Childhood Bilingualism

Peggy McCardle is a research administrator at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, a pre-eminent funding agency of biomedical and behavioural research. She is responsible for a research portfolio on language, bilingualism and biliteracy development and disorders within the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.Erika Hoff is a professor of psychology at Florida Atlantic University, in Davie, Florida. She studies language development and bilingualism.

• Childhood Bilingualism Research: An Introduction - Erika Hoff and Peggy McCardle Processing Two Languages 1. Bilingual Speech Processing - J. F. Werker, W. M. Weikum, and K. A. Yoshida 2. When Infants Hear Two Languages: Interpreting Research on Early Speech Perception by Bilingual Children - A. Fernald 3. The Onset of Word Form Recognition in One Language and in Two - M. M. Vihman, J. A. G. Lum, G. Thierry, S. Nakai and T. Keren-Portnoy Speaking Two Languages4. Bilingual First Language Acquisition in Perspective - F. Genesee5. Social Factors in Bilingual Development - R. E. Eilers, B. Zurer Pearson, A. B. Cobo-Lewis Acquiring Literacy in Two Languages6. Developing Literacy in English-Language Learners - D. August, M. Calderon, Maria Carlo, and M. Nuttall 7. Bilingualism at School - E. Bialystok Perspectives on Childhood Bilingualism from Related Fields 8. Adult Bilingualism and Bilingual Development - J. Kroll9. Finding the Points of Contact: Language Acquisition in Children Raised in Monolingual, Bilingual and Multilingual Environment - S. Waxman Closing Comments10. Multiple Perspectives on Research on Childhood Bilingualism - M. Crago 11. An Agenda for Research on Childhood Bilingualism - Peggy McCardle and Erika Hoff

This book is an excellent illustration of the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration in the area of childhood bilingualism. Following on from an international workshop on this topic, leading players in the fields of child and adult bilingualism provide us with an impressive state-of-the-art survey of recent work as well as a clear research agenda for the future. Margaret Deuchar Professor in Linguistics