3473 - PRAGMATIC BEHAVIOUR: HOW MONOLINGUAL AND BILINGUAL CHILDREN DIFFER

Session: 3470 - PRAGMATICS OF CHILDREN'S SINCERE AND DECEPTIVE SOCIAL COMMUNICATION
AUTHORS:
Wermelinger Stephanie (University of Zurich, Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development ~ Zurich ~ Switzerland) , Rutkowska Joanna (University of Zurich, Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development ~ Zurich ~ Switzerland) , Moser Norine (University of Zurich, Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development ~ Zurich ~ Switzerland) , Zoebeli Vanessa (University of Zurich, Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development ~ Zurich ~ Switzerland) , Daum Moritz (University of Zurich, Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development ~ Zurich ~ Switzerland)
Abstract text:
Communication is a complex process as it can easily go wrong. To avoid misunderstandings and failed interactions, communicators must monitor the communication process and flexibly choose communicative means that are familiar and accessible to their interaction partner. Children differ in how well they can do this. Bilingual children are suggested to be able to navigate challenging communicative situations better than their monolingual peers. We will present two studies exploring this proposal with 4- to 5-year-old children.
In Study 1, we investigated N = 86 children's communicative behaviour in a task where the experimenter asked them to communicate which target objects they should pick up from a shelf with a set of ambiguous objects. We assessed how often children used information about the entity, appearance, or location of those objects in their verbal and non-verbal communication. Compared to monolingual children, bilinguals focused more on the location of the objects in both their gestures and verbal statements. Given the goal of the task, they were more informative and thus more sensitive to their interaction partner's communicative needs.
In study 2, we disentangled whether these differences in children's communicative behaviour are due to bilinguals having a greater repertoire of communicative means at their disposal or a greater flexibility in using these means. We achieved this by first equating N = 120 children's repertoire through the introduction of study-exclusive communicative means and then assessing children's flexibility in using this repertoire. Bilingual children were less flexible in using the newly learnt repertoire to communicate compared to monolingual children.
Together, these studies suggest that bilingual children better adapt to the communicative needs of their interaction partner than monolingual children, and that this is probably based on their greater repertoire of communicative means. Bilingualism is an important source of individual differences in children's communicative development.