Vocalen uit canonieke babbels van Engels en Frans lerende jonge kinderen zijn geanalyseerd en vergeleken. De F1 en F2 zijn gemeten en spreidingsdiagrammen van deze formanten werden verkregen. Ook...Show moreVocalen uit canonieke babbels van Engels en Frans lerende jonge kinderen zijn geanalyseerd en vergeleken. De F1 en F2 zijn gemeten en spreidingsdiagrammen van deze formanten werden verkregen. Ook de vocaalratio is gemeten door de F1 door de F2 te delen. Zowel de verschillende vocalen als de gemiddelden van alle vocalen zijn geanalyseerd. Er zijn geen significante verschillen gevonden tussen de vocaalratio’s van de baby’s uit een Engelse taalomgeving en baby’s uit een Franse taalomgeving. Het resultaat van deze studie biedt steun voor de theorie dat babbelen vooral een universeel proces is, dat tot stand komt door de compositie van het spraakkanaal en de nog niet volledig ontwikkelde controle over taaluitingen en het spraakkanaal.Show less
Inconsistent findings in studies that have examined whether there is a bilingual cognitive advantage in comparison to monolinguals, have caused a bilingual advantage debate. In addition, the...Show moreInconsistent findings in studies that have examined whether there is a bilingual cognitive advantage in comparison to monolinguals, have caused a bilingual advantage debate. In addition, the available evidence in published work that bilinguals may have a cognitive advantage, may have resulted from publication bias. The aim of the present study was to see whether there is a bilingual advantage and whether there is a publication bias in the linguistic scientific world with regards to studies that used the Simon task to research the effect of bilingualism. Therefore, a meta-analysis was conducted and 40 Simon task studies were included. The findings of the meta-analysis resulted only in weak evidence for the bilingual advantage, since only a small effect size was found for bilinguals showing faster Reaction Times than monolinguals. Furthermore, evidence for a publication bias was found, but the Test for Moderators showed that studies earlier published are mostly contributing to the effect size. An explanation for this can be that these studies were conducted at the time when the common belief was that bilinguals had an advantage, resulting in the publication of only large, positive effect sizes.Show less
Would it not be great if any child could grow up bilingual? Because of the many benefits of bilingualism, a start-up company developed a program called TuMi Mundo that attempts to make it possible...Show moreWould it not be great if any child could grow up bilingual? Because of the many benefits of bilingualism, a start-up company developed a program called TuMi Mundo that attempts to make it possible for infants to acquire a second language via non-live exposure only. This study reflects on the first experiment to test if this is indeed possible. A Head Turn Preference Procedure was conducted to test the language preference of the infants after two months of near-daily exposure. Previous studies showed that monolinguals prefer their native language and bilinguals prefer both languages equally. We compared the babies exposed to the app with a monolingual control group and found that the exposed infants indeed showed no preference, but the monolinguals did neither. This lack of expected preference in the monolinguals makes the bilingual-like behavior of the exposed infants uninterpretable. The results of this study are therefore not enough to answer the question whether non-live exposure is enough to make an infant perceive the language as native.Show less
