Author claims that twelve-month-olds understand that foreign languages can communicate

Voulez-vous jouer avec moi? Twelve-month-olds understand that foreign languages can communicate. Athena Vouloumanos. Cognition, Volume 173, April 2018, Pages 87–92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.01.002

Abstract: Infants understand that speech in their native language allows speakers to communicate. Is this understanding limited to their native language or does it extend to non-native languages with which infants have no experience? Twelve-month-old infants saw an actor, the Communicator, repeatedly select one of two objects. When the Communicator could no longer reach the target but a Recipient could, the Communicator vocalized a nonsense phrase either in English (infants’ native language), Spanish (rhythmically different), or Russian (phonotactically different), or hummed (a non-speech vocalization). Across all three languages, native and non-native, but not humming, infants looked longer when the Recipient gave the Communicator the non-target object. Although, by 12 months, infants do not readily map non-native words to objects or discriminate most non-native speech contrasts, they understand that non-native languages can transfer information to others. Understanding language as a tool for communication extends beyond infants’ native language: By 12 months, infants view language as a universal mechanism for transferring and acquiring new information.

Keywords: Language acquisition; Non-native language; Infant cognitive development; Communication; Speech perception