Spanish-English Bilinguals Research Articles

The influence of bilingualism on statistical word learning

Statistical learning is a fundamental component of language acquisition, yet to date, relatively few studies have examined whether these abilities differ in bilinguals. In the present study, we examine this issue by comparing English monolinguals with Chinese–English and English–Spanish bilinguals in a cross-situational statistical learning (CSSL) task. In Experiment 1, we assessed the ability of both monolinguals and bilinguals on a basic CSSL task that contained only one-to-one mappings. In Experiment 2, learners were asked to form both one-to-one and two-to-one mappings, and were tested at three points during familiarization. Overall, monolinguals and bilinguals did not differ in their learning of one-to-one mappings. However, bilinguals more quickly acquired two-to-one mappings, while also exhibiting greater proficiency than monolinguals. We conclude that the fundamental SL mechanism may not be affected by language experience, in accord with previous studies. However, when the input contains greater variability, bilinguals may be more prone to detecting the presence of multiple structures.

The influence of conversational context and the developing lexicon on the calculation of scalar implicatures: Insights from Spanish-English bilingual children

Although monolingual children do not generally calculate the upper-bounded scalar implicature (SI) associated with ‘some’ without additional support, monolingual Spanish-speaking children have been reported to do so with algunos (‘some’), and further distinguish algunos from unos. Given documented cross-linguistic influence in interface phenomena in bilinguals, we asked whether young Spanish-English bilinguals calculate SIs with algunos, or if there is an effect of acquiring languages with overlapping but diverging lexical entries. Two experiments reveal that not only do bilinguals inconsistently calculate SIs, Spanish monolinguals do not always either. In Experiment 1 , bilinguals did not calculate the SI associated with algunos. However, in Experiment 2 , which calls upon their awareness of speaker-hearer dynamics, they did. This research highlights the challenges arising from interpreting linguistic phenomena where lexical, semantic, and pragmatic information intersect, and is a call for further investigation with bilinguals in a rapidly growing area where bilingual research is lacking.

The influence of conversational context and the developing lexicon on the calculation of scalar implicatures

Abstract Although monolingual children do not generally calculate the upper-bounded scalar implicature (SI) associated with ‘some’ without additional support, monolingual Spanish-speaking children have been reported to do so with algunos (‘some’), and further distinguish algunos from unos. Given documented cross-linguistic influence in interface phenomena in bilinguals, we asked whether young Spanish-English bilinguals calculate SIs with algunos, or if there is an effect of acquiring languages with overlapping but diverging lexical entries. Two experiments reveal that not only do bilinguals inconsistently calculate SIs, Spanish monolinguals do not always either. In Experiment 1, bilinguals did not calculate the SI associated with algunos. However, in Experiment 2, which calls upon their awareness of speaker-hearer dynamics, they did. This research highlights the challenges arising from interpreting linguistic phenomena where lexical, semantic, and pragmatic information intersect, and is a call for further investigation with bilinguals in a rapidly growing area where bilingual research is lacking.

The role of code-switching and language context in bilingual phonetic transfer

The present study examines the effect of two potential catalysts for interlanguage phonetic interaction, code-switching and language mode, on the production of voice onset time (VOT) to better understand the role of (near) simultaneous dual language activation on phonetic production, as well as the nature of phonetic transfer. An oral production paradigm was carried out in which Spanish–English bilinguals produced words with initial voiceless stops as non-switched tokens, code-switched tokens in an otherwise monolingual context, and code-switched tokens in a bilingual context. Results demonstrated a degree of phonetic transfer associated with code-switching, either unidirectional or bi-directional. Specifically, English, with long lag VOT, was more susceptible to phonetic transfer than Spanish (short lag). Contrary to expectations, while the code-switching effect was present in both monolingual and bilingual mode, there was no additional transfer, or additive effect, of bilingual language mode. Differences in the effects of code-switching on English and Spanish are discussed with respect to the inherently different acceptable VOT ranges in the two languages. Furthermore, the lack of difference in VOT between the code-switched tokens in the monolingual and bilingual contexts is taken to suggest limits on phonetic transfer.

