Many people around the world, including Canadians, grow up learning more than one language. Research in the BAM Development Lab focuses on those who began learning two or more languages from the time they were born and on those who began learning a second or third language upon starting school.

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     The BAM Development Lab focuses on bilingual development (from infancy to adulthood) from theoretical and clinical perspectives:

• Theory-based research include projects looking at the physiological aspects of attention allocation during spoken language processing in bilinguals using eyetracking, EEG and heart rate. Additionally, a series of eyetracking studies has been conceived to understand whether monolinguals and bilinguals use contextual social cues differently across the lifespan.

• The clinical line of research includes the development of assessment and intervention tools that are appropriate for bilingual populations, specifically at pre-literacy screening level and evaluating whether the bilingual experience affects recovery in clinical populations, potentially to inform speech-language/cognitive interventions. Another line of research includes using artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze typical/atypical developing children’s language behaviour, specifically with young children’s babbling production and for diagnostic purposes in language disorder identification.

     

      Why are we doing this? While research on bilingual/multilingual development is definitely expanding, little is known about what is typical of bilingual or multilingual acquisition. In the short-term, our findings contribute to existing theories of multilingual language and cognitive development and, in the long-run, will help to develop appropriate clinical diagnostic and intervention tools for a wider range of populations, including bilinguals and multilinguals.