Look Who's Talking—In Two Languages
Scientists team up to study language acquisition in bilingual babies
9-month-old Warren*, a visit to the UTSA baby lab must have seemed like child’s play. As he wiggled and fussed on his mom’s lap, researcher Sophia Ortiz waved plastic toys in front of his face. A Barney video played silently in the background. A visiting professor placed a funny cap on his head. What looked from the outside like child’s play was actually serious science.
To 9-month-old Warren*, a visit to the UTSA baby lab must have seemed like child’s play. As he wiggled and fussed on his mom’s lap, researcher Sophia Ortiz waved plastic toys in front of his face. A Barney video played silently in the background. A visiting professor placed a funny cap on his head. What looked from the outside like child’s play was actually serious science.
The stretchy knit “pilot cap” Warren wore featured 19 sewn-in sensors dotting the surface, each filled with conducting gel. The sensors began picking up and amplifying a record of Warren’s brain responses to sounds from a machine, and soon waves of squiggly lines began appearing on a nearby computer screen. After about 20 minutes, the electroencephalogram (EEG) recording was over, but the study of Warren and his brain was just beginning.
Warren was one of 30 children recruited by UTSA sociologists in fall 2005 to participate in an ambitious project studying language acquisition in children growing up in bilingual environments. The project brings together sociologists, neuroscientists and educators from UTSA and the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences in a multiyear collaboration. The aim of the research is to study the development of the bilingual brain using the methods of both the neuroscientist and the social scientist.
“We want to know how the baby’s bilingual brain develops and how infants, even before they learn to talk, are processing two languages,” says Harriett Romo, associate professor of sociology and head of the research team at UTSA.
Though the use of EEGs and standardized tests is an essential part of the research framework, what’s fascinating to Romo and her team are the complex social contexts that shape language acquisition in bilingual environments.
The research is part of a five-year, $90 million National Science Foundation (NSF) initiative examining “the science of learning.” Beginning in 2004, NSF grants established study centers at four major educational institutions. Each center focuses on a different aspect of learning and the brain, and by design, each center is highly collaborative.
UTSA is linked with the Center for Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (the LIFE Center), an interdisciplinary collaboration between the University of Washington (UW), Stanford University and the Stanford Research Institute. It was through a colleague at the Stanford Research Institute that Romo first heard about the LIFE Center and the proposed research on the bilingual brain. Because much of Romo’s research focuses on Spanish-speaking families and bilingual children, it was a natural fit.
“Language is not only communication, it’s culture. … If you truly want to understand people from another culture, you have to speak their language,” says Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the UW Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences. Kuhl is renowned for her work on language acquisition and the brain.
Recruitment and Relationships
The research project’s first challenge: finding families of bilingual babies from 6 to 12 months of age who could commit to a long-term study involving lab tests and repeated home visits to gather data about the bilingual environment.
Since most of the families in the study are classified as low socioeconomic status, the provision of transportation to and from the testing site was essential to the recruitment effort. As further incentive, each participating family is paid a small
stipend to compensate them for their time.
Though Romo’s biggest fear was that they would not be able to find enough subjects, 70 families volunteered. Because of the specific age range needed, however, only 30 babies started the project. A few have since dropped out, although the next phase of testing will bring in new participants.
UTSA researchers Ortiz (who earned her master’s in sociology at UTSA in May 2006) and graduate student Maria Rodriguez have been highly involved in the project since day one. “We’ve established a really good relationship with the families, so they’ve come to trust us a lot,” Rodriguez says.
Since the initial EEG testing, there have been follow-up visits every three months to assess ongoing language development. Rodriguez and Ortiz are often greeted with offers of home-cooked food and news of the latest developmental milestones.
“They’re trusting us with their kids, and then they’re trusting us going into their homes, so that’s been very rewarding to us,” Rodriguez adds.
This ability to establish relationships is important for the project, the researchers say. The information elicited during home visits is personal. How does the family define themselves ethnically? Who speaks Spanish? Who speaks English? Who speaks or reads both? What are the attitudes toward both languages? What foods do they eat? What level of education have they attained? The in-depth questionnaire contains more than 200 questions and takes hours to complete.
The UTSA researchers are also trained to observe elements of the home environment that affect language development, such as what is on the television or radio, what music is being played, what books or magazines are on the shelves and what videos are being watched.
“The parents are very, very humble,” Ortiz says. “They’re very open to you and try to assist you as much as they can.” She was especially moved by one parent who showed her carefully preserved copies of songs written by her father, who was from Mexico. Ortiz has a recording of one of the older siblings singing these songs.
On many occasions, Ortiz and her colleagues have gone beyond their job description. There was the time Ortiz arrived for a home visit to find the mother in labor. Off they went to the hospital. Another family was being evicted from their residence; the UTSA researchers helped them find a new place. It’s not unusual to be asked to pick up children from child care or give someone a lift to buy groceries, they say. “We get attached to these families,” Ortiz adds.
Romo believes the project presents her student researchers with a wonderful opportunity. “What my students can do and the sensitivities they have about the bilingual families and the bilingual community, and the opportunity that this kind of research gives them, are extremely important,” she says.
In the baby lab and in the home
Maritza Rivera-Gaxiola, a research professor and neurobiologist from UW’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, temporarily relocated to San Antonio to conduct the neurological tests. She spent six weeks measuring the ability of the babies to discriminate among three basic phonemes found in English or Spanish and testing their mental, motor, behavioral and linguistic development. To most ears, the syllables tested sound like “ta” or “da,” but in fact there are telling nuances in the use of each syllable in English or in Spanish that will register on the EEG.
By analyzing the EEG data, Rivera-Gaxiola is able to tell whether the babies differentiate between Spanish and English sounds at a very young age.
This technique builds on seminal research done by Kuhl on language acquisition in monolingual babies. Up until 6 to 8 months of age, researchers found, infants can hear and respond to speech sounds from all languages. But by 10 to 12 months of age, they react only to the sounds used in their environment, Rivera-Gaxiola explains.
“These kids responded to both languages equally,” says Rivera-Gaxiola. This finding is consistent with the research on monolingual babies, because these children are hearing speech in two languages on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, UTSA researchers are expanding the very definition of bilingualism. “There is not just one prototype of a bilingual home,” Romo says.
Some children in the research pool have parents who speak only Spanish, but they pick up English from their older siblings. Other children have Spanish-dominant grandparents, with parents who are mostly English-speaking but understand Spanish. Not all the families have roots in Mexico; some bring Spanish from other parts of the world. Another family switches back and forth between English and Spanish, in what many people think of as “Tex-Mex.”
Putting it all together
The interdisciplinary approach is building an extensive database about the developing bilingual brain, Rivera-Gaxiola says. Putting the data together will yield research that challenges the way both academic disciplines think about their subjects.
One example: Rivera-Gaxiola will add variables having to do with socioeconomic status to her research. “I didn’t have the ethnographic approach, and it changes and enriches the way I look at my data,” she says.
Romo finds the study of language acquisition from the phonetic level to be new and enriching information for her own sociological research.
Ultimately, Romo hopes the study will show “how rich a bilingual experience is and how much it would contribute to the cognitive development and ability of someone to expand their horizons both educationally and economically,” she says. In these babies’ future, that will be a valuable skill indeed.
*Name has been changed to provide confidentiality.
— Lynn Gosnell
Illustration by Corri Bristow