A Model of Cognitive, Cultural, and Linguistic Variables Affecting Bilingual Hispanic Children's Development of Concepts and Language

Abstract

The objective of this study was to construct a model of cognitive, cultural, and linguistic variables influencing bilingual children 's verbal and nonverbal conceptual development. Subjects were 30 Hispanic children, aged 6 to 7, from low-socioeconomic backgrounds. For testing the model, five verbal and nonverbal classification tasks were administered in a counterbalanced order in Spanish and English using food and animal objects as stimuli. Tasks were scored twice based on gender or any other valid criteria for classification (e.g., color; functions, subcategories). Findings revealed that bilingual children construct universal nonverbal and semantic representations influenced by culture and language. The Test of Nonverbal Intelligence and the IDEA Oral Proficiency Test underestimated bilingual children 's development, as they achieved at or above their chronological-developmental levels in classification tasks. Implications for accurately assessing bilingual children's cognitive language development are derived.