Many children grow up learning two or more languages and recent research has found differences in cognitive performance between monolingual and bilingual children. Currently we are conducting research looking at how bilingual infants transfer learning across cues and the influence of bilingualism on cognitive development.
Barr, R., Rusnak, S.N., Brito, N.H., Nugent, C. (2020). Actions speak louder than words: Differences in memory flexibility between monolingual and bilingual 18-month-olds. Developmental Science, 23.
Rocha-Hidalgo, Joscelin, Sylvia N. Rusnak, Olivia A. Blanchfield, Sharanya Suresh, Lily Tahmassebi, Hadley Greenwood, Kimberly Chanchavac, and Rachel Barr. (2022). Imitating the Robots: Measuring Memory Flexibility with Monolingual and Bilingual Preschoolers. Languages 7: 268. https://doi.org/10.3390/ languages7040268
Rocha-Hidalgo, J., Feller, M., Blanchfield, O. A., Kucker, S. C., & Barr, R. F. (2021). Patterns of mutual exclusivity and Retention: A Study of Monolingual and bilingual 2-year-olds. Infancy, 26(6), 1011–1036. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12432
Brito, N., Murphy, E., Vaiyda, C., Barr, R. (2015). Do bilingual advantages in attentional control influence memory encoding during a divided attention task?. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1, 1-9.
Barr, R., Brito, N., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2014). Differences in language exposure and its effects on memory flexibility in monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual infants. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1-13.
Barr, R., Brito, N., & Grenell, A. (2014). Specificity of the bilingual advantage for memory: examining cued recall, generalization, and working memory in monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual toddlers. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1-12.
Brito, N., & Barr, R. (2013). Flexible memory retrieval in bilingual 6-month-old infants. Developmental psychobiology, 56(5), 1156–1163. doi: 10.1002/dev.21188.
Brito, N., & Barr, R. (2012). Influence of bilingualism on memory generalization during infancy.Developmental Science, 15, 812-816. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.1184.x.
Rocha-Hidalgo, J., Feller, M., Blanchfield, O. A., Kucker, S. C. & Barr (2021). Patterns of mutual exclusivity and retention: A study of monolingual and bilingual 2-year-olds. Infancy.