Datensatz

Zusammenfassung

Previous studies have shown bilingually and monolingually developing children to differ in their sensitivity to referential
pragmatic deixis in challenging tasks, with bilinguals exhibiting a higher sensitivity. The learning of adjectives is particularly
challenging, but has rarely been investigated in bilingual children. In the present study we presented a pragmatic cue
supporting the learning of novel adjectives to 32 Spanish–German bilingual and 28 German monolingual 5-year-olds. The
children’s responses to a descriptive hand gesture highlighting an object’s property were measured behaviorally using a
forced choice task and neurophysiologically through functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS). While no group
differences emerged on the behavioral level, fNIRS revealed a higher activation in bilingual than monolingual children in the
vicinity of the posterior part of the right superior temporal sulcus (STS). This result supports the prominent role of the STS in
processing pragmatic gestures and suggests heightened pragmatic sensitivity for bilingual children.