Assessing child bilingualism: Direct assessment of bilingual syntax amends caretaker report

Lust, Barbara; Flynn, Suzanne; Blume, María; Park, Seong Won; Kang, Carissa; Yang, Su-Jin; Kim, Ahyoung Alicia

doi:10.1177/1367006914547661

Cited by 23 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Whereas exposure is a good predictor of vocabulary size in the toddler period, this relation did not hold at 48 months of age. Language exposure estimates at 48 months were uncorrelated with vocabulary size ( p s =>.171) consistent with the literature on dominance as children approach school age (Bedore et al, 2012; Lust et al, 2016; Sheng, Lu & Gollan, 2014, but cf. Brebner, McCormack & Liow, 2016).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 82%

A cross-language study of decontextualized vocabulary comprehension in toddlerhood and kindergarten readiness.

Friend¹,

Smolak²,

Liu³

et al. 2018

Developmental Psychology

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[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 54(7) of (see record 2018-30226-001). In the article, the reference for Legacy, Zesiger, Friend,& Poulin-Dubois (2016) should be Legacy, Zesiger, Friend, & Poulin-Dubois (2018). The correct reference for the article is listed below: Legacy, J., Zesiger, P., Friend, M., & Poulin-Dubois, D. (2018). Vocabulary size and speed of word recognition in very young French-English bilinguals: A longitudinal study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 21, 137-149. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728916000833. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Recent studies demonstrate that emerging literacy depends on earlier language achievement. Importantly, most extant work focuses on parent-reported production prior to 30 months of age. Of interest is whether and how directly assessed vocabulary comprehension in the 2nd year of life supports vocabulary and kindergarten readiness in the 4th year. We first contrasted orthogonal indices of parent-reported production and directly assessed vocabulary comprehension and found that comprehension was a stronger predictor of child outcomes. We then assessed prediction from vocabulary comprehension controlling for maternal education, preschool attendance, and child sex. In 3 studies early, decontextualized vocabulary comprehension emerged as a significant predictor of 4th year language and kindergarten readiness accounting for unique variance above demographic control variables. Further we found that the effect of early vocabulary on 4th year kindergarten readiness was not mediated by 4th year vocabulary. This pattern of results emerged in English monolingual children (N = 48) and replicated in French monolingual (N = 58) and French-English bilingual children (N = 34). Our findings suggest that early, decontextualized vocabulary may provide a platform for the establishment of a conceptual system that supports both later vocabulary and kindergarten readiness, including the acquisition of a wide range of concepts including print and number. Differences between parent-reported and directly assessed vocabulary and the mechanisms by which decontextualized vocabulary may contribute to conceptual development are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 82%

A cross-language study of decontextualized vocabulary comprehension in toddlerhood and kindergarten readiness.

Friend¹,

Smolak²,

Liu³

et al. 2018

Developmental Psychology

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“…Language dominance in the current study was determined by language proficiency scores in both languages, following previous research ( Paradis et al, 2003 ; Bedore et al, 2012 ; Iluz-Cohen and Armon-Lotem, 2013 ; Lust et al, 2016 ). In HL-Russian, language proficiency was measured using the Russian Language Proficiency Test for Multilingual Children ( Gagarina et al, 2010 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The child’s current language use was found to be the stronger predictor of the children language performance as measured by direct assessment of language skills in HL and SL. Lust et al (2016) showed a discrepancy between difference indices of language exposure for Korean–English bilinguals suggesting that parental reports should be supplemented by direct measures of language assessment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Morpho-Syntactic Abilities of Unbalanced Bilingual Children: A Closer Look at the Weaker Language

Meir

2018

Front. Psychol.

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Previous studies evaluating morpho-syntactic abilities in the Weaker Language of unbalanced bilingual children are scarce; and they bring inconclusive evidence on the nature of the Weaker Language development. The current study looked into morpho-syntactic profiles of bilingual Russian–Hebrew speaking children in the Weaker Language [the Weaker Heritage Language (HL-Russian) and the Weaker Societal Language (SL-Hebrew)] as compared to balanced bilinguals, unbalanced bilinguals in the Dominant Language and bilinguals with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Four groups of bilingual children aged 5;5–6;5 participated: unbalanced bilinguals with the Weaker HL-Russian and the Dominant SL-Hebrew (HL-weak: n = 39), unbalanced bilinguals with the Weaker SL-Hebrew and the Dominant HL-Russian (SL-weak: n = 19); balanced bilinguals (BB: n = 38), and bilinguals with SLI (biSLI: n = 23). Children’s morpho-syntactic abilities in both languages were investigated using LITMUS (Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings) Sentence Repetition Tasks (based on Marinis and Armon-Lotem, 2015). Quantitative analysis of morpho-syntactic abilities showed that unbalanced bilinguals scored lower in the Weaker Language as compared to balanced bilinguals and unbalanced bilinguals in the Dominant Language, yet, higher than bilinguals with SLI. Error patterns were similar across bilingual groups with TLD and could be traced to cross-linguistic influence. By contrast, error profiles of unbalanced bilinguals in the Weaker Language and bilinguals with SLI bore fundamental differences. Whereas unbalanced bilinguals in the Weaker Language opted for complex structures, relying on the available resources from the Dominant Language; bilinguals with SLI simplified complex syntactic structures. To conclude, the study shows that the Weaker Language of unbalanced bilinguals with TLD develop qualitatively similarly to the languages of balanced bilinguals and the Dominant Language in unbalanced bilinguals, albeit delayed or influenced by the Dominant Language to a larger extent. Conversely, the study brings evidence that linguistic profiles of unbalanced bilinguals with TLD in the Weaker Language and bilinguals with SLI differ, pointing at a deviant pattern of acquisition in children with SLI.

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“…Parental questionnaires have long been used as a measure of child language development (Gutierrez-Clellen and Kreiter 2003;Squires, Bricker, and Potter 1997;Thordaardottir and Weismer 1996), a recent study found that a more precise estimate of grammar can be achieved by adding a direct observation measure to the child's evaluation. In the study by Lust et al (2014), two Korean-dominant children who were four years of age with Korean as their L1 (first language) and English as their L2 were assessed through a questionnaire and also an elicited imitation task. The parental reports and general linguistic histories predicted similar proficiency for the two children.…”

Section: Type/level Of Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of Linguistic Linked Open Data Resources for Collaborative Data-Intensive Research in the Language Sciences

2020

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We thank William J. Badecker, NSF Linguistics Program director, whose advice has been invaluable during all stages of this project, and Marc Lowenthal and Anthony Zannino at MIT Press, who guided us to publication. We thank Amy Brand, director of MIT Press, whose pursuit of the development of scholarly communication in the digital age provided support for our project. The Cornell University Library, through Oya Rieger, provided continual advice and support, as well as a critical dimension of library-researcher relations, continuing the early vision of previous Mann Library director, Janet McCue. Emily Bernardski provided key support and coordination for the workshop, as did Carissa Kang and Jonathan Masci, our student support team. Our editors Michelle Melanson and Rebecca Rich Goldweber provided invaluable assistance in volume publication. James Gair provided continual support throughout.

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Assessing child bilingualism: Direct assessment of bilingual syntax amends caretaker report

Cited by 23 publications

References 32 publications

A cross-language study of decontextualized vocabulary comprehension in toddlerhood and kindergarten readiness.

A cross-language study of decontextualized vocabulary comprehension in toddlerhood and kindergarten readiness.

Morpho-Syntactic Abilities of Unbalanced Bilingual Children: A Closer Look at the Weaker Language

Development of Linguistic Linked Open Data Resources for Collaborative Data-Intensive Research in the Language Sciences

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