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press, Journal of Child Language). Further, infants in both groups (1) and (2) exhibit theirlinguistic and semantic-conceptual milestones on the identical overall maturational time courseas seen in monolingual children (Petitto, 2000), with their specific developmental patterns beingidentical to that which has been observed in the typical case of bi-lingual hearing babies exposedto two spoken languages (e.g., spoken French and spoken English; more below).II. Discovery of common timing in bi-lingual and mono-lingual children: In the course ofconducting the above research on the maturational timing mechanisms in hearing babiesacquiring signed & spoken languages from their bilingual parents, we discovered that our younghearing controls--bilingual children learning spoken French and English--were achieving allmajor linguistic milestones in each of their respective languages on the identical time course, andon the identical time course as monolinguals (Petitto, 1994, 1997). Significance: Prevailingresearch on very young bilinguals, however, had reported that bilingual babies under 20 monthsexhibited language delay and confusion relative to monolingual babies because they ostensiblyhad a single, fused representation of their two native languages, which they were only able tosort out over the first three years of life. By contrast, my findings suggested that very youngbilingual babies have highly distinct representations of their two native languages quite probablyfrom birth. I have further advanced an hypothesis stating what mechanisms in the human brainmay enable the very young baby to differentiate between its two native languages from birth, andI have offered the field an explanation as to why the perception of "delay" and "confusion" inyoung bilinguals has prevailed, both among scientists and the public (see Petitto et al., 2001,Journal of Child Language).© 2008 Dr. Catherine CollierAll Rights Reserved116