Simultaneous Bilingual Children Research Articles

Shared representations in cognate comprehension and production: An online picture naming and lexical decision study with bilingual children

Abstract The cognate facilitation effect, a classic example of cross-language interaction in the bilingual lexicon, has mostly been studied in adults. We examined the extent to which such effects occurred in simultaneous bilingual children’s word processing, to what extent these were modulated by language dominance, and to what extent this differed between comprehension and production tasks. Simultaneous bilingual Dutch-Greek children, ranging from Dutch-dominant to Greek-dominant, performed auditory lexical decision and picture-naming tasks in an online experiment. Cognate facilitation effects emerged in both tasks but manifested themselves differently. In lexical decision, there was an interaction effect with language dominance in accuracy, while in picture naming there was a main effect in reaction times. These findings suggest that, similar to what has been found for adults, simultaneous bilingual children have an integrated lexicon, in which both languages are interactively connected. Effects may differ as a combined result of factors such as comprehension versus production and individual differences in language dominance. Importantly, despite such differences, our results show that cognate effects emerge across tasks and across a range of individual children’s language dominance, indicating that shared representations within the bilingual lexicon are accessed during both word comprehension and production.

Portuguese and German Intonation Contours in a Two-Way Immersion School

This study investigates the intonation contours of neutral yes–no interrogatives produced by simultaneous bilingual children in their two native languages. Previous studies have shown prosodic transfer from one language to another, either from the dominant into the non-dominant language or vice versa, but little is known about what specifically triggers this behaviour. This study explores how bilingual children make use of phonetic–phonological resources while interacting with peers. Three child speakers of German (ambient language) and Portuguese (heritage language) were recorded as they performed a modified version of a map task. Natural and spontaneous data were collected and the speech was analysed. The results indicate that to some degree, bilingual children produce all intonational contours specific to their language variety. When speaking German, they produced the syntax and contour consistent with the structure of yes–no interrogatives in German. When speaking Portuguese, the children displayed variation in their choice of tune, depending on the variety of Portuguese and the language proficiency of their interlocutor. This behaviour is interpreted as prosodic convergence resulting from the high variability of prosodic structures in the different varieties of Portuguese present in the classroom.

Factors Affecting Home Language Literacy Development in Japanese-English Bicultural Children in Japan

Simultaneous bilingual and bicultural children who are schooled in the dominant societal language can acquire literacy in their home language through home literacy practices and weekend school. Twenty-eight Japanese-English bilingual–bicultural children (ages 9 to 14) attending English weekend schools in Japan were assessed using the standardized Test of Written Language (TOWL, 4th ed.). Their overall age-adjusted writing scores showed that most were on a par with same-age US peers. The parents’ responses to parental questionnaires revealed that the children’s regular attendance and enjoyment of weekend school, coupled with parental home support and access to plenty of appropriate English reading materials, helped to establish their English literacy. Nevertheless, the children attained different writing scores. Although many performed within the Average range, some scored either in the Above Average or higher range or the Below Average or lower range. Further analysis of these three groups of children revealed a strong relationship between reading practices and writing scores. Better writers tend to read frequently in English; they enjoy reading independently and voluntarily. These findings underscore the importance of recreational reading as an accessible and affordable means for developing home language literacy in bilingual and bicultural children in Japan.

Cognate facilitation in single- and dual-language contexts in bilingual children’s word processing

Abstract We examined the extent to which cognate facilitation effects occurred in simultaneous bilingual children’s production and comprehension and how these were modulated by language dominance and language context. Bilingual Dutch-German children, ranging from Dutch-dominant to German-dominant, performed picture naming and auditory lexical decision tasks in single-language and dual-language contexts. Language context was manipulated with respect to the language of communication (with the experimenter and in instructional videos) and by means of proficiency tasks. Cognate facilitation effects emerged in both production and comprehension and interacted with both dominance and context. In a single-language context, stronger cognate facilitation effects were found for picture naming in children’s less dominant language, in line with previous studies on individual differences in lexical activation. In the dual-language context, this pattern was reversed, suggesting inhibition of the dominant language at the decision level. Similar effects were observed in lexical decision. These findings provide evidence for an integrated bilingual lexicon in simultaneous bilingual children and shed more light on the complex interplay between lexicon-internal and lexicon-external factors modulating the extent of lexical cross-linguistic influence more generally.

