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This mixed methods study explores the effects of cumulative exposure, age of onset of acquisition (AO), parent proficiency and richness of the language environment on the grammatical development in French and English of 49 French–English bilingual children who were acquiring the languages either simultaneously (2L1) or successively (cL2). Participants (24 girls) were in 1st grade (M = 6;4, n = 20) or 5th grade (M = 10;4, n = 29), attending a state school in France, in a French–English bilingual programme. Production data come from a narrative task in each language. Parent questionnaires were used to explore environmental factors. Results show, first, that children's age and parent proficiency were positive predictors of grammatical accuracy in English, while in French only cumulative exposure was a positive predictor. Secondly, exposure showed a stronger relationship with grammatical accuracy in cL2 children; however, only in French, the language in which children made more errors overall. Finally, we found that both 2L1 and cL2 children made gender errors, an early-acquired structure in French. A qualitative analysis of errors with gender highlights, first, the importance of language output for grammatical development, even for children receiving substantial language input and, second, the role of home factors which play a more important role than community language use in shaping grammatical development. This study underscores the complex, interconnected nature of experiential effects on bilingual grammatical development in each language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When speaking or writing, people tend to re-use the syntactic structures they recently encountered (structural priming). Individuals differ in the extent to which they are primed (primeability). Previous research has suggested that perspective-taking, that is, the ability to imagine the feelings, thoughts and perceptions of others, predicts the magnitude of priming in adults. The present study investigates if this also holds for monolingual and bilingual children. We primed the possessive structure in monolingual Dutch children and bilingual children with varying L2s. There was individual variation in children's primeability in both groups. For both monolinguals and bilinguals, we found that the better children were at perspective-taking, the more likely they were to be primed. Dutch language proficiency also influenced children's primeability: higher language proficiency resulted in more priming in both groups. The findings suggest that structural priming serves a social function which is mediated by perspective-taking abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on bilingual language development often reports cases of cross-linguistic interaction of the two languages being acquired. In this paper, we investigate possible cross-linguistic interaction outputs in the development of branching onsets in the bilingual acquisition of French and Portuguese. Thirty French–Portuguese bilingual children, aged between 3;6 and 6;1, participated in our study. Their elicited productions were collected using two picture naming tasks containing 29 clusters in French and 57 clusters in Portuguese. Almost all the children acquire branching onsets earlier in French than in Portuguese, independently of the quality of cluster type (Consonant + Rhotic (Cr) clusters vs. Consonant + Lateral (Cl) clusters). Epenthesis is more present in Portuguese than in French. Shared structures in both languages are not acquired at the same time. These results show that bilingual children follow separate patterns of development, close to the ones reported for monolinguals, during the acquisition of their two languages. Moreover, the bilingual children show higher rates of development of clusters in Portuguese than the ones reported for monolinguals, suggesting an accelerated acquisition of clusters in Portuguese due to a positive influence of French. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When speaking or writing, people tend to re-use the syntactic structures they recently encountered (structural priming). Individuals differ in the extent to which they are primed (primeability). Previous research has suggested that perspective-taking, that is, the ability to imagine the feelings, thoughts and perceptions of others, predicts the magnitude of priming in adults. The present study investigates if this also holds for monolingual and bilingual children. We primed the possessive structure in monolingual Dutch children and bilingual children with varying L2s. There was individual variation in children’s primeability in both groups. For both monolinguals and bilinguals, we found that the better children were at perspective-taking, the more likely they were to be primed. Dutch language proficiency also influenced children’s primeability: higher language proficiency resulted in more priming in both groups. The findings suggest that structural priming serves a social function which is mediated by perspective-taking abilities.

