Chair: Marc Brysbaert (Ghent University) People from non-dominant cultures often show a higher prevalence of multilingualism than people from dominant cultures, influenced by various socioeconomic factors. In addition, the presence of multiple official languages in many countries contributes to the widespread phenomenon of individuals acquiring additional languages. This in turn leads to a significant proportion of the world's population (estimated at more than 50 percent) being multilingual. This symposium presents recent research on the early stages of second language acquisition (both voluntary and involuntary) in children and explores the potential impact of this process on their broader developmental trajectory.
Out-of-school acquisition of English as a second language Vanessa De Wilde (Ghent University) Today’s omnipresence of English in many European countries provides an excellent context to investigate L2 learning in an informal setting. This presentation will look into young learners’ acquisition of English through out-of-school exposure. In the presentation I will discuss findings from various studies which investigated the influence of out-of-school exposure on L2 English learning in various contexts, both before and after the start of formal instruction. I will also discuss how the role of out-of-school learning is different for various L2s by comparing French and English learning in Flanders. The results of the studies showed that out-of-school exposure can have an important role in L2 English learning but also pointed to large differences between learners. The most beneficial types of input were gaming, computer use and contact with speakers of English. Results of other types of exposure were mixed. Longitudinal studies showed that this type of informal language learning had a large impact on young learners’ L2 English proficiency even after formal instruction had started.
Cognitive development as important piece of the language learning puzzle Eleonore H.M. Smalle (Ghent University, Tilburg University) Why do children learn language more easily than adults do? This puzzle has fascinated language scientists for decades. During the presentation, I will approach the language learning puzzle from a cognitive perspective that is inspired by evidence from the perceptual and motor learning literature. Recent neuroscientific studies show that two memory systems in the brain are involved in human learning, an early implicit procedural memory system and a late-developing cognitive or declarative memory system. We argue that higher cognitive development constrains implicit statistical learning processes that are essential for learning patterns and regularities in languages, that is, the adult cognitive architecture has a cost. This is supported by experimental evidence showing that the acquisition of implicit linguistic knowledge via auditory statistical language learning is enhanced in young adults under temporary conditions of cognitive fatigue, as well as in children and presumably also healthy cognitively aged adults (pilot data). More research is needed to test the cognitive cost hypothesis, as it could partly solve the language learning puzzle as well as explain individual differences in language development.
Multilingual experience is associated with better statistical language learning but also L1 interference Saara Kaskivuo (University of Helsinki) Prior language experience shapes statistical language learning (SLL). SLL performance is guided by familiar cues from L1 [1, 2, 3, 4] or even L2 [5]. Compared to monolinguals, multilingual experience facilitates SLL when cues are unfamiliar [6, 7] although results for general improvement of SL(L) are inconclusive (review: [8]). We investigated whether experience with more languages facilitates SLL when structure conflicts with participants’ native language. We recruited native Finnish-speaking participants (n = 61) with diverse multilingual experience for a visual SLL task containing items adhering and not adhering to vowel harmony, a prevalent phonotactic rule in Finnish. After an exposure of two minutes, we measured their performance in a serial recall task (see [9]). Our results showed that overall performance was positively correlated with multilingualism (r(59) = .42–.53, p < .001), and that performance with harmonious vs. nonharmonious items was better (t(60) = 7.63, p < .001). However, contrary to our hypothesis, the multilingual advantage was less pertinent with nonharmonious items, as the difference between harmonious-nonharmonious performance was also positively correlated with multilingualism (r(59) = .3–.33, p < .05). Thus, multilingual experience is associated with improved SLL but also stronger native language interference.
Are children with developmental or learning disorders more at risk in immersion education? Chloé Parmentier (Université catholique de Louvain) Arnaud Szmalec (Université catholique de Louvain, Ghent University) Although immersion education has gained much popularity worldwide, it is often regarded as an elitist approach focused on the cognitively most gifted children. Hence, the question whether this bilingual education method is also profitable for children with developmental disorders, remains largely unanswered. We conducted 2 studies in French-speaking Belgium investigating whether children with dyslexia (study 1) and children with AD(H)D (study 2) can also benefit from an immersion education experience or whether their reading or attention problems puts them more at risk. In study 1, 28 5th and 11th-grade children with diagnosed dyslexia and 112 matched controls were identified within a larger sample of participants. We compared immersed and non-immersed children with or without dyslexia, in terms of linguistic abilities and acquired academic content. In study 2, we recruited more than 50 5th and 6th-grade children with various attentional profiles, including AD(H)D. We assessed their attentional and executive control abilities in addition to their linguistic skills. Overall, our findings suggest that there is no measurable disadvantage for pupils with dyslexia or with attentional difficulties to attend immersion education, neither for foreign-language learning, nor for acquiring academic content. Also, we observed that immersion education did not exacerbate the reading or attentional problems of children with dyslexia or AD(H)D, respectively.