Narrative abilities and grammaticality of Russian heritage children

Heritage language maintenance and development depend on the family language policy, language dominance, frequency of use, linguistic distance and similarities between the minority and the majority languages or (dia)lects of the society, as well as on the multi-directionality of cross-linguistic influence and accommodation. The present study investigates the narrative skills of Russian heritage children in Cyprus, with a focus on macro-structure (story structure, structural complexity and internal states terms) and grammaticality; that is, the extent to which utterances follow the grammatical rules of a language. The participants in the study were 40 Russian-Cypriot Greek (CG) simultaneous bilingual children; their ages ranged from 4;0 to 6;0 (mean 5;2 [years;months]), and they attended kindergartens and primary CG schools where the language of instruction was Greek. The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN; Gagarina et al., 2012; 2015) was used for the data collection. The participants’ language proficiency in Russian was measured using the Russian Proficiency Test for Multilingual Children (RPTMC), while background information was obtained via parental questionnaires and interviews. The narratives were recorded, transcribed and analysed in terms of macro-structure and grammaticality. The analysis of the data showed that heritage children had errors in aspect, case, gender, morphological agreement, subject and object pronoun non-target production, as well as in innovative forms of words (nouns and verbs). There was non-standard production in terms of words order, prepositions and conjunctions. Overall, it was found that grammaticality was affected by proficiency in the heritage language, but there was no correlation with macro-structure measures. Narrative production and comprehension, macro-structure, were affected by the mode of narration.

Early Precursors of Reading Development in Simultaneous Bilinguals: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Purpose: Literacy precursors are cognitive, linguistic, and oral-language skills that predict future reading skills in children as young as 4 years. Speech-language pathologists and educators utilize these precursors as assessment tools to identify children at risk for reading difficulties. Most current tools are developed based on monolinguals (predominantly in English), despite the significant percentage of bilinguals globally. As such, bilingual children are typically assessed on tools developed for monolinguals in research and clinical settings. Despite this common practice, there is a lack of comprehensive synthesis on whether these precursors are a reliable indicator of reading skills in bilingual children. Our article examines whether literacy precursors commonly used with monolinguals are associated with reading development in simultaneous bilinguals. Method: Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses and Cochrane guidelines, our review includes four databases (Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, Educational Resources Information Center, Modern Language Association, and PsycINFO), in addition to gray-literature and manual reference-list searches. To control for age of acquisition and language dominance variability, we included typically developing simultaneous bilinguals exposed to both languages before age 3 years ( N = 5,942). We analyzed reported statistical associations between code-related or oral-language precursors and reading outcome measures, using correlational meta-analyses. Results: The 41 reports, which met inclusion/exclusion criteria, were published between 1977 and 2022. The average age at assessment was 7;5 (years;months; range: 3;0–11;0), with children speaking over 21 bilingual language combinations. Our meta-analysis demonstrated significant within-language correlations and cross-language transfer effects for code-related (e.g., phonological awareness) and oral-language (e.g., vocabulary and morphological awareness) precursors. Semantic awareness, however, was not a reliable predictor in bilinguals. Conclusions: Phonological awareness and vocabulary measures—even if originally developed for monolingual children—can form a meaningful component of early literacy assessment in simultaneous bilingual children: These precursors may be used as assessment tools across heritage and societal languages in research and clinical practice. Future research suggestions within this domain are also discussed. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23880465

Cross-linguistic influence in the simultaneous bilingual child's lexicon: An eye-tracking and primed picture selection study

Abstract In a between-language lexical priming study, we examined to what extent the two languages in a simultaneous bilingual child's lexicon interact, while taking individual differences in language exposure into account. Primary-school-aged Dutch–Greek bilinguals performed a primed picture selection task combined with eye-tracking. They matched pictures to auditorily presented Dutch target words preceded by Greek prime words. Their reaction times and eye movements were recorded. We tested for effects of between-language phonological priming, translation priming, and phonological priming through translation. Priming effects emerged in reaction times and eye movements in all three conditions, at different stages of processing, and unaffected by language exposure. These results extend previous findings for bilingual toddlers and bilingual adults. Processing similarities between these populations indicate that, across different stages of development, bilinguals have an integrated lexicon that is accessed in a language-nonselective way and is susceptible to interactions within and between different types of lexical representation.