The present paper aims to investigate the interplay of lexical and grammatical development in school-aged Greek-Albanian bilingual children by providing evidence both from majority, Greek, and heritage, Albanian. To this end, 47 8 to 10-year-old bilingual children were tested by means of expressive vocabulary tests in Greek and in Albanian, while their grammatical skills were evaluated by means of the LITMUS Sentence Repetition Task administered in both languages. Additionally, input-related measures in both languages, such as oral language practices, literacy, and educational practices were used to assess the bilingual experience and examine how it would correlate with lexical and grammatical skills. The analysis showed that within each language, lexical and grammatical skills were closely related both for the majority and the heritage language, while when examining across-language effects, grammatical skills in the heritage language were correlated with grammatical skills in the majority language. Concerning the role of input, we found that input in the heritage language supported skills both in the heritage and the majority language. The study's contribution is that by providing novel evidence from this specific language pair it shows that supporting the use of heritage language can boost language skills in both languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study delves into the concept of Harmonious Bilingual Development (HBD), characterizing families where linguistic situations do not adversely affect their well-being. Following a recently proposed holistic framework on Harmonious Bilingual Experience (HBE), this research aims to discern the relationship between input factors and the bilingual children's social–emotional and behavioral skills (SEBS). While input undoubtedly plays a major role in bilingual development, more insight is needed on the quantity and quality of input necessary to foster HBD. A total of 36 five-year-old children with Russian and French as their first languages participated in our study. Children's language exposure and input quality, as well as parental attitudes, beliefs and strategies regarding language transmission, were assessed with parent questionnaires and activity journals. Additionally, parents assessed their children's SEBS using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Hierarchical cluster analysis identified family profiles which support HBD. We found that the quantity of Russian input, as measured by current exposure, does not directly correlate with SEBS. However, less than 30% of weekly input in Russian appears insufficient for achieving HBD. Furthermore, our study suggests that engaging in at least one extra-curricular activity in Russian, e.g., Saturday school, coupled with parental impact belief, aligns with a family profile experiencing more HBD. These results are coherent with previous studies on harmonious bilingualism, and emphasize the interplay of quantitative and qualitative input factors, as well as SEBS, for achieving HBD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intentional bilingualism is becoming increasingly popular in EFL countries, where many second-language speakers of English raise their children as a bilingual, with English alongside the local language. This article explores a case of intentional bilingualism spanning the first four years of a child, Ipek, who lives in Türkiye and has been exposed to Turkish and English since birth. As part of a longitudinal qualitative study, field and reflective notes were analysed to outline the key elements of Ipek’s context, including the participants, tools, methods and techniques. The insights and experiences gained in the study may contribute to developing effective strategies for developing intentional bilingualism.

Copyright of Journal of Elementary Education / Revija za Elementarno Izobraževanje is the property of University of Maribor, Faculty of Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This mixed methods study explores the effects of cumulative exposure, age of onset of acquisition (AO), parent proficiency and richness of the language environment on the grammatical development in French and English of 49 French–English bilingual children who were acquiring the languages either simultaneously (2L1) or successively (cL2). Participants (24 girls) were in 1st grade (M = 6;4, n = 20) or 5th grade (M = 10;4, n = 29), attending a state school in France, in a French–English bilingual programme. Production data come from a narrative task in each language. Parent questionnaires were used to explore environmental factors. Results show, first, that children’s age and parent proficiency were positive predictors of grammatical accuracy in English, while in French only cumulative exposure was a positive predictor. Secondly, exposure showed a stronger relationship with grammatical accuracy in cL2 children; however, only in French, the language in which children made more errors overall. Finally, we found that both 2L1 and cL2 children made gender errors, an early-acquired structure in French. A qualitative analysis of errors with gender highlights, first, the importance of language output for grammatical development, even for children receiving substantial language input and, second, the role of home factors which play a more important role than community language use in shaping grammatical development. This study underscores the complex, interconnected nature of experiential effects on bilingual grammatical development in each language.

The literature on bilingual language development often reports cases of cross-linguistic interaction of the two languages being acquired. In this paper, we investigate possible cross-linguistic interaction outputs in the development of branching onsets in the bilingual acquisition of French and Portuguese. Thirty French–Portuguese bilingual children, aged between 3;6 and 6;1, participated in our study. Their elicited productions were collected using two picture naming tasks containing 29 clusters in French and 57 clusters in Portuguese. Almost all the children acquire branching onsets earlier in French than in Portuguese, independently of the quality of cluster type (Consonant + Rhotic (Cr) clusters vs. Consonant + Lateral (Cl) clusters). Epenthesis is more present in Portuguese than in French. Shared structures in both languages are not acquired at the same time. These results show that bilingual children follow separate patterns of development, close to the ones reported for monolinguals, during the acquisition of their two languages. Moreover, the bilingual children show higher rates of development of clusters in Portuguese than the ones reported for monolinguals, suggesting an accelerated acquisition of clusters in Portuguese due to a positive influence of French.