Analogical Transfer by Spanish–English Bilinguals: Implications for Educational and Employment Settings

ABSTRACTThe present research investigated analogical transfer during problem solving by bilinguals. In a study with 50 Spanish–English bilinguals, participants solved a target problem whose solution was similar to that of a preceding source problem. The source problem was always presented in the 2nd language; the target problem was always presented in the 1st language. The results showed that when participants understood a key structural feature shared by the source and target problems, they solved the target problem more often than others. Participants’ performance was not related to their proficiency in the language of the source problem (i.e., the 2nd language).

The role of language proficiency, cognate status and word frequency in the assessment of Spanish–English bilinguals’ verbal fluency

Purpose: Assessment tools are needed to accurately index performance in bilingual populations. This study examines the verbal fluency task to further establish the relative sensitivities of letter and category fluency in assessing bilingual language skills in Spanish–English bilinguals.Method: English monolinguals and Spanish–English bilinguals had 1 minute to name words belonging to a category (e.g. animals) or starting with a letter (e.g. A). Number of words retrieved, proficiency, cognate and frequency effects were examined.Result: In their dominant language (English), bilinguals and monolinguals showed similar fluency patterns, generating more words in category than letter tasks. This category advantage disappeared for bilinguals tested in their non-dominant language (Spanish). Further, bilinguals retrieved a higher percentage of cognates (e.g. lagoon-laguna) than monolinguals across tasks and languages. In particular, as proficiency increased in their non-dominant language, bilinguals were more likely to produce cognates (including cognates with lower word frequencies).Conclusion: While bilinguals and monolinguals performed largely the same, bilinguals showed fine-grained differences from monolinguals in both their dominant and non-dominant languages. Based on these results, it is recommended that clinicians evaluate findings from bilinguals’ verbal fluency tasks with attention to language proficiency, cognate words produced and relative to normative data that match their clients’ language histories.

Discrepancies between bilinguals’ performance on the Spanish and English versions of the WAIS Digit Span task: Cross-cultural implications

ABSTRACTThis study explored within-subjects differences in the performance of 40 bilingual participants on the English and Spanish versions of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) Digit Span task. To test the linguistic hypothesis that individuals would perform worse in Spanish because of its syllabic demand, we compared the number of syllables correctly recalled by each participant for every correct trial. Our analysis of the correct number of syllables remembered per trial showed that participants performed significantly better (i.e., recalling more syllables) in Spanish than in English on the total score. Findings suggest the Spanish version of the Digit Span (total score) was significantly more difficult than the English version utilizing traditional scoring methods. Moreover, the Forward Trial, rather than the Backward Trial, was more likely to show group differences between both language versions. Additionally, the Spanish trials of the Digit Span were correlated with language comprehension and verbal episodic memory measures, whereas the English trials of the Digit Span were correlated with confrontational naming and verbal fluency tasks. The results suggest that more research is necessary to further investigate other cognitive factors, rather than just syllabic demand, that might contribute to performance and outcome differences on the WAIS Digit Span in Spanish-English bilinguals.

Working Memory in Spanish–English and Chinese–English Bilinguals

Many researchers demonstrated the causal effect of bilingualism for working memory ability; bilinguals have higher executive functions in maintaining higher working memory ability. The present research examined the effect of different language types college bilinguals—Chinese–English (two dispersed languages) and Spanish–English (two similar languages) bilinguals for their working memory abilities. Chinese–English and Spanish–English bilinguals have been compared in many studies. Spanish–English bilinguals are superior learning English with similar consonant, vowel, alphabetic orthographic system and phonetic structure. Therefore, they are outperformed in many language-related tasks because they use less switching and transferring cost in both languages. On the other hand, learning English for Chinese-English bilinguals is much challenging because of the greater language structure differences. They need to visually practice in Chinese logograph and English alphabetic orthographic system to achieve high levels of competencies in both languages. Hence, it implies Chinese–English bilinguals acquire a higher working memory ability to deal with languages and daily tasks than those Spanish–English bilinguals who exercise working memory less in languages. To evaluate how language can shape on human’s working memory ability without language proficiency issue, a visual working memory (Paper Folding Test) was presented. By comparing the visual working memory test scores, Chinese–English bilinguals scored statistically higher than Spanish–English bilinguals, while controlling for gender and self-reported English level. Further research should investigate the relationship between bilingualism and working memory, and continuously assess the definitions on very shared languages and very dispersed languages.