Prosodic interaction in Cantonese-English bilingual children’s speech production

Abstract This corpus-based study investigates intonation patterns in the production of Cantonese by Cantonese-English bilingual children. We examine the intonation patterns in eight simultaneous bilingual children acquiring a tonal (Cantonese) and an intonational language (English) from 2;0 to 3;0. Two intonation patterns are observed in all the bilingual children studied: high pitch followed by a fall (including H_H*L% and H_L*L%) and low pitch followed by a rise (including L_H*H% and L_L*H%), in which English-like intonation is applied to Cantonese and code-mixed utterances. They illustrate cross-linguistic influence in prosody from English in the bilingual children’s early phonological development. Language dominance, use of sentence-final particles, and the children’s grammatical complexity are found to be significant predictors for the production of bilingual intonation. First, the more dominant the child is in Cantonese, the less bilingual intonation is produced in Cantonese and code-mixed utterances. Second, bilingual intonation is significantly more likely to be produced in utterances with sentence-final particles than without. Third, the greater the child’s grammatical complexity, the lower the predicted probability of producing bilingual intonation.

WPPSI-IV and NEPSY-II performance in mono- and bilingual 5-6-year-old children: Findings from The FinSwed Study.

Children's language background relates to their neurocognitive development. Knowledge of this relationship is important as bilingualism is common. However, research regarding language background in relation to performance on cognitive tests such as the WPPSI-IV and NEPSY-II is scarce. The present study compared WPPSI-IV and NEPSY-II performances between 5- and 6-year-old Swedish-speaking monolingual (n=45) and Swedish-Finnish-speaking simultaneous bilingual (n=34) children in Finland. The participants were gathered by stratified sampling and were assessed with the Swedish versions of the tests. In profile analyses, a significant monolingual advantage was found in some WPPSI-IV subtests and indexes requiring expressive vocabulary (Vocabulary, Similarities, PictureNaming, and Vocabulary Acquisition Index) and visuospatial skills (Object Assembly and Visual Spatial Index). No group differences were found between mono- and bilingual children in receptive language, visual memory, or fluid intelligence. Additionally, no differences were found on the Full Scale IQ. The performance on the WPPSI-IV Similarities subtest improved in a subgroup of bilinguals when answers in both Swedish and Finnish were accounted for, instead of accepting only answers in Swedish. No significant differences were found between mono- and bilinguals on the language and memory tasks of NEPSY-II. These findings highlight the importance of considering the child's language background when assessing expressive language in young children, as well as the benefits of assessing bilinguals in both of their languages.

Monolingual and bilingual children's production of complex syntactic structures.

Typically-developing bilingual children often score lower than monolingual peers of the same age on standardized measures; however, research has shown that when assessed in more natural discourse contexts, bilinguals can perform similar to age-matched monolinguals in some language subdomains. This study investigated complex syntax production in simultaneous French-English bilingual children and monolingual age-matched peers, using structured and spontaneous measures. Surprisingly, the bilinguals scored higher than the monolinguals on the structured task. There was no difference between groups on the spontaneous measure; however, predictors of complex syntax production differed by language groups and by tasks. Contrary to other language subdomains showing bilingual English development as protracted relative to monolingual peers, these results point to a relative strength of complex syntax acquisition among simultaneous bilingual children. Differences in exposure relative to monolingual children may be less pronounced in syntax, in part because bilinguals can benefit from syntactic knowledge in their other language.

Gender Marking and Clitic Pronoun Resolution in Simultaneous Bilingual Children

The acquisition of clitics still remains a highly controversial issue in Greek acquisition literature despite the bulk of studies performed. Object clitics have been shown to be early acquired by monolingual children in terms of production rates, whereas only highly proficient bilingual children achieve target-like performance. Crucially, errors in gender marking are persistent for monolingual and bilingual children even when adult-like production rates are achieved. This study aims to readdress the acquisition of clitics in an innovative way, by entering the variable of gender in an experimental design targeting to assess production and processing by bilingual and monolingual children. Moreover, we examined the role of language proficiency (in terms of general verbal intelligence and syntactic production abilities). The groups had comparable performance in both tasks (in terms of correct responses and error distribution in production and reaction times in comprehension). However, verbal intelligence had an effect on the performance of the monolingual but not of the bilingual group in the production task, and bilingual children were overall slower in the comprehension task. Syntactic production abilities did not have any effect. We argue that gender marking affects clitic processing, and we discuss the implications of our findings for bilingual acquisition.