Some grammatical phenomena are more resistant to diachronic change than others. The syntactic core is particularly resilient, raising the question why this is the case and what causes the least vulnerable properties to change. Since fundamental alterations of grammars do not occur across the lifespan of adults, first language acquisition is commonly considered to be the main locus of syntactic change. Under the assumption that language contact leads to cross-linguistic interaction, early bilinguals have been claimed to be the main agents of change. I revisit this debate, focusing on head directionality and V2. Summaries of studies of various acquisition types lead to the conclusion that reanalysis in core syntax does not happen in the course of neither monolingual nor bilingual L1 acquisition. Contrary to hypotheses entertained in diachronic linguistics, neither language contact nor structural ambiguity/complexity has this effect. For core properties to change in L1, the triggering information must be contained in the input. Insufficient exposure, as in heritage language acquisition, can cause morphosyntactic change, though not in the syntactic core. Only second language acquisition exhibits such effects. L2 learners are thus the most likely agents of fundamental syntactic change. I conclude that explanations of the resilience of syntactic phenomena cannot rely exclusively on structural aspects. It results from an interaction of syntactic and developmental factors, defined by grammatical constraint, acquisition principles, and processing demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the impact of teachers' questions on child bilingual's heritage language reading process and outcomes. This study examined the role of adults' questions in English-Mandarin bilingual preschoolers' Mandarin word learning, story comprehension, and reading engagement. Ninety-nine 4- to 5-year-old preschoolers in Singapore were assigned to one of the three reading conditions: (a) reading with contextualized questions (e.g., labelling), (b) reading with decontextualized questions (e.g., inference), and (c) reading without questions. The experimenters read three storybooks to the children three times over 2 weeks. Children's general Mandarin proficiency was tested before the intervention, and their target words knowledge and story comprehension were tested before and after the intervention. Children's reading engagement in each reading was assessed with a modified Child Behavior Rating Scale. The results demonstrate that not all aspects of Mandarin performance and reading engagement have benefitted from the experimenter's questions. Contextualized questions were found to significantly enhance children's word meaning explanation and story retelling. Contextualized and decontextualized questions lead to higher increase in social-cognitive engagement but resulted in faster decrease in behavioral and affective engagement over repetitive readings. Furthermore, children's initial Mandarin proficiency influences their reading process and outcomes. Generally, the better their Mandarin vocabulary knowledge was, the more they could enjoy and benefit from the reading, whether they were asked questions or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bulletin of Ablai Khan KazUIRandWL: Series 'Philological sciences' is the property of Kazakh Ablai Khan University of International Relations & World Languages and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study delves into the concept of Harmonious Bilingual Development (HBD), characterizing families where linguistic situations do not adversely affect their well-being. Following a recently proposed holistic framework on Harmonious Bilingual Experience (HBE), this research aims to discern the relationship between input factors and the bilingual children’s social–emotional and behavioral skills (SEBS). While input undoubtedly plays a major role in bilingual development, more insight is needed on the quantity and quality of input necessary to foster HBD. A total of 36 five-year-old children with Russian and French as their first languages participated in our study. Children’s language exposure and input quality, as well as parental attitudes, beliefs and strategies regarding language transmission, were assessed with parent questionnaires and activity journals. Additionally, parents assessed their children’s SEBS using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Hierarchical cluster analysis identified family profiles which support HBD. We found that the quantity of Russian input, as measured by current exposure, does not directly correlate with SEBS. However, less than 30% of weekly input in Russian appears insufficient for achieving HBD. Furthermore, our study suggests that engaging in at least one extra-curricular activity in Russian, e.g., Saturday school, coupled with parental impact belief, aligns with a family profile experiencing more HBD. These results are coherent with previous studies on harmonious bilingualism, and emphasize the interplay of quantitative and qualitative input factors, as well as SEBS, for achieving HBD.

