Download pdf
An Analysis by Comparing Monolingual and Multilingual Environment to Study Children’s First Language Acquisition
- 1 Singapore Institute of Management
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
The process of children language acquisition and relevant influence factors has attracted researchers and academician’s attention due to its implications for speech therapy and neurolinguistics. The process of children’s first language acquisition is a dynamic and complicated experience that involves multiple stages. This review examines these stages while considering the impact of language environment. Furthermore, it compares and contrasts research findings on children raised in monolingual and multilingual environments to analyze key influencing factors. The findings suggest that the multilingual environment is shaping the better cognitive and social-interactional development for kids, which make their language performance outstanding compared with monolingual kids. For filling the research gap in this region, the discussion part of this review explored the relationship between linguistic learning and socioeconomic status (SES). This paper also underscores a high SES background is having a positive impact on kid’s language development. This study focused on the background and psychological factors during language acquisition, which provide meaningful reference for further research in this field.
Keywords
first language acquisition, behaviourist theory, monolingual, multilingual, cognitive development
[1]. Hutauruk, B. S. (2015). Children first language acquisition at age 1-3 years old in balata. IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science (IOSR-JHSS), 20(8), 51-57.
[2]. Varshney, R. L. (2003). An Introductory Textbook of Linguistics & Phonetic. India: Student Store.
[3]. Chomsky, N. (2009). Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought (3rd ed.). America: Cambridge University Press.
[4]. Unsworth, S. (2013). Current issues in multilingual first language acquisition. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 33. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190513000044
[5]. Walker, D., & Carta, J. J. (2020). Intervention research to improve language-learning opportunities and address the inequities of the word gap. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 50, 1-5.
[6]. Kuhl, P., Conboy, B., Padden, D., Nelson, T., & Pruitt, J. (2005). Early speech perception and later language development: Implications for the "Critical Period". LANGUAGE LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT, 1, 237-264. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15473341lld0103&4_2
[7]. Kutlu, E., Baxelbaum, K., Sorensen, E., Oleson, J., & McMurray, B. (2024). Linguistic diversity shapes flexible speech perception in school-age children. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 28825.
[8]. Herman, H., Purba, R., Purba, N., Fatmawati, E., Saputra, N., & Van Thao, N. (2024). Investigating the bilingual acquisition of language acquired by an early aged child from social psychology: A case study. Revista iberoamericana de psicología del ejercicio y el deporte, 19(2), 202-207.
[9]. Brasileiro, I. (2009). The effects of bilingualism on children's perception of speech sounds. LOT.
[10]. Berk, S., & Lillo-Martin, D. (2012). The two-word stage: Motivated by linguistic or cognitive constraints? Cognitive Psychology, 65(1), 118-140.
[11]. McCarthy, K. M., Mahon, M., Rosen, S., & Evans, B. G. (2014). Speech perception and production by sequential bilingual children: A longitudinal study of voice onset time acquisition. Child Development, 85(5), 1965-1980.
[12]. Indeed Editorial Team. (2024). The 6 stages of language development and their importance. Indeed Career Guide. Retrieved from https://ca.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/stages-of-language-development
[13]. Tenés, L. S., Weiner-Bühler, J. C., Volpin, L., Grob, A., Skoruppa, K., & Segerer, R. K. (2023). Language proficiency predictors of code-switching behavior in dual-language-learning children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 26(5), 942-958.
[14]. Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Early language acquisition: Cracking the speech code. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 5(11), 831-843.
[15]. Lenneberg, E. H. (1967). Biological foundations of language.
[16]. Petitto, L. A., Katerelos, M., Levy, B. G., Gauna, K., Tétreault, K., & Ferraro, V. (2001). Bilingual signed and spoken language acquisition from birth: Implications for the mechanisms underlying early bilingual language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 28(2), 453-496.
[17]. Bialystok, E. (2001). Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy, and cognition. Cambridge University Press.
[18]. Pearson, B. Z., Fernández, S. C., & Oller, D. K. (1993). Lexical development in bilingual infants and toddlers: Comparison to monolingual norms. Language Learning, 43(1), 93-120.
[19]. Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984). Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development, 7(1), 49-63.
[20]. Werker, J. F., & Hensch, T. K. (2015). Critical periods in speech perception: New directions. Annual Review of Psychology, 66(1), 173-196.
[21]. Jusczyk, P. W. (1999). How infants begin to extract words from speech. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3(9), 323-328.
[22]. Weber, A., & Cutler, A. (2004). Lexical competition in non-native spoken-word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 50(1), 1-25.
[23]. Bosch, L. (2005). Phonology and bilingualism. In Handbook of Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Approaches (pp. 68-87).
[24]. Kovács, Á. M. (2009). Early bilingualism enhances mechanisms of false-belief reasoning. Developmental Science, 12(1), 48-54.
[25]. Fan, S. P., Liberman, Z., Keysar, B., & Kinzler, K. D. (2015). The exposure advantage: Early exposure to a multilingual environment promotes effective communication. Psychological Science, 26(6), 1030–1037.
[26]. Lanza, E. (1997). Language mixing in infant bilingualism: A sociolinguistic perspective. Oxford University Press.
[27]. Kaushanskaya, M., & Marian, V. (2009). Bilingualism reduces native-language interference during novel-word learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35(3), 829–835.
[28]. Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior. Appleton-Century-Crofts/INC.
[29]. Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Brookes Publishing.
[30]. Snow, C. E. (2010). Academic language and the challenge of reading for learning about science. Science, 328(5977), 450-452. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1182597
Cite this article
Liu,J. (2025). An Analysis by Comparing Monolingual and Multilingual Environment to Study Children’s First Language Acquisition. Advances in Social Behavior Research,16(2),25-29.
Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
Disclaimer/Publisher's Note
The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s). EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.
About volume
Journal：Advances in Social Behavior Research
© 2024 by the author(s). Licensee EWA Publishing, Oxford, UK. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Authors who
publish this series agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this
series.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published
version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial
publication in this series.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and
during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See
Open access policy for details).