Language Mixing in an Indonesian-Balinese Simultaneous Bilingual Child

When children get regular and continual exposure to two or more languages, they can develop the competence to use those languages. However, the languages used by the children may include mixing, where features of different languages converge in single language use. The present research investigates the speech of a three-year-old child exposed to Indonesian and Balinese since birth. The study focused on analyzing the language mixing produced by the child. The child was observed for three months. The child was exposed to Indonesian by the parents and Balinese by grandparents and other extended family members. They all lived in the same compound. In collecting the data, diary notes were used, supplemented with video recordings. The result shows that language mixing occurred when the child substituted content words, phrases, and function words in both languages. The language mixing happens due to the salient of the words, the frequent use of the words or phrases in the child's environment, the availability of mixing in the input, and an effort to emphasize meaning. Pragmatically, the result shows that the child can use the two languages appropriately with different interlocutors.

The role of exposure on school-aged bilingual language abilities – it depends on what you measure

ABSTRACT Few studies have focused on bilingual language development in school-aged simultaneous bilingual children. The current study tackles this gap in the literature by examining the influence of language exposure on the development of both languages in school-aged simultaneous bilingual living in additive bilingual contexts. The language abilities of 19 school-aged simultaneous bilingual children were assessed using standardised language measures in French. Their amount of language exposure was also measured using a parent questionnaire. No correlation was found between language abilities in French and exposure to French. Results did, however, show that most of the children who received as little as 20% of their lifetime exposure to French, obtained scores within the average range on all of the measures. Additionally, children who were exposed to both of their languages on a daily basis were more likely to have better performances than their peers who used one of their languages less frequently. This effect was observed even though children in the former group received less exposure to their strongest language than children who were not exposed to both of their languages daily. Therefore, while exposure is important, other factors may have a positive influence on simultaneous bilinguals’ language proficiency levels.

Construct validity of the focus on the outcomes of communication under six (FOCUS) total and profile scores for multilingual preschoolers: Considering functional speech skills

Purpose To conduct an exploratory study to establish construct validity of the Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS) in the Jamaican context for FOCUS Total and Profile scores. Method Parents of a representative sample of 3-to-6-year-old Jamaican Creole (JC)-English-speaking simultaneous bilingual children completed the FOCUS in English, and the Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS) in JC and in English. Children completed the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (DEAP) in both languages. Percent phonemes, consonants, and vowels correct were calculated using single word responses to DEAP items. Pearson correlations were completed to describe relationships between measurement scores. Result Convergent validity was found for FOCUS Total and ICS/JC scores. Convergent and divergent validity were found for specific FOCUS Profile scores and ICS/JC scores. Minimal evidence of convergent validity was found with FOCUS Total scores and transcription-based measures of speech production in JC and in English. Convergent and divergent validity were found between specific FOCUS Profile scores and some transcription-based measures of speech production in JC and in English. Conclusion This study provides evidence of construct validity for FOCUS Total and Profile scores. It also provides validity evidence for FOCUS scores in a multilingual context using a representative sample of children that serves to broaden the range of applicability of the FOCUS.

The acquisition of English active and passive monotransitive constructions by English–Spanish simultaneous bilingual children

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: We examine the acquisition of English active and passive monotransitives by English–Spanish bilingual children. These data are compared to English monolinguals from previous studies. We explore whether bi- and monolinguals show similar onset patterns given the shared grammatical properties of actives in the bilinguals’ two languages, and whether they differ in the onset of passives given the grammatical properties in English (canonical determiner phrase [DP]-movement) and Spanish (canonical DP-movement and se-passives). We also investigate the role played by adult input in child output. Design/methodology/approach: We analyze the spontaneous production data from eight English–Spanish bilinguals (ages: 1;01–6;11), and the adults who interact with them. Data and analysis: We perform a double analysis: (1) the onset of these structures in the spontaneous production of bilinguals to determine whether emergence patterns differ from those of monolinguals and (2) their incidence through language development to focus on production frequency. Findings/conclusions: Bilinguals start producing passives at the age of 3, later than actives that emerge at the age of 2, akin to English monolinguals. This acquisition order effect is also seen in the lower incidence of passives when compared to actives in the two child groups. The distributional properties of the two passive types do not seem to have interfered in the bilinguals’ acquisition of the English passive type, causing delay. These data suggest that the emergence and the incidence of the two constructions in bi- and monolinguals could be explained by the DP-movement maturation and/or adult input effects given the adults’ lower frequency of exposure to passives with respect to actives. Originality: This is the first study that addresses bilingual acquisition data and compares child output to adult input. Significance/implications: It contributes to elucidate how the bilinguals’ two languages interact in the acquisition and incidence of English actives and passives.

