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Background and aims The increase in the number of people who require bilingual and multilingual speech-language intervention justifies reviewing the current practices of Speech-Language Therapists (SLTs), who are ethically responsible for providing the best possible evidence-based intervention to the families with whom they work. There is, therefore, a clear need to competently serve populations with linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds. The goal of this work was to document the beliefs, needs and practices of SLTs in Spain, as well as to obtain a deeper understanding of linguistic, cultural and professional competencies from the perspective of SLTs. Method Based on previous work in other countries, a questionnaire was designed to study multilingual and multicultural speech-language intervention in Spain. The sample consisted of 208 SLTs working with a diverse population across regions of Spain. Results Eighty-four percent of the survey respondents reported that they speak more than one language, but only 56% considered themselves bilingual; 77% reported having faced the challenge of working with multilingual people; 86% reported that they had not received training focused on this diversity and 92% reported that they lacked resources for conducting bilingual speech and language evaluations. Nevertheless, there were significant differences in the beliefs and practices when bilingual and monolingual SLTs were compared. Conclusions This work, with results similar to those of previous studies, provides a first step for designing methods, policies and resources to improve professional competencies and multilingual practices. Several challenges for SLTs facing this new social reality are discussed.

We evaluated the impact of exposure to a second language on infants’ emerging speech production skills. We compared speech produced by three groups of 12-month-old infants while they interacted with interlocutors who spoke to them in Spanish and English: monolingual English-learning infants who had previously received 5 hours of exposure to a second language (Spanish), English- and Spanish-learning simultaneous bilinguals, and monolingual English-learning infants without any exposure to Spanish. Our results showed that the monolingual English-learning infants with short-term exposure to Spanish and the bilingual infants, but not the monolingual English-learning infants without exposure to Spanish, flexibly matched the prosody of their babbling to that of a Spanish- or English-speaking interlocutor. Our findings demonstrate the nature and extent of benefits for language learning from early exposure to two languages. We discuss the implications of these findings for language organization in infants learning two languages.

Infants learn phonetic information from a second language with live-person presentations, but not television or audio-only recordings. To understand the role of social interaction in learning a second language, we examined infants’ joint attention with live, Spanish-speaking tutors and used a neural measure of phonetic learning. Infants’ eye-gaze behaviors during Spanish sessions at 9.5 – 10.5 months of age predicted second-language phonetic learning, assessed by an event-related potential (ERP) measure of Spanish phoneme discrimination at 11 months. These data suggest a powerful role for social interaction at the earliest stages of learning a new language.

Language experience ‘narrows’ speech perception by the end of infants’ first year, reducing discrimination of non-native phoneme contrasts while improving native-contrast discrimination. Previous research showed that declines in non-native discrimination were reversed by second-language experience provided at 9–10 months, but it is not known whether second-language experience affects first-language speech sound processing. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we examined learning-related changes in brain activity to Spanish and English phoneme contrasts in monolingual English-learning infants pre- and post-exposure to Spanish from 9.5 to 10.5 months of age. Infants showed a significant discriminatory ERP response to the Spanish contrast at 11 months (post-exposure), but not at 9 months (pre-exposure). The English contrast elicited an earlier discriminatory response at 11 months than at 9 months, suggesting improvement in native-language processing. The results show that infants rapidly encode new phonetic information, and that improvement in native speech processing can occur during second-language learning in infancy.

Infants' speech perception skills show a dual change towards the end of the first year of life. Not only does non-native speech perception decline, as often shown, but native language speech perception skills show improvement, reflecting a facilitative effect of experience with native language. The mechanism underlying change at this point in development, and the relationship between the change in native and non-native speech perception, is of theoretical interest. As shown in new data presented here, at the cusp of this developmental change, infants' native and non-native phonetic perception skills predict later language ability, but in opposite directions. Better native language skill at 7.5 months of age predicts faster language advancement, whereas better non-native language skill predicts slower advancement. We suggest that native language phonetic performance is indicative of neural commitment to the native language, while non-native phonetic performance reveals un committed neural circuitry. This paper has three goals: (i) to review existing models of phonetic perception development, (ii) to present new event-related potential data showing that native and non-native phonetic perception at 7.5 months of age predicts language growth over the next 2 years, and (iii) to describe a revised version of our previous model, the native language magnet model, expanded (NLM-e). NLM-e incorporates five new principles. Specific testable predictions for future research programmes are described.