Network analytical approaches have been applied to the study of young bilinguals’ word learning strategies by a growing body of research in various settings (for a review, see Wojcik, 2018). They have investigated the effect of one language on the structure of the other’s network or compared both networks, trying to identify similarities. These studies have identified features that influence bilinguals’ acquisition process: frequency, phonological features (Bilson et al., 2015), the presence of translation equivalents and cognates (Bosch & Ramon-Casas, 2014), and familiarity (Wojcik, 2018), among others. The present study was an exploratory attempt to capture the structure of the receptive vocabulary networks of young bilingual children, by combining both of their languages. Network analysis can model the connections or links of word-nodes based on selected lexical features. The links in the present social networks were determined by how many of the participating children knew two words at the same time. This knowledge was previously tested with the English (Dunn & Dunn, 1997) and Dutch (Schlichting, 2005) versions of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) with children with early exposure to both languages (Aalberse et al. [MIND-team], 2021). Exposure to Dutch and English at children's homes and daycare centers for each individual child was assessed through a parental and daycare questionnaire respectively (MIND-team, 2021). Social network analysis, using the ORA-lite software (Altman & Reminga, 2018), was used to create a network for all the children (N=297; MAge= 34.5 months, SDAge= 6.5 months) and two networks of two subgroups based on exposure (Group A: higher English than Dutch exposure, and Group B: higher Dutch than English exposure). Average exposure scores were used as a threshold and cut-off point to determine ‘high’ and ‘low’ exposure groups. The Leiden algorithm was applied to the networks (Traag et al., 2019). The algorithm is designed to identify groups, sets, and clusters within dense networks with many nodes and links. The comparison of these three networks revealed the role of exposure in acquisition and hints at the strategies employed by bilingual children in word learning. The total group of children, without exposure factored in, showed clear clustering along the language divide, with Dutch words being more central in the network. To account for exposure, the total group was divided into two subgroups, one with higher exposure to Dutch (N=118; MAge= 34.84 months) and one with higher exposure to English (N=100, MAge= 34.23 months). Whereas the subgroup with higher Dutch exposure mirrored the clustering trends of the total group of children, the subgroup with higher English exposure showed higher cross-language clustering, with both English and Dutch words being in the same Leiden cluster more consistently in the network. In the group with higher Dutch exposure, the three node-sets detected, through the Leiden algorithm, were 1) central Dutch words, 2) peripheral Dutch words and 3) peripheral English words. Contrastively, for the group with higher English exposure, the central node-set included words from both languages. This marks a group of words (from both languages) with increased learnability and potential links with each other. Joint membership in frequent semantic categories (animal names, food, clothing, small household items, and body parts) and phonological features (word length and initial sound) are the most likely candidates that guided cross-language clustering. Word difficulty affected the structure of the network as a whole: words belonging to higher PPVT sets were known by fewer children than the ones in lower sets. Overall, exposure scores were shown to have an important effect on cross-language clustering and network structure. To which relative the children spoke to and for how long they spoke to them per day (MIND-team, 2021) could determine the centrality of words in the network. Children growing up in the Netherlands have a high exposure to Dutch, as the societal language. That meant that the English group (higher English exposure) had more exposure to Dutch than the Dutch group (higher Dutch exposure) had to English. For the English group, that led to a more balanced exposure to both languages, which most likely led to higher cross-language clustering for learned words. This study offers a new methodology for studying lexical acquisition, with the aim of capturing the interconnected nature of bilinguals’ languages. The results from the balanced exposure group are in accordance with emergentist accounts of language acquisition (Claussenius-Kalman et al., 2021), suggesting that ‘one word [might utilize] the conceptual packaging invoked by a word in the other language' (Bilson et al., 2015). There were semantic and phonological features that linked words across languages in learning. No strong effect of cross-linguistic learning was found for translation equivalents and cognates, because these items were rare between the English and Dutch versions of the PPVT. Nonetheless, the contributions of the present study are an added step to the investigation of the factors that might drive connectivity in lexical acquisition.