Acquisition of Russian nominal derivation in monolingualism and bilingualism

The case study focuses on the acquisition of Russian derivational morphology in terms of nouns by monolingual (Russian) and simultaneous bilingual (Russian German) children of early age. The results are based on analysis of representative natural longitudinal recordings transcribed and stored in CHAT format using the CHILDES system. The first patterns and methods of nominal word-formation along with the morphemes used by children are revealed. The properties of word-formation that indicate the productive use of the nominal derivatives, such as the presence of simplex–derivative pairs, chains and word families, as well as occasionalisms are noted. The similarities and differences in the acquisition of nominal derivatives, including their semantic domains, in mono- and bilingual situations are discussed. Keywords: nouns, word-formation, derivatives, simplexes, compounding, Russian, German

Sözdizim-Edimbilim Arakesitinde: Türkçe-İngilizce, Türkçe-Almanca ve Türkçe-Rusça İki Dilli Çocukların Türkçenin Sözcük Dizilimini Edinimi

The aim of this study is to investigate how syntactic and pragmatic features of Turkish word order are acquired by Turkish-English, Turkish-German and Turkish-Russian bilingual children. The data were collected from Turkish monolingual and bilingual children who were born in England, Germany and Russia and acquired Turkish as their heritage language. The findings of the study reveal that the Turkish monolingual children adopt the use of SOV order as canonical, but they also show sensitivity to the pragmatics of Turkish and use other orders from an early age. Turkish-German, Turkish-English and Turkish-Russian simultaneous bilingual children, on the other hand, showed different patterns of word order acquisition than their Turkish monolingual counterparts.

Internal and external factors contributing to variability in consonant accuracy of Arabic-French simultaneous bilingual children.

This study aims to describe the relationships between child-internal and child-external factors and the consonant accuracy of bilingual children. More specifically, the study looks at internal factors: expressive and receptive vocabulary, and external factors: language exposure and language status, of a group of 4-year-old bilingual Arabic-French children. We measured the consonant accuracy of the children by the percentage of correct consonants in a Picture-Naming Task and a Non-Word Repetition Task in each language. The results suggest a significant relationship between vocabulary and consonant accuracy. A cross-language correlation was observed between the expressive vocabulary level of the majority language (French) and the consonant accuracy of the minority language (Arabic). Also, a significant correlation was found between Arabic language exposure and Arabic consonant accuracy. Finally, consonant accuracy was significantly higher in French tasks than in Arabic, despite the individual differences of the children.

The effects of language input on word order in German as a heritage and majority language

ABSTRACT This study addresses the question of how the main factors related to input—including the environment in which children are exposed to both languages, the relative timing of the onset of the exposure to them and the amount of input—affect bilingual language acquisition at primary-school age. We examined the data of 42 German Polish bilinguals who had acquired German from birth and German monolinguals, comparing on the one hand simultaneous bilingual children speaking German as a majority language with simultaneous bilinguals who speak German as a heritage language and, on the other hand, comparing heritage speakers of German who are simultaneous bilinguals with those who are sequential bilinguals. We studied their word order patterns in German, specifically the position of verb and negation, by dint of several tasks including acceptability judgment, forced choice, sentence repetition, and narrative tasks. The results revealed the effect of all three factors on word order patterns used by bilinguals between the ages of 7 and 13. The performance of simultaneous bilingual heritage speakers varies across the tasks. We conclude that they have problems inhibiting their stronger language in tasks that place higher demands on processor, leading to a non-target-like performance in their weaker language in producing narratives.

Language input effects on children's words and vowels: An accent categorization and rating study

This study assesses the effects of heterogeneous speech input on ratings of children's words and vowels. First, we examined whether exposure to a certain accent type or to different languages can predict accent categorization as standard, regional or foreign. Second, we examined how perceived accent strength of words and isolated vowels can be predicted by the amount of input children receive in distinct accents and languages and by lexical frequency. To this end, speech samples of 51 monolingual German children and simultaneous bilingual children speaking German and another language (mean age 9; 9) were presented to 63 monolingual German adult raters. In Experiment 1, 31 raters assessed the category (standard, regional, foreign) and degree of accent of children's words, while in Experiment 2, 32 raters assessed vowels extracted from these words. The results show that an equal proportion of monolingual and bilingual children were categorized as having a Standard German accent. Children who were rated as foreign-accented were more likely to be bilingual, while children who were rated as regionally-accented were more likely to be monolingual. As predicted, foreign-accent strength increased with a greater amount of input in the other language of the bilinguals. Lexical frequency predicted accentedness ratings of vowels (but not of words). These findings show that not only other language input but also accented input matter when assessing perceived accent.