Parent Reports of Young Spanish-English Bilingual Children's Productive Vocabulary: A Development and Validation Study.

This 2-phase study aims to extend research on parent report measures of children's productive vocabulary by investigating the development (n = 38) of the Spanish Vocabulary Extension and validity (n = 194) of the 100-item Spanish and English MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories Toddler Short Forms and Upward Extension (Fenson et al., 2000, 2007; Jackson-Maldonado, Marchman, & Fernald, 2013) and the Spanish Vocabulary Extension for use with parents from low-income homes and their 24- to 48-month-old Spanish-English bilingual children. Study participants were drawn from Early Head Start and Head Start collaborative programs in the Northeastern United States in which English was the primary language used in the classroom. All families reported Spanish or Spanish-English as their home language(s). The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories as well as the researcher-designed Spanish Vocabulary Extension were used as measures of children's English and Spanish productive vocabularies. Findings revealed the forms' concurrent and discriminant validity, on the basis of standardized measures of vocabulary, as measures of productive vocabulary for this growing bilingual population. These findings suggest that parent reports, including our researcher-designed form, represent a valid, cost-effective mechanism for vocabulary monitoring purposes in early childhood education settings.

The Relationship Between Vocabulary and Word Reading Among Head Start Spanish–English Bilingual Children

In this study, we investigated the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between vocabulary and word reading across Spanish and English. One hundred and seventeen 4- to 5-year-old Spanish–English bilingual children attending Head Start programs in the United States were tested for their Spanish and English word reading twice, 5 months apart. We also tested the children’s Spanish and English vocabulary and phonological awareness at Time 1. We used multiple regression models to examine the predictive value of vocabulary to word reading cross-linguistically and longitudinally. Results showed that within (Spanish or English) language and concurrent predictions were stronger than cross-language and longitudinal predictions; however, Spanish vocabulary was a significant and unique predictor of English word reading longitudinally. Spanish phonological awareness also played an important role in the relationship between vocabulary and word reading. Our results suggest that helping Spanish-speaking children build their Spanish vocabulary can also improve their English word reading ability.

The extension of 'estar' across the Mexico-US border: Evidence against contact induced acceleration

This variationist study compares the extension of estar in contexts where normatively one would expect the use of the ser, in the Spanish varieties spoken in Sonora, Mexico and Arizona, United States. An analysis of 1,582 tokens in 36 interviews shows an overall innovative use of estar of 16.2% in Sonora and 20.8% in Arizona, percentages comparable to previous studies. Place of origin of the speaker (Sonora/Arizona) is not statistically significant and the distribution of the factors is very similar in the two communities, suggesting bilingualism (Spanish-English) does not result in an accelerated innovative use in this corpus. A discussion of previous research also provides evidence against a general tendency towards an accelerated use of innovative estar as the result of Spanish-English bilingualism in US Spanish. The methodology implemented in this study (comparing Sonoran monolinguals and Arizonan bilinguals from Sonoran families), provides a needed control when discerning between contact-induced change and language-internal dialectal variation.

Assessment of language impairment in bilingual children using semantic tasks: two languages classify better than one.

Significant progress has been made in the identification of language impairment in children are bilingual. Bilingual children's vocabulary knowledge may be distributed across languages. Thus, when testing bilingual children it is difficult to know how to weigh each language for diagnostic purposes. Even when conceptual scoring is used in vocabulary testing, bilingual children may score below that of their typical monolingual peers. The primary aim was to evaluate the classification accuracy of two approaches (total semantics score and two-dimensional bilingual coordinate score) that combined lexical-semantic knowledge across two languages. We investigated the classification accuracy of the English and Spanish semantics subtest using the experimental version of the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (BESA) with bilingual children with and without language impairment. A total of 78 bilinguals with balanced exposure to English and Spanish (15 with language impairment, 63 with typical development) participated. Children were between 4;0 and 6;11 years old. Discriminant function analysis explored the extent to which these children were accurately classified when combining Spanish and English subtests. Discriminant analysis yielded above 85% correct classification for balanced bilingual children for both approaches. For the most accurate assessment and diagnostic decision-making for bilinguals, approaches that consider both languages together are recommended.

