How bilingualism affects children’s thinking about people, animals, and objects

Krista Byers-Heinlein

Concordia University

 

An increasing number of children around the world grow up bilingual.  These children provide a natural experiment for understanding links between language and cognition.  Unlike monolingual children, bilingual children regularly interact with people who speak different languages, and encounter two words for each object (one in each language). These bilingual experiences have subtle, yet pervasive, influences on children’s thinking.   Three lines of experimental evidence will be presented: language-based friendship preferences, essentialist reasoning about people and animals, and early-emerging expectations about how objects are labeled.