Behavioral studies have demonstrated that children develop a nearly adult-like grammar between 36 and 42 months, but few studies have addressed how the child's brain processes semantic versus syntactic information. In previous research, Silva-Pereyra and colleagues showed that distinct event-related potentials (ERPs) are elicited by semantic and syntactic violations in sentences in children as young as 30, 36, and 48 months, following the patterns displayed by adults. In the current study, we examined ERPs to syntactic phrase structure violations in real and jabberwocky sentences in 36-month-old children. Jabberwocky sentences are sentences in which content (open-class) words are replaced by pseudowords while function (closed-class) words are retained. Results showed that syntactically anomalous real sentences elicited two positive ERP effects: left-distributed effects from 500 to 750 msec and 1050 to 1300 msec, whereas syntactically anomalous jabberwocky sentences elicited two negative ERP effects: a left-distributed effect from 750 to 900 msec and a later broadly distributed effect from 950 to 1150 msec. The results indicate that when preschoolers process real English sentences, ERPs resembling the positive effects previously reported for adults are noted, although at longer latencies and with broader scalp distributions. However, when preschoolers process jabberwocky sentences with altered lexical-semantic content, a negative-going ERP component similar to one typically associated with the extraction of meaning is noted.

Infant bilingualism offers a unique opportunity to study the relative effects of language experience and maturation on brain development, with each child serving as his or her own control. Event-related potentials (ERPs) to words were examined in 19- to 22-month-old English-Spanish bilingual toddlers. The children's dominant vs. nondominant languages elicited different patterns of neural activity in the lateral asymmetry of an early positive component (P100), and the latencies and distributions of ERP differences to known vs. unknown words from 200-400 and 400-600 ms. ERP effects also differed for 'high' and 'low' vocabulary groups based on total conceptual vocabulary scores. The results indicate that the organization of language-relevant brain activity is linked to experience with language rather than brain maturation.

Language experience ‘narrows’ speech perception by the end of infants’ first year, reducing discrimination of non-native phoneme contrasts while improving native-contrast discrimination. Previous research showed that declines in non-native discrimination were reversed by second-language experience provided at 9–10 months, but it is not known whether second-language experience affects first-language speech sound processing. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we examined learning-related changes in brain activity to Spanish and English phoneme contrasts in monolingual English-learning infants pre- and post-exposure to Spanish from 9.5–10.5 months of age. Infants showed a significant discriminatory ERP response to the Spanish contrast at 11 months (post-exposure), but not at 9 months (pre-exposure). The English contrast elicited an earlier discriminatory response at 11 months than at 9 months, suggesting improvement in native-language processing. The results show that infants rapidly encode new phonetic information, and that improvement in native speech processing can occur during second-language learning in infancy.

The development of speech perception during the 1st year reflects increasing attunement to native language features, but the mechanisms underlying this development are not completely understood. One previous study linked reductions in nonnative speech discrimination to performance on nonlinguistic tasks, whereas other studies have shown associations between speech perception and vocabulary growth. The present study examined relationships among these abilities in 11-month-old infants using a conditioned head-turn test of native and nonnative speech sound discrimination, nonlinguistic object-retrieval tasks requiring attention and inhibitory control, and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (L. Fenson et al., 1993). Native speech discrimination was positively linked to receptive vocabulary size but not to the cognitive control tasks, whereas nonnative speech discrimination was negatively linked to cognitive control scores but not to vocabulary size. Speech discrimination, vocabulary size, and cognitive control scores were not associated with more general cognitive measures. These results suggest specific relationships between domain-general inhibitory control processes and the ability to ignore variation in speech that is irrelevant to the native language and between the development of native language speech perception and vocabulary.

Studies using the English and Spanish MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories demonstrated that the grammatical abilities of 20-30-month-old bilingual children were related more strongly to same-language vocabulary development than to broader lexical-conceptual development or maturation. First, proportions of different word types in each language varied with same-language vocabulary size. Second, individual changes in predicate and closed class word proportion scores were linked to growth in same-language vocabulary but not to total conceptual vocabulary. Third, increases in English utterance length and English and Spanish sentence complexity were related to growth in same-language vocabulary but not to growth in conceptual vocabulary. Increases in Spanish utterance length were linked to growth in both Spanish vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary. Possible mechanisms underlying these patterns are considered.

