Megan Gross

Effects of classroom bilingualism on task-shifting, verbal memory, and word learning in children.

We examined the effects of classroom bilingual experience in children on an array of cognitive skills. Monolingual English-speaking children were compared with children who spoke English as the native language and who had been exposed to Spanish in the context of dual-immersion schooling for an average of 2 years. The groups were compared on a measure of non-linguistic task-shifting; measures of verbal short-term and working memory; and measures of word learning. The two groups of children did not differ on measures of non-linguistic task-shifting and verbal short-term memory. However, the classroom-exposure bilingual group outperformed the monolingual group on the measure of verbal working memory and a measure of word learning. Together, these findings indicate that while exposure to a second language in a classroom setting may not be sufficient to engender changes in cognitive control, it can facilitate verbal memory and verbal learning.

Conceptual Scoring of Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Measures in Simultaneous and Sequential Bilingual Children

PURPOSE The authors examined the effects of conceptual scoring on the performance of simultaneous and sequential bilinguals on standardized receptive and expressive vocabulary measures in English and Spanish. METHOD Participants included 40 English-speaking monolingual children, 39 simultaneous Spanish-English bilingual children, and 19 sequential bilingual children, ages 5-7. The children completed standardized receptive and expressive vocabulary measures in English and also in Spanish for those who were bilingual. After the standardized administration, bilingual children were given the opportunity to respond to missed items in their other language to obtain a conceptual score. RESULTS Controlling for group differences in socioeconomic status (SES), both simultaneous and sequential bilingual children scored significantly below monolingual children on single-language measures of English receptive and expressive vocabulary. Conceptual scoring removed the significant difference between monolingual and simultaneous bilingual children in the receptive modality but not in the expressive modality; differences remained between monolingual and sequential bilingual children in both modalities. However, in both bilingual groups, conceptual scoring increased the proportion of children with vocabulary scores within the average range. CONCLUSION Conceptual scoring does not fully ameliorate the bias inherent in single-language standardized vocabulary measures for bilingual children, but the procedures employed here may assist in ruling out vocabulary deficits, particularly in typically developing simultaneous bilingual children.

Dialect Awareness and Lexical Comprehension of Mainstream American English in African American English–Speaking Children

PURPOSE This study was designed to examine the relationships among minority dialect use, language ability, and young African American English (AAE)-speaking childrens understanding and awareness of Mainstream American English (MAE). METHOD Eighty-three 4- to 8-year-old AAE-speaking children participated in 2 experimental tasks. One task evaluated their awareness of differences between MAE and AAE, whereas the other task evaluated their lexical comprehension of MAE in contexts that were ambiguous in AAE but unambiguous in MAE. Receptive and expressive vocabulary, receptive syntax, and dialect density were also assessed. RESULTS The results of a series of mixed-effect models showed that children with larger expressive vocabularies performed better on both experimental tasks, relative to children with smaller expressive vocabularies. Dialect density was a significant predictor only of MAE lexical comprehension; children with higher levels of dialect density were less accurate on this task. CONCLUSIONS Both vocabulary size and dialect density independently influenced MAE lexical comprehension. The results suggest that children with high levels of nonmainstream dialect use have more difficulty understanding words in MAE, at least in challenging contexts, and suggest directions for future research.

Predictors of processing-based task performance in bilingual and monolingual children.

In the present study we examined performance of bilingual Spanish-English-speaking and monolingual English-speaking school-age children on a range of processing-based measures within the framework of Baddeleys working memory model. The processing-based measures included measures of short-term memory, measures of working memory, and a novel word-learning task. Results revealed that monolinguals outperformed bilinguals on the short-term memory tasks but not the working memory and novel word-learning tasks. Further, childrens vocabulary skills and socioeconomic status (SES) were more predictive of processing-based task performance in the bilingual group than the monolingual group. Together, these findings indicate that processing-based tasks that engage verbal working memory rather than short-term memory may be better-suited for diagnostic purposes with bilingual children. However, even verbal working memory measures are sensitive to bilingual childrens language-specific knowledge and demographic characteristics, and therefore may have limited clinical utility.

Voluntary language switching in English–Spanish bilingual children

Although bilingual children frequently switch between languages, the psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying the emerging ability to control language choice are unknown. We examined the mechanisms of voluntary language switching in English–Spanish bilingual children during a picture-naming task under two conditions: (1) single-language naming in English and in Spanish; (2) either-language naming, when the children could use whichever language they wanted. The mechanism of inhibitory control was examined by analysing local switching costs and global mixing costs. The mechanism of lexical accessibility was examined by analysing the properties of the items children chose to name in their non-dominant language. The children exhibited significant switching costs across both languages and asymmetrical mixing costs; they also switched into their non-dominant language most frequently on highly accessible items. These findings suggest that both lexical accessibility and inhibition contribute to language choice during voluntary language switching in children.

Processing and Comprehension of Accented Speech by Monolingual and Bilingual Children.

ABSTRACT This study tested the effect of Spanish-accented speech on sentence comprehension in children with different degrees of Spanish experience. The hypothesis was that earlier acquisition of Spanish would be associated with enhanced comprehension of Spanish-accented speech. Three groups of 5–6-year-old children were tested: monolingual English-speaking children, simultaneous Spanish-English bilingual children, and early English-Spanish bilingual children. The children completed a semantic judgment task in English on semantically meaningful and nonsensical sentences produced by a native English speaker and a native Spanish speaker characterized by a strong Spanish accent. All children were slower to respond to foreign accented speech, independent of language background. Monolingual and early bilingual children showed reduced comprehension accuracy of accented speech, but only for nonsensical sentences. Simultaneous bilingual children performed similarly to other groups for meaningful contexts, but were not as strongly affected by accent for nonsensical contexts. Together, the findings suggest that children’s language background has only a minor influence on processing of accented speech.

Novel Morpheme Learning in Monolingual and Bilingual Children

Purpose The purpose of the present study was to examine the utility of a novel morpheme learning task for indexing typical language abilities in children characterized by diverse language backgrounds. Method Three groups of 5- to 6-year-old children were tested: monolingual speakers of English, native speakers of Spanish who also spoke English (Spanish-L1 bilinguals), and native speakers of English who also spoke Spanish (English-L1 bilinguals). All children were taught a new derivational morpheme /ku/ marking part-whole distinction in conjunction with English nouns. Retention was measured via a receptive task, and sensitivity and reaction time (RT) data were collected. Results All three groups of children learned the novel morpheme successfully and were able to generalize its use to untaught nouns. Furthermore, language characteristics (degree of exposure and levels of performance on standardized measures) did not contribute to bilingual childrens learning outcomes. Conclusion Together, the findings indicate that this particular version of the novel morpheme learning task may be resistant to influences associated with language background and suggest potential usefulness of the task to clinical practice.