a question about multilingual babies

Mon May 9 04:18:35 UTC 2011

Dear Mohinish,

Thank you for your question. Although Bilingualism might not be a risk
factor (nobody said this for sure through research though) but would
compound the situaiton if the child has the hiden autistic factors. Although
there are many as you can read below suggest that early bilingualism
might increase autistic symptoms.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000085.html

who would like to create a risky situation for his or her kids.
1.  There is no well known reason discovered for autism.
2.  there are many disagreements about the way children learn language

what your result would  be? To rush the poor baby in a risky situation that
some articles with limited number of subjects showed or in a natural
situation where billions of children are grown up.

Bilingualism can be achieved even when the baby starts speaking one
language. Why should we expose our kids to two or three or even worse four
languages to have maybe a healthy cognitively high (we don't know how much
higher statistically?) boy in future and *maybe not!*
*As a mother and researcher I suggest you give your kid time to learn his
first language! then help him learn as many languages as he would like when
he starts speaking.*

Best,
Parisa

On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 6:57 AM, Mohinish <mohinish.s at gmail.com> wrote:

>  I too share other posters' understanding that bilingualism is not a risk
> factor. In fact Kovács & Mehler (PNAS, 2009:
> http://www.pnas.org/content/106/16/6556.short) show that there can be
> cognitive GAINS in 7-mo-old bilinguals, compared to monolinguals.
>
> I think there is a causal asymmetry - certain developmental trajectories
> that lead to abnormal conditions like autism might include language delays,
> but language delays by themselves need not be the CAUSE of these conditions;
> and I would be very interested to see evidence that language delay CAUSES
> problems like autism. We know that there can be substantial variation in,
> e.g, production, such that some kids start speaking earlier than others.  I
> don't think that the later-speaking kids' 'delays' count as pathological at
> all.
>
> Parisa, could you include some key references that suggest that learning a
> single language early is better than learning multiple languages?
>
> Thanks
> Mohinish
>
>
>
>   On May 8, 2011, at 11:11 PM, parisa Daftarifard wrote:
>
>   Language delay is much more dangerous than loosing time for true
> bilingualism. There are many risk factors like being autistic, developmental
> delay and global delay in terms of cognition. I think recent psychology
> suggests for learning one language first and then being exposed to other
> languages. I can send you some books off list.
>
> Best,
> Parisa
>
> On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 3:55 AM, beachjade <beachjade at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Tamar and Yves,
>>
>> There is a recent paper by Janet Werker that may be relevant to your
>> second question about how early should you expose your child to his many
>> languages.  In contrast to an earlier response to your post, my reading of
>> the literature suggests that bilingualism/multilingualism in an of itself is
>> not a risk factor in development.  This is echoed by
>>
>> http://www.lsadc.org/info/pdf_files/Bilingual.pdf
>>
>>  <http://www.lsadc.org/info/pdf_files/Bilingual.pdf>
>> http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/pspi_10_3.pdf
>>
>>  <http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/pspi_10_3.pdf>
>> http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2010/werker.cfm
>>
>>
>> On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Tamar & Yves <tamarmr at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello all,
>>> Our 10 months old son is exposed to 3 languages at home ( each one of
>>> us is speaking to him his mother- tongue, and we speak English between
>>> us) and to a 4th one outside.
>>>
>>>
>>> Soon he will be starting Nursery, and we were wondering what language
>>> it should be in. Is it better to expose him simultaneously to all 4
>>> languages or should we do it gradually over the first few years of his
>>> life (It's possible to sign him up to a nursery in my husnband's
>>> mother tongue (2)/ english (3)/ bi lingual (enviroment+English)(4))
>>>
>>>
>>> We don't want language acquisition to be too much of a burden on him,
>>> and not sure how many languages he can learn at once.
>>>
>>>
>>> We are aware of the large number of factors affecting the answer, but
>>> does anyone know or refer us to research done on the specific issues
>>> of (i) number of languages babies can learn and its implication on
>>> their emotional state; and (ii) Is it better to expose a baby to those
>>> languages simultaneously or gradually over the first few years of his
>>> life.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Tamar & Yves
>>>
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>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Parisa Daftarifard
> Phd Student of TEFL
> Islamic Azad University of Science and Research
>
>
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-- 
Parisa Daftarifard
Phd Student of TEFL
Islamic Azad University of Science and Research

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