Input is considered crucial in bilingual children's language development. This is especially true for bilingual children's mother tongue language learning given its common reduction in input opportunities due to the dominance of one language within society, as seen in countries and regions from Wales to Singapore. Previous studies tend to focus on the quantity and quality of conventional active communication and resources (e.g., speaking and reading with parents) on bilingual children's language development, and substantially, fewer studies have explored this topic from the perspective of digital media. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated the critical role of digital media in various aspects of life, including bilingual children's home language environment. Thus, to holistically understand bilingual children's daily language input patterns, it is imperative to explore both their conventional and digital media input resources. The current study focuses on English-Mandarin bilingual children in Singapore and would like to explore (1) whether their conventional and digital media language environments have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) whether the societal status of a language and familial socioeconomic status (SES) would affect bilingual children's conventional and digital media input. Survey data from 162 parents of English-Mandarin bilingual preschoolers (3 to 6 years old) were used to explore the two research questions. Two online parental questionnaires were employed for data collection. One-way repeated-measures MANOVA and path models were used to address the questions. The results indicated that input patterns from nuclear family members had not been affected by COVID-19; however, the amount and frequency of conventional and digital media materials and activities increased significantly since COVID-19. Higher-SES families possessed more conventional materials and conducted conventional activities more often, while lower-SES families possessed more digital media materials. Both conventional and digital media materials and activities were richer in English than in Mandarin. Higher-SES families perceived digital media usage for learning to be of less importance than lower-SES families. The implications for early bilingual learning following COVID-19 are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate how Alor Malay–Abui child bilinguals, a non-WEIRD and underrepresented population in the field, comprehend and produce reflexive and non-reflexive possessive constructions in Abui. Their profiles of language development are explored through functionalist accounts that highlight the close connection between language and domain-general learning capacities, with special emphasis on three models: Competition Model, usage-based approach, and processing determinism.A total of 17 children (experimental group) and 17 adults (comparison group) complete a forced-choice sentence comprehension task (where they listen to two sentences following a short video prompt and verbally select the sentence that best describes the clip) and an elicited production task (where they watch a series of video clips and describe what is happening in each clip in a semi-spontaneous way).This study employs mixed-effects modelling for data analysis. The global model per experiment includes Condition (reflexive; non-reflexive) and Group (child; adult) as fixed effects and Participant and Item as random effects, with the maximal random-effects structure allowed by the model.Results show asymmetric performance by bilingual children on the two construction types across both experiments. Our findings provide insight into the developing processor in bilingual children, influenced by various factors such as usage frequency, cognitive skills, and task effects, within the functionalist framework.The findings of this study align with functionalist accounts for language development, illuminating the intricate deployment of linguistic knowledge in the minds of bilingual children interfacing with language-usage experience and domain-general factors. By combining the three models of functionalism, our findings are more properly understood, highlighting their complementary nature in addressing developmental trajectories of linguistic knowledge for child bilinguals. Importantly, our study shifts our attention to a unique bilingual context that has not been explored – lesser-studied languages and learning environments, contributing to offsetting the sampling bias persistent in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compared the online comprehension and the production of multiple interrogatives in 18 Romanian-English bilingual children aged 6;0-9;2 (MAGE = 8;0) living in the UK who have Romanian as heritage language (L1) and English as majority language (L2) and 32 Romanian monolingual children aged 6;11 to 9;8 (MAGE = 8;3). We examined whether differences emerge between heritage and monolingual children in the online comprehension and in the production of multiple interrogatives in Romanian, which requires fronting of all wh-phrases, contrary to English. The main aim was to uncover to which extent similarities or differences in morphosyntactic properties between the L1 and the L2 systems affect the acquisition and processing of the heritage language/L1. Online comprehension was assessed in a self-paced listening task, while production was assessed using an elicitation task. The results reveal that Romanian heritage children show similar online comprehension patterns to monolingual children for multiple interrogatives in Romanian. A different pattern emerges for production as heritage children produce less complex multiple questions in Romanian and avoid movement of two wh-phrases in all elicited structures. Given that their predominant responses for multiple interrogatives only make use of the structural option present in English, namely one fronted wh-phrase and one in-situ, we take this to show that there is transfer from the majority language to the heritage language. Thus, language production in the children's L1 seems to be affected by properties of the dominant L2, under cross-linguistic influence. Taken together, the results for both comprehension and