Bilingual Infants Demonstrate Advantages in Learning Words in a Third Language

Prior research suggests that bilingualism may endow infants with greater phonological flexibility. This study investigated whether this flexibility facilitates word learning in additional languages (n=96). Experiment 1 compared 18- to 20-month-old monolingual (English) and bilingual (English/Mandarin) infants on their ability to learn words distinguished by click consonants from a Southern African language, Ndebele. English-Mandarin bilingual infants were sensitive to Ndebele click contrasts, but monolingual English infants were not. In Experiments 2a and 2b, we investigated whether enhanced bilingual sensitivity extended to analogous nonlinguistic labels: hand claps and finger snaps. Although discriminated by infants, neither group distinguished words labeled by hand claps and finger snaps. Results suggest that bilingual infants' sustained openness to non native contrast may facilitate the uptake of words in distant languages.