking for the hidden object that she could not see when she asked “where”

in a serious, genuine manner but that she wanted the child to pick the object she was

looking at when she asked “where” in a playful, pedagogical way (just as adults do

when reading picture books to children). We found that while monolingual and

bilingual 4-year-old children were equally likely to select the hidden object when

asked “where” in a serious, genuine manner, bilingual children were more likely than

monolingual children to select the mutually visible object when asked “where” in a

playful, pedagogical manner.

Study 4 examined how children make use of communicative cues such as hand

gestures with co-occurring speech cues (order-of-mention) to infer a target object in

face of an ambiguous pronoun. Children were shown pairs of animal characters

pictures (same gender) and they heard stories about the two characters doing some

reciprocal action. The experimenter either provided a co-referential localizing gesture

that was consistent with the first- or second-mentioned character, or none at all while

telling the stories. Children were asked to determine which character an ambiguous

(gender) pronoun referred to. Children, monolingual and bilingual alike, chose the

first-mentioned character more when the gesture was targeted at the first-mentioned

character than when it was not. However, bilingual children showed more adult-like

pattern of responses than monolingual children, including a burgeoning order-of-

mention bias and differentiated responses when order-of-mention bias conflicted with

gesture. In sum, bilingual children indicated a greater level of sensitivity to the

experimenter’s gesture than monolingual children.

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Study 5 examined how the experience of a communication breakdown (of a

bilingual nature) may increase children’s sensitivity to communicative cues. This is

achieved by introducing a communication breakdown that is typically present in a

bilingual environment (language mixing) to induce a state of uncertainty as to what the

speaker is talking about, and then introducing a situation where there is a need to make

use of the speaker’s cues (e.g. pointing and eye gaze) to locate a hidden object. The

same children were followed up about one month later to examine whether such

benefit (if any) would extend to performance of task after a period of delay. In sum,

children who had experienced a communicative challenge (experimental condition)

immediately performed better across almost all test trial-types than children in the

control condition who heard just English. However, this effect was transient, in the

sense that about one month later, this overall heightened sensitivity was no longer

distinguishing the two groups of children’s performance. Rather, a certain level of

consolidation seemed to have taken place, such that performance of children in the

control condition have improved over time, but children’s (experimental condition)

heightened level of sensitivity to a speaker’s cues held up in the most challenging

trials. This pattern of results was similar to our earlier study where we found that

bilingual children performed better than monolingual children in a similar game only

in the most challenging trials.

Self-Generated Efforts to Maintain Communicative Effectiveness

These studies support the argument that there are circumstances where

attunement to social cues to understand a speaker’s intent is heightened due to the

116

demands of the social environment one is in. More specifically, growing up in an

environment where a child hears people speaking more than one language presents a

unique yet sustained challenge of understanding ambiguous referents in a social

interaction and intensifies the need to avoid communication breakdown. This

heightened need to communicate successfully may elicit self-generated efforts to

monitor the communicative requirements of the socio-linguistic context. For example,

bilingual children may experience a greater chance of a communication breakdown

due to language choice compared to monolingual children. Bilingual children may

have to constantly monitor the dynamic communicative situation to determine what

language a given speaker is using and what the speaker is referring to, in part to deal

with these challenges. The argument is that by being sensitive to the communicative

context, cues about the speaker’s behaviors, and a speaker’s state of knowledge and

dispositions, children can substantially narrow down the plausible referential intents of

a speaker and consequently be successful in their communicative efforts. Hence, such

self-generated efforts to maintain communicative effectiveness may result in a greater

awareness in bilingual children to the social, pragmatic and communicative contexts

surrounding language use, such as a heightened sensitivity to communicative cues that

indicate the speaker’s referential intent.

This emphasis on the role that self-generated efforts play in promoting

development differs from the more usual emphasis on the role of experience and input.

The influence of input on children’s cognitive and linguistic development in general is

well documented. For example, there is a substantial relationship between the

quantity, lexical richness, and sentence complexity of mothers’ speech to their

117

children and the vocabulary and syntactic growth and linguistic processing in young

children (e.g. Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff, 2003; ; Hurtado, Marchman & Fernald,

2008; Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer, & Lyons, 1991; Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva,

Cymerman, & Levine, 2002; Pan, Rowe, Singer, & Snow, 2005). In addition, children

whose parents more frequently use and explain mental state terms in conversations

with them develop an understanding of theory of mind at an earlier age (e.g. Garner,

Jones, Gaddy, & Rennie, 1997; Ruffman, Slade, & Crowe, 2002; Wellman, 1990;

Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). Thus, there is little doubt that input can be a

critical factor in understanding others and developing language skills.

I would like to emphasize that experience also fosters development in another

critical way: skills gained via self-generated attempts to cope with challenges that

children regularly face. Take for example, the bilingual advantage in inhibitory

control that was discussed earlier in this paper. The proposed mechanism is that in

order to use the appropriate language in the right context, bilingual children often have

to, of their own accord, suppress one language in order to use the other. The regular

practice of suppressing interference from one language while communicating in

another yields considerable prowess in executive functioning. These advances in

inhibitory control skills are gained largely due to bilingual children’s own efforts to

communicate in the appropriate language.

Similarly, I propose that the advantages found in bilingual children’s use of

referential gestures is a result not of differences in input per se, but of their self-

generated attempts to communicate successfully. For example in Study 5, the amount

of referential gesture provided to children with or without experience of

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communication failure was the same, but children with experience of communication

failure of a bilingual nature became more attuned to the speaker’s gestures than

children with no such experience. Hence, it may be considered that the amount of

input, for example a speaker’s use of pointing, eye gaze, or other gestures, may not

substantially differ between monolinguals and bilinguals, but rather, bilingual children

become more vigilant in trying to avoid communicative breakdown and thereby have

more practice in monitoring and assessing a wider range of communicative cues.