Previous behavioral studies have shown improved sensitivity to native‐language contrasts and reduced sensitivity to non‐native phonetic contrasts when comparing 6–8‐ and 10–12‐month‐old monolingual infants. It has been argued that exposure to language dedicates neural networks to the acoustic properties of native‐language speech, and that, in adulthood, this commitment interferes with nonnative speech processing [native language neural commitment or (NLNC)]. There are very few studies on how early speech perception in bilinguals relates to future language advancement. Recently it has been shown that infants’ early native‐language speech perception skill predicts their later success at language acquisition. In the present investigation, we examined how brain measures of speech perception in bilingual infants and socio‐cultural factors of their environment predict later vocabulary growth. Our results showed excellent neural discrimination of both English and Spanish phonetic contrasts in 12‐month‐old infant...

Kuhl et al. [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 100, 9096–9101 (2003)] showed that the decline in the discrimination of non‐native perceptual contrasts observed during development can be reversed with short‐term exposure to a non‐native language. In this poster, the question of whether short‐term exposure also impacts the speech produced by infants is addressed. For this purpose, 9–10‐month‐old infants from monolingual English‐speaking households were exposed to Spanish for a total of 5 h over 6 weeks (12 25‐min sessions). At the end of this exposure, babbling data were collected from the infants in two sessions with (a) an English‐speaking parent and (b) a Spanish‐speaking research assistant. In this experiment, adult listeners were tested in their ability to identify the babbling produced by these infants as English or Spanish. Canonical syllables and multi‐syllabic utterances from these sessions were played to adult native speakers of English and Spanish, who identified the tokens as English or Spanish using a forced‐choice paradigm. Results will be discussed in the context of the literature on short‐term exposure as well as the effects of social interactions on language acquisition.

Previous research has linked increasing cognitive abilities to reductions in sensitivity to nonnative phonemes toward the end of the first year, but found no association between cognitive skills and native speech perception (Conboy et al., 2006; Lalonde & Werker, 1995). The present study examined cognitive abilities and brain activity to second‐language (L2) phoneme contrasts in infants who had short‐term experience with the L2: we predicted better cognitive skills in infants with better discrimination of the L2 contrast. Seventeen infants from monolingual English homes completed event‐related potential (ERP) speech perception testing and nonlinguistic tasks requiring attentional flexibility, memory, and inhibitory control at 11 months, after twelve Spanish play sessions from 9.5 ‐ 10.5 months. An ERP oddball paradigm assessed discrimination of English and Spanish contrasts (English: voiced /da/ vs. voiceless‐aspirated [tha]; Spanish: prevoiced /da/ vs. voiceless‐unaspirated /ta/). Infants showed broad mi...

Speech perception during the first year reflects increasing attunement to native language phonetic features, but the mechanisms underlying this development are not well understood. Reductions in non‐native phonetic discrimination have been linked to improvement in native phonetic discrimination and later vocabulary growth (Kuhl et al., 2005), and performance on nonlinguistic tasks (Lalonde and Werker, 1995). The present study examined links between native and non‐native voice onset time discrimination, receptive vocabulary (MacArthur‐Bates CDI), and cognitive control abilities at 11 months. Infants (n=18) completed a double‐target conditioned head turn task and two nonlinguistic tasks requiring attentional control and resistance to irrelevant cues (means‐end and detour‐reaching object retrieval). Infants with CDI scores above the median showed higher native discrimination scores, t(16)=2.15 0.05, but no group differences for the nonnative contrast. Infants with scores above the median on either cognitive task showed worse discrimination of the nonnative contrast (means‐end, t(15)=2.27p0.04; detour‐reaching, t(15)=3.49, p.01), but no group differences for the native contrast. These results suggest that cognitive control plays a role in infants’ ability to ignore acoustic cues that are irrelevant to their native languages phonemic categories. [Work supported by NICHD (Grant HD37954) and a UW NSF Science of Learning Center Grant (LIFE).]