Summary: | Hearing words in sentences facilitates word recognition in monolingual children. Many children grow up receiving input in multiple languages-including exposure to sentences that 'mix' the languages. We explored Spanish-English bilingual toddlers' (n = 24) ability to identify familiar words in three conditions: (i) single word (ball!); (ii) same-language sentence (Where's the ball?); or (iii) mixed-language sentence (Dónde está la ball?). Children successfully identified words across conditions; however, the advantage linked to hearing words in sentences was present only in the same-language condition. This work hence suggests that language mixing plays an important role on bilingual children's ability to recognize spoken words. © 2019 Cambridge University Press.
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