production suggest that heritage children are able to establish the underlying representation of multiple wh-movement structures, similarly to monolinguals, but have difficulties activating the more complex structure in production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research shows that family language patterns (i.e., which languages are spoken in the family and by whom) are associated with bilingual children's language use. However, it is unclear how input properties such as input quantity, parental proficiency, and language mixing may differ across family language patterns. It is also unclear whether the effects of family language patterns on children's language proficiency remain when differences in input properties are controlled. We investigated (i) which family language patterns occurred in bilingual families in the Netherlands (n = 136), (ii) whether input properties differed across patterns, and (iii) how patterns related to children's proficiency, once input properties were controlled. Home language situations were assessed through a questionnaire, children's proficiency in Dutch and the minority language through vocabulary tests and parent ratings. Three language patterns were found: one-parent-one-language, both parents mixed languages or used the minority language. The results showed differences in input properties across all patterns, as well as effects of these patterns on children's proficiency in Dutch and the minority language that disappeared once input properties were controlled. These findings do not provide robust evidence that family language patterns predict children's proficiency, but rather, that input quantity is crucial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compared the online comprehension and the production of multiple interrogatives in 18 Romanian-English bilingual children aged 6;0–9;2 (MAGE = 8;0) living in the UK who have Romanian as heritage language (L1) and English as majority language (L2) and 32 Romanian monolingual children aged 6;11 to 9;8 (MAGE = 8;3). We examined whether differences emerge between heritage and monolingual children in the online comprehension and in the production of multiple interrogatives in Romanian, which requires fronting of all wh-phrases, contrary to English. The main aim was to uncover to which extent similarities or differences in morphosyntactic properties between the L1 and the L2 systems affect the acquisition and processing of the heritage language/L1. Online comprehension was assessed in a self-paced listening task, while production was assessed using an elicitation task. The results reveal that Romanian heritage children show similar online comprehension patterns to monolingual children for multiple interrogatives in Romanian. A different pattern emerges for production as heritage children produce less complex multiple questions in Romanian and avoid movement of two wh-phrases in all elicited structures. Given that their predominant responses for multiple interrogatives only make use of the structural option present in English, namely one fronted wh-phrase and one in-situ, we take this to show that there is transfer from the majority language to the heritage language. Thus, language production in the children’s L1 seems to be affected by properties of the dominant L2, under cross-linguistic influence. Taken together, the results for both comprehension and production suggest that heritage children are able to establish the underlying representation of multiple wh-movement structures, similarly to monolinguals, but have difficulties activating the more complex structure in production.

Research has highlighted the significance of the family and community in minority language revitalisation, whilst raising concern for efforts solely focused at the school level. This article draws upon research with children in Gaelic Medium Education, in Scotland, to explore their experiences and perceptions of their language use. The findings illustrate the dominance of English language across multiple aspects of children's lives and highlight the opportunities/threats of recent revitalisation efforts to push the bilingual benefits of language learning. The findings suggest the need for a more considered approach, such as translanguaging pedagogies, in order to effectively revitalise Gaelic language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Bilingual and monolingual 9‐month‐olds completed a face‐voice matching task. • In contrast to previous work, the test language was familiar to all infants. • Monolingual and bilingual infants learned the face-voice pairings equally well. • Thus, the bilingual advantage reported earlier does not extend to familiar languages. • Implications for the development of talker recognition are discussed. Recent work has shown that exposure to multiple languages affects nonlinguistic processing of speech during infancy. Specifically, Fecher and Johnson found that bilingual 9-month-olds outperformed their monolingual peers in a face–voice matching task in an unfamiliar language [ Developmental Science (2019a), 22 (4), e12778]. What factors were driving this effect? That is, was this finding truly reflective of a bilingual advantage specific to talker processing, or did the study demonstrate a general cognitive advantage in bilingual infants? Here, we revisited this question by testing bilingual and monolingual 9-month-olds (N = 48) on their ability to associate previously unknown voices with animated cartoon characters. In comparison with earlier work, where infants were presented with characters speaking an unfamiliar language (Spanish), the characters in this study spoke a language familiar to both groups of infants (English). Critically, we found that the monolingual and bilingual infants learned the face–voice pairings equally well when they were tested on the familiar language. We conclude that whereas bilingual infants are skilled at recognizing talkers regardless of the language spoken by the talkers, monolingual infants succeed at talker recognition in a familiar language only. These results begin to clarify the underlying nature of the talker recognition benefit previously reported for bilingual infants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]