The structure of developing semantic networks: Evidence from single and multiple nominal word associations in young monolingual and bilingual readers

Abstract

The present study focuses on the effect of an important methodological choice in word association studies in children: the elicitation of single versus multiple responses. This choice has been shown to affect the numbers and types of associations adults produce, however, little is known about how it affects children’s word associations. A total of 11,725 associations to 80 nouns from 207 monolingual and bilingual minority children were classified according to a detailed coding system, and differences between the semantic characteristics of first, second, and third responses were examined. We show that in children as well, the multiple association task elicits more and qualitatively different responses, resulting in more diversified semantic networks surrounding the stimulus nouns. On the speaker level, reading comprehension scores were related differently to initial and later responses, suggesting a more complex measure of semantic knowledge emerges from the multiple word association task. No differences were found between monolingual and bilingual children’s associative preferences. We argue that the multiple association task produces more detailed data on language users’ semantic networks than the single association task, and suggest a number of ways in which this task could be employed in future research.

A Study on the Developmental Features of Yi Students’ Chinese Mental Lexicon

“…Further, most studies investigating the organization of L2 mental lexicon either addressed meaning-based and form-based associations or paradigmatic and syntagmatic associations, only a few studies have dug deep into the subcategories of paradigmatic and syntagmatic associations ( Fitzpatrick, 2007 ; Zhang, 2010a , b ; Cremer et al, 2011 ; Khazaeenezhad and Alibabaee, 2013 ; Feng, 2014 ; Li and Wang, 2016b ; El-Dakhs, 2017 ; Spätgens and Schoonen, 2020 ). In the few existing studies, paradigmatic and syntagmatic associations of L2 mental lexicon have been divided into different subcategories.…”

Children's likelihood to perform adult-like in word association test: Effects of bilingualism and distributional properties of word relationships

“…Previous work has demonstrated the significant influence of age on WAT performance (e.g., Cremer et al, 2011;Spätgens & Schoonen, 2020;Nelson, 1977). Entwisle (1966) showed that older monolingual children (e.g., fifth grade) produced more responses commonly shared among group members than younger monolingual children (e.g., preschoolers), suggesting greater within-group homogeneity that characterizes the community.…”

“…The impact of bilingualism on semantic convergence in children's WAT performance has received much less attention when compared to other semantic domains, such as picture identification and naming abilities that indicate vocabulary breadth. Notably, existing work on WAT in bilingual children has focused on analyzing qualitative aspects of responses, such as meaning-related versus form-based (Cremer et al, 2011), paradigmatic versus syntagmatic (Holmström et al, 2016;Namei, 2004;Sheng et al, 2006), or context-independent versus context-dependent responses (Spätgens & Schoonen, 2020). Results from these studies are far from conclusive: previous work has found subtle advantages in producing the more advanced paradigmatic associates in bilingual children (Holmström et al, 2016;Sheng et al, 2006), subtle disadvantages in bilingual children (Namei, 2004) though the effect of language backgrounds was more limited compared to the effect of age (e.g., Cremer et al, 2011), or comparable associative preferences between monolingual and bilingual children (Spätgens & Schoonen, 2020).…”

“…Notably, existing work on WAT in bilingual children has focused on analyzing qualitative aspects of responses, such as meaning-related versus form-based (Cremer et al, 2011), paradigmatic versus syntagmatic (Holmström et al, 2016;Namei, 2004;Sheng et al, 2006), or context-independent versus context-dependent responses (Spätgens & Schoonen, 2020). Results from these studies are far from conclusive: previous work has found subtle advantages in producing the more advanced paradigmatic associates in bilingual children (Holmström et al, 2016;Sheng et al, 2006), subtle disadvantages in bilingual children (Namei, 2004) though the effect of language backgrounds was more limited compared to the effect of age (e.g., Cremer et al, 2011), or comparable associative preferences between monolingual and bilingual children (Spätgens & Schoonen, 2020). Highly diverse coding and classification systems (for a review, see Fitzpatrick & Thwaites, 2020) and differences in participant profiles across studies may have led to inconsistent results.…”

“…The impact of bilingualism on semantic convergence in children's WAT performance has received much less attention when compared to other semantic domains, such as picture identification and naming abilities that indicate vocabulary breadth. Notably, existing work on WAT in bilingual children has focused on analyzing qualitative aspects of responses, such as meaning-related versus form-based (Cremer et al, 2011), paradigmatic versus syntagmatic (Holmström, Salameh, Nettelbladt & Dahlgren-Sandberg, 2016; Namei, 2004; Sheng, McGregor & Marian, 2006), or context-independent versus context-dependent responses (Spätgens & Schoonen, 2020). Results from these studies are far from conclusive.…”