Conceptual transfer: The impact of addressee location on Spanish-English bilinguals' nominal demonstratives

Purpose The purposes of the current study were to examine the effect of age on Spanish-English bilinguals' speech recognition performance and to identify differences in speech recognition performance between Spanish and English bilinguals' 1st and 2nd languages. Method Fifteen younger adult Spanish-English bilinguals, 15 older adult Spanish-English bilinguals, 15 younger adult English monolinguals, and 15 older adult English monolinguals participated in this study. Bilingual participants had learned Spanish from birth and began learning English by the age of 4 years ( SD = 2.7). Speech recognition performance was measured using the Spanish and English versions of the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT; Nilsson, Soli, & Sullivan, 1994 ) presented in quiet and in a speech-shaped background noise. Participants also completed a self-assessment of the listening effort they expended on the HINT in background noise. Results There were no significant differences in performance within or between the participant groups for the HINT in quiet. In background noise, Spanish-English bilinguals performed significantly poorer and had increased listening effort on the English HINT than English monolinguals, with the most significant effects evidenced for the older Spanish-English bilingual group. Overall, the bilingual participants performed significantly better and expended less listening effort on the Spanish than on the English HINT in background noise, despite learning both languages at an early age. Conclusions Older Spanish-English bilinguals are at an increased disadvantage in understanding English in background noise compared to older English monolinguals. This suggests that current clinical audiological evaluation and treatment procedures may need to be modified to better serve an older bilingual population.

Aims and objectives: Attentional control is an important cognitive ability, and it includes the abilities of attention and inhibitory control. It remains unclear whether a bilingual advantage in attentional control exists and whether different bilingual experiences exert distinct effects on this ability. This study aimed to address these questions. Research Questions: (1) Does bilingual experience enhance attentional control? (2) Do different bilingual experiences differentially influence attentional control? Methodology: Chinese-English bilinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals, and English monolinguals were recruited for the study. The participants underwent assessments of their English learning experiences, English proficiency, and attentional control abilities. Data and Analysis: Data analysis was performed by using SPSS 23. The group differences in the English learning experiences, English proficiency, Attentional Network Task (ANT) indicators for Chinese-English bilinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals, and English monolinguals were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The correlations between ANT and English learning experiences, and English proficiency for three groups were analyzed using Pearson correlation. Conclusion: Compared with English monolinguals, both Chinese-English bilinguals and Spanish-English bilinguals did not show better attentional control ability. Further, we found that compared with Spanish-English bilinguals, Chinese-English bilinguals showed better inhibitory control, indicating that different bilingual experiences have different impacts on inhibitory control ability. However, no significant difference was found between Chinese-English bilinguals and Spanish-English bilinguals after controlling for age or AOA (age of acquisition), indicating age or AOA influenced the effect of different bilingual experiences on inhibitory control ability. The correlation results indicated the older the age, the better the attention ability for Chinese-English bilinguals; the older the age and AOA, the better the attention ability for Spanish-English bilinguals; the older the AOA, the poorer the inhibitory control ability for Spanish-English bilinguals. This study fills the gap in the effect of different bilingual experiences on attentional control ability.

Purpose The purpose of the current study was to examine inhibition of irrelevant information in younger and older English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual adults. Method Sixty-one participants divided into four groups: 15 younger English monolinguals, 16 younger Spanish-English bilinguals, 15 older English monolinguals, and 15 older Spanish-English bilinguals participated in this study. Younger participants were 18-25 years of age, and older participants were 47-62 years of age. Bilingual participants had learned Spanish from birth and began learning English by the age of 3 years old (SD = 3.1). All participants had hearing thresholds of < 25 dB HL from 250 to 4000 Hz, bilaterally (American National Standards Institute [ANSI], 2004) and were right-handed. Inhibition was measured using a forced-attention dichotic consonant vowel listening task with a prime stimulus and the Simon task, a nonverbal visual test. Results Younger participants were better able to inhibit the irrelevant auditory and visual stimuli and modulate their attention according to the instructions that they were given compared to the older participants. However, no significant differences in inhibition performance or attention modulation were evidenced between the monolingual and bilingual groups in any of the dichotic listening conditions or on the Simon task. Conclusions No significant differences in performance on an auditory or a visual test of inhibition of irrelevant information was evidenced between the monolingual and bilingual participants in this study. These findings suggest that younger and older adult, early balanced Spanish-English bilinguals may not exhibit an advantage in the inhibition of irrelevant information compared to younger and older adult English monolinguals.

