[BIC-announce] CRLMB Seminar Series

[Vincent Gracco]

Thursday, May 8, 2008, 2 – 3:30pm
Redpath Museum Auditorium
McGill University
Early landmarks of language acquisition and crib-bilingualism
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. 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.
This lecture is jointly sponsored by the CRLMB, BRAMS and CERNEC

Please note that this is a change in venue for Dr. Jacques Mehler's  
lecture.  The lecture will be held in the Redpath Museum Auditorium.    
Refreshments will be served after the talk.

Vincent L. Gracco, PhD
McGill University
Faculty of Medicine
School of Communication Sciences & Disorders
1266 Pine Avenue West
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3G 1A8

Telephone:	(514) 398-7386
Fax:	(514) 398-8123
E-mail:	vincent.gracco at mcgill.ca



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www2.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/pipermail/bic-announce/attachments/20080506/47929c67/attachment.htm