Publications

Publication details [#63031]

Kager, René and Liquan Liu. 2017. Is mommy talking to daddy or to me? Exploring parental estimates of child language exposure using the Multilingual Infant Language Questionnaire. The International Journal of Multilingualism 14 (4) : 366–377.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
Routledge

Annotation

Language input is a crucial factor in bi-/multilingual research. It roots in the definition of bi-/multilingualism and affects infant cognitive development since and even before birth. The methods eployed to evaluate language exposure amid bi-/multilingual infants diverge across studies. This article debates the parental report patterns of the amount/degree of exposure to their children and supplies an algorithm-based Multilingual Infant Language Questionnaire (MILQ) targeting the amount of hours and degree of exposure an infant is exposed to each language. In the MILQ, parental feedback between general language input (languages spoken in the environment an infant resides in) and direct language exposure (languages spoken directly to an infant) are differentiated. Comparing the results drawn from general and direct perspectives, parental estimates of their children’s exposure match the general but not direct language input condition. Implications of these results are debated.