Language Membership Identification Precedes Semantic Access: Suppression during Bilingual Word Recognition.

Previous research suggests that bilingual comprehenders access lexical representations of words in both languages nonselectively. However, it is unclear whether global language suppression plays a role in guiding attention to target language representations during ongoing lexico-semantic processing. To help clarify this issue, this study examined the relative timing of language membership and meaning activation during visual word recognition. Spanish-English bilinguals performed simultaneous semantic and language membership classification tasks on single words during EEG recording. Go/no-go ERP latencies provided evidence that language membership information was accessed before semantic information. Furthermore, N400 frequency effects indicated that the depth of processing of words in the nontarget language was reduced compared to the target language. These results suggest that the bilingual brain can rapidly identify the language to which a word belongs and subsequently use this information to selectively modulate the degree of processing in each language accordingly.

Syntactic Processing in Professional Interpreters: Understanding Ambiguous Sentences in Reading and Translation

This study evaluates the way in which interpreters activate the source language and the target language (TL) when they perform the interpreting task. We focused on syntactic ambiguities. In sentences like Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony, two antecedents (‘servant’ and ‘actress’) are potential correct agents of the clause (who was on the balcony). Previous studies showed that Native English speakers interpret the second antecedent as the agent (actress); Spanish speakers prefer the first antecedent (servant), and Spanish–English bilinguals do not show any preference. In the present study, we observed the interpreters’ syntactic processing when they either read the ambiguous sentences in Spanish to repeat them in Spanish or read the sentences in Spanish to translate them into English. The way ambiguous sentences were processed depended on the task: professionals did not show a clear attachment preference when they read and repeated sentences, while they used the strategy preferred in the TL when they performed the interpreting task. Interpreters managed TL syntactic properties in a flexible manner during the comprehension phase of the interpreting task.

Multiple Translations in Bilingual Memory: Processing Differences Across Concrete, Abstract, and Emotion Words

Historically, the manner in which translation ambiguity and emotional content are represented in bilingual memory have often been ignored in many theoretical and empirical investigations, resulting in these linguistic factors related to bilingualism being absent from even the most promising models of bilingual memory representation. However, in recent years it was reported that the number of translations a word has across languages influences the speed with which bilinguals translate concrete and abstract words from one language into another (Tokowicz and Kroll in Lang Cogn Process 22:727-779, 2007). The current work examines how the number of translations that characterize a word influences bilingual lexical organization and the processing of concrete, abstract, and emotional stimuli. In Experiment 1, Spanish-English bilinguals translated concrete and abstract words with one and more than one translation. As reported by Tokowicz and Kroll, concreteness effects emerged only when words had more than one translation across languages. In Experiment 2, bilinguals translated emotion words with more than one translation. Concreteness effects emerged in both language directions for words with more than one translation, and in the L1-L2 language direction for words with a single translation across languages. These findings are discussed in terms of how multiple translations, specifically for emotion words, might be incorporated into current models of bilingual memory representation.

Phonetic variation in bilingual speech: A lens for studying the production-comprehension link.

We exploit the unique phonetic properties of bilingual speech to ask how processes occurring during planning affect speech articulation, and whether listeners can use the phonetic modulations that occur in anticipation of a codeswitch to help restrict their lexical search to the appropriate language. An analysis of spontaneous bilingual codeswitching in the Bangor Miami Corpus (Deuchar et al., 2014) reveals that in anticipation of switching languages, Spanish-English bilinguals produce slowed speech rate and cross-language phonological influence on consonant voice onset time. A study of speech comprehension using the visual world paradigm demonstrates that bilingual listeners can indeed exploit these low-level phonetic cues to anticipate that a codeswitch is coming and to suppress activation of the non-target language. We discuss the implications of these results for current theories of bilingual language regulation, and situate them in terms of recent proposals relating the coupling of the production and comprehension systems more generally.

