HYDE PARK — The Chilean family down the block, the old Dominican couple at the park and the Nicaraguan couple’s kids at the playground may all be boosting neighborhood kids’ learning abilities, according to new research from the University of Chicago.
Psychologists at the university published findings in the journal Cognition this month that support the conclusion that kids exposed to other languages out in the neighborhood might be better than other kids at learning from people who speak other languages, even if they don’t fully understand.
“All of the babies in our study heard only English from their parents and caretakers, but they lived in neighborhoods where multiple languages were spoken,” said lead author Lauren Howard, a psychology doctoral student at U. of C. “Our findings showed that hearing those languages outside the home, for example at the park or on the bus, made infants more open to learning from someone who did not speak English.”
In the experiment, infants who spoke only English were more likely to be able to follow along with an adult’s instructions in Spanish even if they had encountered Spanish only incidentally outside the home.
“This study provides evidence that infants’ social learning is shaped by the diversity of the neighborhood in which they live, even if they do not have direct interaction with people who speak other languages,” said co-author Amanda Woodward, a psychology professor at the university.
She said the exposure might help protect children from bias against foreign language speakers later in life.
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