However, there are no studies to date that provide insights about the nonverbal aspects

of communication in a bilingual environment, that is, whether bilingual children were

indeed exposed to a greater amount of input or were given more scaffolding in using

communicative cues compared to monolingual children. Further studies would be

needed to examine this argument in greater detail.

One interesting question that remains is in what way such a need to avoid

communicative breakdown is unique to bilinguals. For example, monolingual

children frequently experiences communication breakdown when learning new labels

to novel objects. Are there specific types of communication breakdown that are more

crucial than others in this process, such as those specific to the bilingual experience

(e.g. mixing foreign words in an English utterance) versus those that are general in a

communication process (e.g. ambiguous reference, “Can you give that to me?”)

Similarly, there is a need to determine the nature of such communication breakdown,

such as whether this experience is person-specific or situation-specific. For example,

does the increased sensitivity apply only to the person with whom a child has prior

communication breakdown, or does the experience of communication breakdown

119

induce an overall heightened sensitivity to any subsequent speaker? Further studies

will provide important insights to these questions.

In sum, my research has found that bilingual children are more effective than

monolingual children in integrating various communicative cues to understand a

speaker’s communicative intent. Such successful use of communicative cues could be

due to bilingual children’s more sophisticated understanding of the use of multiple

cues in a socio-communicative context rather than a simple reliance on a single cue

regardless. Most importantly, children who experienced communicative challenges of

a bilingual nature were found to be better than children who had no such prior

experience to use a speaker’s communicative cues to determine the speaker’s

communicative intent. Such sensitivity continued to persist in the more challenging

task even one month after the initial experience of communicative challenges.

Hence, my research suggests that experience with communication failure (such

as those of a bilingual nature) may increase children’s efforts to monitor and utilize

various communicative cues in order to avoid further communication failure. This

may heighten children’s sensitivity to nonverbal communicative cues, foster a more

sophisticated interpretation of the communicative context, and contribute overall to the

development of communicative competence in children.

120

CHAPTER 4

REFERENCES

Appendices

Appendix A: Language Questionnaire

Please kindly answer the following questions (and return it by either dropping it into the marked envelope provided near the entrance of the classroom or handing it to the Head Teacher) Name of child: _____________________ Birthdate:_____________________ Birthplace: ________________________ Class: __________________ Name of parent: ____________________ Date of completion:______________ (1) How many languages (both past and current) are your child learned/exposed to?

________________ (2) For EACH language as per (1), write down the approximate age that your child

was first exposed to it and the context in which your child was exposed to.

Language Age first exposed

With whom or where? (You can check more than one)

1.

! ! ! ! ! ! Mother Father Grandparents Caregiver School Others:__

2.

! ! ! ! ! ! Mother Father Grandparents Caregiver School Others:__

3.

! ! ! ! ! ! Mother Father Grandparents Caregiver School Others:__

121

(3) For a typical week, estimate how much time (%) your child hears and/or speaks a language (if more than one language, they should add up to 100%)

Language 1. ______ % 2. ______ % 3. ______ % Total = 100 %

(4) What languages do you, your spouse and/or caretaker speak, and how proficient?

Language(s) Proficiency (please circle for each lang) Not Moderately Very Proficient Proficient Proficient

Mother: 1.

2.

3.

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

Father: 1.

2.

3.

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

Caretaker: 1.

2.

3.

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

122

Appendix B: List of Sentences Used in Study 4

1) Ms Ducky is going out with Ms Owl. Ms Ducky/Owl wants the bag. (practice)

2) Mr Teddy is playing cowboy with Mr Penguin. Mr Teddy/Penguin wants the

rope. (practice)

3) Ms Kitty is at school with Ms Chicky. She wants the book.

4) Mr Bear is playing outside with Mr Piggy. He wants the ball.

5) Ms Reindeer is going to a birthday party with Ms Bear. She wants the present.

6) Mr Racoon is having lunch with Mr Doggy. He wants the picnic basket.

7) Mr Froggy is getting ready for school with Mr Panda. He wants the sweater.

8) Ms Bunny is going to the beach with Ms Bear. She wants the sunglasses.

9) Mr Doggy is getting ready to bed with Mr Froggy. He wants the pajamas.

10) Ms Mousie is getting dressed with Ms Reindeer. She wants the hat.

11) Ms Kitty is taking a bath with Ms Bunny. She wants the towel.

12) Mr Panda is cleaning the house with Mr Piggy. He wants the broom.

13) Ms Chicky is taking a picture with Ms Mousie. She wants the camera.

14) Mr Racoon is playing music with Mr Bear. He wants the guitar.

123

Appendix C: List of Sentences Used in Study 5

Control Condition:

1) Can you bring me the big piece of cardboard please? 2) Can you help me put this cardboard in this slot please? 3) Can you bring me the two silver & blue boxes please? 4) Can you help me put this box on the table please? Experimental Condition:

1) Can you bring me the "oh-ki-na a-tsu-ga-mi" please? (ohkina = big) (atsugami = cardboard) 2) Can you help me put "ko-no a-tsu-ga-mi” in this ‘ha-ko" please? (kono = this) (hako = box) 3) Can you bring me "fu-ta-tsu-no ha-ko" please? (futatsu = two) 4) Can you help me put "ko-no ha-ko" on the "tsu-ku-e" please? (tsukue = table)

124

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