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

Abstract

Purpose This study 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 bilinguals, ages 5–7. The children completed standardized receptive and expressive vocabulary measures in English and also in Spanish for bilinguals. After the standardized administration, bilinguals 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 bilinguals scored significantly below monolinguals on single-language measures of English receptive and expressive vocabulary. Conceptual scoring removed the significant difference between monolinguals and simultaneous bilinguals in the receptive modality, but not in the expressive modality; differences remained between monolinguals and sequential bilinguals in both modalities. However, in both bilingual groups conceptual scoring increased the proportion of children with vocabulary scores within the average range. Conclusions Conceptual scoring does not fully ameliorate the bias inherent in single-language standardized vocabulary measures for bilinguals, but the procedures employed here may assist in ruling out vocabulary deficits, particularly in typically-developing simultaneous bilingual children.

The joint effects of bilingualism, DLD and item frequency on children's lexical‐retrieval performance

“…Consistent with previous findings and our prediction, bilingual children scored lower than monolingual children (e.g., Gross et al . ). In addition, children with DLD achieved lower accuracy than children with TLD (Biran et al .…”

“…) and among children (e.g., Gross et al . ). Further, the effect of bilingualism in the lexical domain among children with DLD is also consistent with findings from previous studies (Crutchley et al .…”

“…Similar to children with DLD, bilingual children receive lower scores in lexical‐retrieval tasks (Gross et al . ). The joint effect of bilingualism and DLD on lexical abilities, as reflected by the performance of bilingual children with DLD (BiDLD), is not fully understood (for an overview, see Armon‐Lotem et al .…”

“…One prominent example of such reduced linguistic input can be identified in the case of bilingual children, for which each of their languages receives less input from the environment (Gollan et al 2011). Similar to children with DLD, bilingual children receive lower scores in lexical-retrieval tasks (Gross et al 2014). The joint effect of bilingualism and DLD on lexical abilities, as reflected by the performance of bilingual children with DLD (BiDLD), is not fully understood (for an overview, see Armon-Lotem et al 2015).…”

Maternal Depressive Symptomatology, Social Support, and Language Development of Bilingual Preschoolers From Low-Income Households

“…Other researchers have focused on the study of combined language functioning, considering the conceptual sum of language skills across English and Spanish (e.g., Marchman & Martínez-Sussmann, 2002;Pearson, Fernández, & Oller, 1993). This approach is critical for improving the field's identification of language delay or impairment in this population (e.g., Bedore, Peña, Garcia, & Cortez, 2005;Gross, Buac, & Kaushanskaya, 2014). However, for the study of factors implicated in the development of language, bilingual children's individual languages may be teased apart to identify evidence of differential effects of these factors on each language.…”