Dr. Jacques Mehler

Early landmarks of language acquisition and crib-bilingualism

Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 2-3:30 pm
Redpath Museum Auditorium, McGill University

Dr. Jacques Mehler is head of the Language, Cognition and Development Lab at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy. He was editor in chief of Cognition until 2007, and became an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001.

Abstract

Humans are born with the ability to differentiate languages that belong to different rhythmic classes whereas four additional months are necessary to learn how to differentiate the maternal language from other languages belonging to the same rhythmic class.

After reviewing the empirical data we ask whether reaching this early landmark of language acquisition is modified by a bilingual environment. We compare infants who are confronted to two languages from birth until testing time with monolinguals in a simple binary learning task. We find that bilinguals are more advanced in domain-general executive functions. After presenting a series of experiments carried out using an eye-tracking device we draw general theoretical consequences for language acquisition.

Dr. Mehler will deliver a second lecture, "Mechanisms of language acquisition" in the (BRAMS) laboratory at Université de Montréal on Friday, May 9th at 3:00 p.m. . Please see the CRLMB events calendar for location details.

Dr. Mehler's lectures are jointly sponsored by the Centre for Research on Language, Mind and Brain (CRLMB), the Brain, Music and Sound (BRAMS) research lab and the Centre de recherche en neuropsychologie et cognition