A robust demonstration of the cognate facilitation effect in first-language and second-language naming

The cognate facilitation effect refers to the phenomenon that in bilinguals performance on various vocabulary tasks is enhanced for cross-linguistic cognates as opposed to noncognates. However, research investigating the presence of the cognate advantage in bilingual children remains limited. Most studies with children conducted to date has not included a control group or rigorously designed stimuli, which may jeopardize the validity and robustness of the emerging evidence. The current study addressed these methodological problems by examining performance in picture naming tasks in 34 4- to 7-year-old Spanish–English bilinguals and 52 Mandarin–English bilinguals as well as 37 English-speaking monolinguals who served as controls. Stimuli were controlled for phonology, word frequency, and length. The Spanish–English bilinguals performed better for cognates than for noncognates and exhibited a greater number of doublet responses (i.e., providing correct responses in both languages) in naming cognate targets than in naming noncognates. The control groups did not show differences in performance between the two sets of words. These findings provide compelling evidence that cross-linguistic similarities at the phonological level allow bootstrapping of vocabulary learning.

Determiner-noun code-switching in Spanish heritage speakers

Code-switching is prevalent in bilingual speech, and follows specific syntactic constraints. Several theories have been proposed to explain these constraints, and in this paper we focus on the Minimalist Program and the Matrix Language Frame model. Using a determiner-noun picture naming paradigm, we tested the ability of these theories to explain determiner-noun code-switches in Spanish–English bilinguals. The Minimalist Program predicts that speakers will use the determiner from the gendered language, whereas the Matrix Language Frame model predicts that the determiner will come from the language that dominates the syntactic structure in a code-switched utterance. We observed that the bilinguals had slowest naming times and decreased accuracy in Spanish determiner - English noun conditions (‘el dog’), and that adding a Matrix Language did not modulate this pattern. Although our results do not align with either theory, we conclude that they can be explained by the WEAVER++ model of speech production.

Multilingual Miami: Current Trends in Sociolinguistic Research

AbstractIn this paper, we discuss current trends in sociolinguistic work focusing on language in metropolitan Miami, an area we contend is underrepresented in the sociolinguistics literature given the unique contact situation that has arisen there during the past half century. We focus our attention on four main areas of theoretical and empirical concern: (1) Spanish–English bilingualism, (2) issues related to the varieties of Spanish spoken in Miami, (3) issues related to the varieties of English spoken in Miami, and (4) an overview of languages other than English and Spanish spoken in the region, with particular attention to Haitian Creole. We conclude with suggestions for future sociolinguistic work in all of these areas.

Preposition Stranding in Spanish as a Heritage Language

Previous research examining heritage speaker bilingualism has suggested that interfaceconditioned properties are likely to be affected by crosslinguistic influence (e.g., Montrul & Polinsky, 2011; White, 2011). It is not clear, however, whether the core syntax can also be affected to the same degree (e.g., Cuza, 2013; Depiante & Thompson, 2013). Departing from Cuza’s (2013) and Depiante and Thompson’s (2013) research, the present study seeks to determine the extent to which this is possible in the case of Spanish as a heritage language. With this goal in mind, a total of thirty-three Spanish heritage speakers (divided into sequential and simultaneous bilinguals) and a comparison group of eleven late Spanish-English bilinguals completed a battery of off-line tasks that examined knowledge and use of preposition stranding (i.e., a syntactic construction whereby the object of the preposition is fronted while the preposition itself is left stranded), an understudied core syntactic phenomenon that is licit in English but precluded in Spanish. Overall findings reveal that the sequential heritage speakers pattern with participants from the control group. The simultaneous heritage speakers, on the other hand, seem to have a grammar that is not so restricting as they accept and produce ungrammatical cases of preposition stranding. Herein, we argue that these results do not obtain the way they do due to incomplete acquisition or L1 attrition but crucially because of the timing of exposure to the societal language. We propose that this property was completely acquired, although differently acquired due to the structural overlap observed between the two languages involved (e.g., Müller & Hulk, 2001), and most importantly, to the timing of acquisition of English (e.g., Putnam & Sánchez, 2013).