Chinese-English bilinguals are more sensitive to environmental sound perception than Spanish-English bilinguals through top-down cognitive mechanism

Purpose This study investigates consonant and vowel accuracy and whole-word variability (also called token-to-token variability or token-to-token inconsistency) in bilingual Spanish-English and monolingual English-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) compared to their bilingual and monolingual peers with normal hearing (NH). Method Participants were 40 children between 4;6 and 7;11 (years;months; M age = 6;2), n = 10 each in 4 participant groups: bilingual Spanish-English with CIs, monolingual English with CIs, bilingual Spanish-English with NH, and monolingual English with NH. Spanish and English word lists consisting of 20 words of varying length were generated, and 3 productions of each word were analyzed for percent consonants correct, percent vowels correct, and the presence of any consonant and/or vowel variability. Results Children with CIs demonstrated lower accuracy and more whole-word variability than their peers with NH. There were no differences in rates of accuracy or whole-word variability between bilingual and monolingual children matched on hearing status, and bilingual children had lower accuracy and greater whole-word variability in English than in Spanish. Conclusions High rates of whole-word variability are prevalent in the speech of children with CIs even after many years of CI experience, and bilingual language exposure does not appear to negatively impact phonological development in children with CIs. Contributions to our understanding of underlying sources of speech production variability and clinical implications are discussed.

This report compares device use in a cohort of Spanish-English bilingual and English monolingual children who are deaf and hard of hearing, including children fitted with traditional hearing aids, cochlear implants (CIs), and/or bone-conduction hearing devices. Participants were 84 Spanish-English bilingual children and 85 English monolingual children from clinical sites across the United States. The data represent a subset obtained in a larger clinical trial. Device use obtained via data logging was modeled as a function of language group, device type, child age, sex, and parental education. Among children with traditional hearing aids, bilingual children wore their devices significantly fewer hours per day than monolingual children, but this group difference was not observed for children with CIs or bone-conduction hearing devices. In the monolingual group, older children wore their devices significantly more hours than younger children, but this effect of age was not present in the bilingual group. Parent report was consistent with data logging for bilingual and monolingual children. Spanish-English bilingual hearing aid users wore their devices less than their English monolingual peers, particularly among older children. This group effect was not observed for children with CIs or bone-conduction hearing devices. Additional studies are needed to identify factors that contribute to device use among bilingual children with hearing aids.

It is well established in the literature that English diagnostic tests should not be directly applied to speakers whose primary language is Spanish. Normative nasalance data across word and sentence-level stimuli among Spanish-English bilingual children living in the United States have not been provided. The present study aims to (1) compare differences in nasalance between typically developing Spanish-English bilingual children and English-speaking monolingual children and (2) determine whether within-speaker nasalance differences exist in Spanish-English bilingual children when presented with English and Spanish speech stimuli. Thirty-four typically developing children including 17 monolingual English speakers and 17 Spanish-English bilingual speakers with normal velopharyngeal anatomy between 5 and 7 years of age participated in the study. Speakers were recorded using a nasometer producing sets of stimulus items at the word and sentence level in English (English monolinguals) and in both Spanish and English for bilingual children. Results indicated no statistically significant difference between nasalance values across the different stimuli between monolingual and bilingual participants. However, within-subject effects showed statistical significance between English and Spanish word stimuli among the bilingual group. These findings emphasize the importance of using language-specific diagnostic materials for nasalance testing, which would be of importance in the treatment of individuals with cleft palate.

A-121 Functional Outcomes in Bilingual Persons with Traumatic Brain: The Role of Mood

Social Differences Between Monolingual English and Bilingual English-Spanish Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Vowel reduction is a prominent feature of American English, as well as other stress-timed languages. As a phonological process, vowel reduction neutralizes multiple vowel quality contrasts in unstressed syllables. For bilinguals whose native language is not characterized by large spectral and durational differences between tonic and atonic vowels, systematically reducing unstressed vowels to the central vowel space can be problematic. Failure to maintain this pattern of stressed-unstressed syllables in American English is one key element that contributes to a “foreign accent” in second language speakers. Reduced vowels, or “schwas,” have also been identified as particularly vulnerable to the co-articulatory effects of adjacent consonants. The current study examined the effects of adjacent sounds on the spectral and temporal qualities of schwa in word-final position. Three groups of English-speaking adults were tested: Miami-based monolingual English speakers, early Spanish-English bilinguals, and late Spanish-English bilinguals. Subjects performed a reading task to examine their schwa productions in fluent speech when schwas were preceded by consonants from various points of articulation. Results indicated that monolingual English and late Spanish-English bilingual groups produced targeted vowel qualities for schwa, whereas early Spanish-English bilinguals lacked homogeneity in their vowel productions. This extends prior claims that schwa is targetless for F2 position for native speakers to highly-proficient bilingual speakers. Though spectral qualities lacked homogeneity for early Spanish-English bilinguals, early bilinguals produced schwas with near native-like vowel duration. In contrast, late bilinguals produced schwas with significantly longer durations than English monolinguals or early Spanish-English bilinguals. Our results suggest that the temporal properties of a language are better integrated into second language phonologies than spectral qualities. Finally, we examined the role of nonstructural variables (e.g. linguistic history measures) in predicting native-like vowel duration. These factors included: Age of L2 learning, amount of L1 use, and self-reported bilingual dominance. Our results suggested that different sociolinguistic factors predicted native-like reduced vowel duration than predicted native-like vowel qualities across multiple phonetic environments.

