Concordia PhD student wins Prix Relève étoile for research on language acquisition in bilingual infants
Concordia PhD student Miranda Gómez Díaz wins the Prix Relève étoile for a journal article on bilingual infants' vocabulary development.
Although nearly half of Quebec’s population is bilingual in French and English, scientific understanding of how children learn two languages remains limited.
Miranda Gómez Díaz, a PhD student in the Department of Psychology, is seeking to fill this gap with her research on language development in bilingual infants. She has recently been awarded for a journal article on bilingual infants' vocabulary development.
Her recent paper, “Testing Theories of the Vocabulary Spurt With Monolingual and Bilingual Infants,” has been honoured with September’s Prix Relève étoile Paul-Gérin-Lajoie from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC).
The FRQ confers three $1,500 Relève étoile prizes monthly intended to promote and recognize exceptional research by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the province. Eligible research is categorized by Society and Culture, Nature and Technology, and Health.
“I am interested in how infants learn new words and how this process varies depending on their exposure to two languages and the amount of time they listen to each language," Gómez Díaz explains.
'Vocabulary spurts' in bilingual infants
Her study focuses on the 'vocabulary spurt,' a period in which infants rapidly increase their word usage. While this phenomenon has been widely studied in monolingual infants, Gómez Díaz’s research is one of the first to explore it in bilingual infants.
"We were interested in whether bilingual infants also showed a vocabulary spurt and, if they did, if their exposure to two languages would influence the timing and size of their spurt," she said.
To investigate this, her team studied English-French bilingual and monolingual infants aged 16 to 30 months. Monthly reports from parents tracked the number of words their child said in both languages, and interviews assessed the balance of exposure to each language.
“Of the infants studied, 76% of infants experienced a vocabulary spurt in at least one language, but bilingual infants were less likely to show a spurt in their non-dominant language,” Gómez Díaz reports.
Infants with higher exposure to language demonstrated bigger and earlier vocabulary spurts. Bilingual infants who heard more of one language than the other also experienced earlier and bigger spurts.
By understanding how bilingual infants develop language skills, Gómez Díaz hopes her research will inform practices for parents, caregivers, and educators in supporting bilingual language development.
“Our understanding of how infants learn two languages is still limited," Gómez Díaz says. "The vocabulary spurt is sometimes considered a sign of typical language development, but it has not been studied enough in bilingual infants.”
Read the cited paper: “Testing Theories of the Vocabulary Spurt With Monolingual and Bilingual Infants.”
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