What Bilingual Babies Reveal About the Brain: Q&A with Psychologist Janet Werker
One of the most fascinating windows scientists have into the human mind comes from watching babies learn to interact with the world around them.
Janet Werker is a psychologist at Vancouver's University of British Columbia who studies how babies learn languages. Some of her recent work was aimed at investigating the claim that growing up bilingual can confuse a baby and make learning to speak more difficult. In fact, Werker and her colleagues found the opposite: Rather than causing any difficulties, learning two languages at once may confer cognitive advantages to babies, including not just special auditory sensitivity, but enhanced visual sensitivity as well.
LiveScience spoke to Werker at the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., about what bilingual children can teach us about how the mind works.
Why can babies learn second languages without "foreign" accents, but adults rarely can?
I would not take this statement for granted. In the Netherlands most of the kids coming from Moroccan families do speak Dutch with a heavy accent.
@FiorenzaMella
Janet Werker is a psychologist at Vancouver's University of British Columbia who studies how babies learn languages. Some of her recent work was aimed at investigating the claim that growing up bilingual can confuse a baby and make learning to speak more difficult. In fact, Werker and her colleagues found the opposite: Rather than causing any difficulties, learning two languages at once may confer cognitive advantages to babies, including not just special auditory sensitivity, but enhanced visual sensitivity as well.
LiveScience spoke to Werker at the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., about what bilingual children can teach us about how the mind works.
Why can babies learn second languages without "foreign" accents, but adults rarely can?
I would not take this statement for granted. In the Netherlands most of the kids coming from Moroccan families do speak Dutch with a heavy accent.
@FiorenzaMella
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