Bilingual individuals have been shown to be more proficient on visual tasks of inhibition compared with their monolingual counterparts. However, the bilingual advantage has not been evidenced in all studies, and very little is known regarding how bilingualism influences inhibitory control in the perception of auditory information. The purpose of the current study was to examine inhibition of irrelevant information using auditory and visual tasks in English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual adults. Twenty English monolinguals and 19 early balanced Spanish-English bilinguals participated in this study. All participants were 18-30 years of age, had hearing thresholds < 25 dB HL from 250 to 8000 Hz, bilaterally (American National Standards Institute, 2003), and were right handed. Inhibition was measured using a forced-attention dichotic consonant-vowel listening task and the Simon task, a nonverbal visual test. Both groups of participants demonstrated a significant right ear advantage on the dichotic listening task; however, no significant differences in performance were evidenced between the monolingual and bilingual groups in any of the dichotic listening conditions. Both groups performed better on the congruent trial than on the incongruent trial of the Simon task and had significantly faster response times on the congruent trial than on the incongruent trial. However, there were no significant differences in performance between the monolingual and bilingual groups on the visual test of inhibition. No significant differences in performance on auditory and visual tests of inhibition of irrelevant information were evidenced between the monolingual and bilingual participants in this study. These findings suggest that bilinguals may not exhibit an advantage in the inhibition of irrelevant information compared with monolinguals.

Automatic sound encoding is sensitive to language familiarity: Evidence from English monolinguals and Spanish-English bilinguals

Purpose: The Spanish and English narrative skills of young (mean age = 5.65 years) Spanish-English bilinguals were compared to functionally monolingual Spanish and English-only speakers’ narrative skills, respectively ( n = 63). Method: Spanish and English oral retellings, elicited at the beginning and end of the kindergarten year, were transcribed and coded in terms of discourse- (story structure complexity), semantic- (word diversity) and grammatical-level (lexical and grammatical errors, revisions) skills. Data and analysis: Repeated measures ANOVAs, with Time (beginning-, end-of-year) and Language Status (bilingual and either functionally monolingual Spanish or English monolingual) or Language (English, Spanish) as factors, were used to compare children’s narratives in terms of story structure complexity, word diversity, errors and revisions. Pearson correlations examined the relation of revisions to word diversity and errors. Results: Time comparisons revealed significant gains in story structure complexity, with no statistically significant difference between bilinguals’ and monolinguals’ complexity scores. Bilinguals’ stories were also not different between English and Spanish. Yet, bilinguals included more errors in English than did English monolinguals, while engaging in a comparable number of revisions. Moreover, despite comparable error rates with Spanish monolinguals, bilinguals included more lexical and grammatical revisions in Spanish. Revisions and word diversity were positively correlated; no relation was found between revisions and errors. Conclusions: The relative differences in revisions between bilinguals’ and Spanish monolinguals’ narratives, versus English monolinguals’, highlight the linguistic strengths of bilinguals. In particular, bilinguals’ tendency to engage in revisions as they attempt to increase their language complexity, suggests that revisions require advanced linguistic knowledge, not language uncertainty. Originality: The children in this study were considered language minority learners in the United States. Moving past accounts of minority learners’ “low” performance on oral language and reading comprehension, our study findings reveal evidence of “advanced” linguistic knowledge for bilingual speakers.

The ability to read on grade level is a fundamental skill required for children to achieve academic success. Students who are English language learners (ELLs) and/or those who have learning disabilities often find it extremely difficult to achieve at the reading expectation level. This study examines English phonemic awareness and phonic skills in four groups of kindergarten students with and without disabilities: (a) 20 high-reading-level English monolinguals, (b) 20 low-reading-level English monolinguals, (c) 20 high-reading-level English-Spanish bilinguals, and (d) 20 low-reading-level English-Spanish bilinguals. Findings indicated differences for monolingual versus bilingual speakers in their ability to identify voiced versus voiceless contrasts. It appears from these findings that an achievement gap in reading levels between monolingual and bilingual students exists even at the kindergarten grade level.

Bilingualism is common worldwide and increasingly prevalent, but there is little information about bilingual children with autism spectrum disorder. The goal of the study was to compare expressive and receptive language skills in monolingual English and bilingual English-Spanish children with autism spectrum disorder. A review of the multidisciplinary evaluations done in toddlers who were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at a university-affiliated center between 2003 and 2010 was performed. Data included demographics, developmental testing, autistic characteristics, and expressive and receptive language skills, obtained from formal speech and language evaluation. A total of 80 toddlers were identified, 40 classified as bilingual English-Spanish. Compared with monolinguals, bilingual children were more likely to vocalize and utilize gestures, with no other differences in language skills. There were no differences in cognitive functioning and autistic features between the groups. In this study, bilingualism did not negatively affect language development in young children with autism spectrum disorder.