WorldWideScience

Sample records for bilingual language production

  1. Bilingual Language Switching: Production vs. Recognition

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    Mosca, Michela; de Bot, Kees

    2017-01-01

    This study aims at assessing how bilinguals select words in the appropriate language in production and recognition while minimizing interference from the non-appropriate language. Two prominent models are considered which assume that when one language is in use, the other is suppressed. The Inhibitory Control (IC) model suggests that, in both production and recognition, the amount of inhibition on the non-target language is greater for the stronger compared to the weaker language. In contrast, the Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA) model proposes that, in language recognition, the amount of inhibition on the weaker language is stronger than otherwise. To investigate whether bilingual language production and recognition can be accounted for by a single model of bilingual processing, we tested a group of native speakers of Dutch (L1), advanced speakers of English (L2) in a bilingual recognition and production task. Specifically, language switching costs were measured while participants performed a lexical decision (recognition) and a picture naming (production) task involving language switching. Results suggest that while in language recognition the amount of inhibition applied to the non-appropriate language increases along with its dominance as predicted by the IC model, in production the amount of inhibition applied to the non-relevant language is not related to language dominance, but rather it may be modulated by speakers' unconscious strategies to foster the weaker language. This difference indicates that bilingual language recognition and production might rely on different processing mechanisms and cannot be accounted within one of the existing models of bilingual language processing. PMID:28638361

  2. Cross-Language Activation in Children's Speech Production: Evidence from Second Language Learners, Bilinguals, and Trilinguals

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    Poarch, Gregory J.; van Hell, Janet G.

    2012-01-01

    In five experiments, we examined cross-language activation during speech production in various groups of bilinguals and trilinguals who differed in nonnative language proficiency, language learning background, and age. In Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 5, German 5- to 8-year-old second language learners of English, German-English bilinguals,…

  3. Cognate costs in bilingual speech production: Evidence from language switching

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    Mirjam Broersma

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available This study investigates cross-language lexical competition in the bilingual mental lexicon. It provides evidence for the occurrence of inhibition as well as the commonly reported facilitation during the production of cognates (words with similar phonological form and meaning in two languages in a mixed picture naming task by highly proficient Welsh-English bilinguals. Previous studies have typically found cognate facilitation. It has previously been proposed (with respect to non-cognates that cross-language inhibition is limited to low-proficient bilinguals; therefore, we tested highly proficient, early bilinguals. In a mixed naming experiment (i.e., picture naming with language switching, 48 highly proficient, early Welsh-English bilinguals named pictures in Welsh and English, including cognate and non-cognate targets. Participants were English-dominant, Welsh-dominant, or had equal language dominance. The results showed evidence for cognate inhibition in to ways. First, both facilitation and inhibition were found on the cognate trials themselves, compared to non-cognate controls, modulated by the participants’ language dominance. The English-dominant group showed cognate inhibition when naming in Welsh (and no difference between cognates and controls when naming in English, and the Welsh-dominant and equal dominance groups generally showed cognate facilitation. Second, cognate inhibition was found as a behavioral adaptation effect, with slower naming for non-cognate filler words in trials after cognates than after non-cognate controls. This effect was consistent across all language dominance groups and both target languages, suggesting that cognate production involved cognitive control even if this was not measurable in the cognate trials themselves. Finally, the results replicated patterns of symmetrical switch costs, as commonly reported for balanced bilinguals. We propose that cognate processing might be affected by two different

  4. Dutch-Cantonese Bilinguals Show Segmental Processing during Sinitic Language Production

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    Kalinka Timmer

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available This study addressed the debate on the primacy of syllable vs. segment (i.e., phoneme as a functional unit of phonological encoding in syllabic languages by investigating both behavioral and neural responses of Dutch-Cantonese (DC bilinguals in a color-object picture naming task. Specifically, we investigated whether DC bilinguals exhibit the phonemic processing strategy, evident in monolingual Dutch speakers, during planning of their Cantonese speech production. Participants named the color of colored line-drawings in Cantonese faster when color and object matched in the first segment than when they were mismatched (e.g., 藍駱駝, /laam4/ /lok3to4/, “blue camel;” 紅饑駝, /hung4/ /lok3to4/, “red camel”. This is in contrast to previous studies in Sinitic languages that did not reveal such phoneme-only facilitation. Phonemic overlap also modulated the event-related potentials (ERPs in the 125–175, 200–300, and 300–400 ms time windows, suggesting earlier ERP modulations than in previous studies with monolingual Sinitic speakers or unbalanced Sinitic-Germanic bilinguals. Conjointly, our results suggest that, while the syllable may be considered the primary unit of phonological encoding in Sinitic languages, the phoneme can serve as the primary unit of phonological encoding, both behaviorally and neurally, for DC bilinguals. The presence/absence of a segment onset effect in Sinitic languages may be related to the proficiency in the Germanic language of bilinguals.

  5. Cross-language activation in children's speech production: Evidence from second language learners, bilinguals, and trilinguals

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    Poarch, G.J.; Hell, J.G. van

    2012-01-01

    In five experiments, we examined cross-language activation during speech production in various groups of bilinguals and trilinguals who differed in nonnative language proficiency, language learning background, and age. In Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 5, German 5- to 8-year-old second language learners

  6. Semantic facilitation in bilingual first language acquisition.

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    Bilson, Samuel; Yoshida, Hanako; Tran, Crystal D; Woods, Elizabeth A; Hills, Thomas T

    2015-07-01

    Bilingual first language learners face unique challenges that may influence the rate and order of early word learning relative to monolinguals. A comparison of the productive vocabularies of 435 children between the ages of 6 months and 7 years-181 of which were bilingual English learners-found that monolinguals learned both English words and all-language concepts faster than bilinguals. However, bilinguals showed an enhancement of an effect previously found in monolinguals-the preference for learning words with more associative cues. Though both monolinguals and bilinguals were best fit by a similar model of word learning, semantic network structure and growth indicated that the two groups were learning English words in a different order. Further, in comparison with a model of two-monolinguals-in-one-mind, bilinguals overproduced translational equivalents. Our results support an emergent account of bilingual first language acquisition, where learning a word in one language facilitates its acquisition in a second language. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  7. Effects of language experience, use, and cognitive functioning on bilingual word production and comprehension

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    Litcofsky, K.; Tanner, D.; Hell, A.G. van

    2016-01-01

    Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: Considerable research has investigated how bilinguals produce and comprehend words, focusing mainly on how bilinguals are able to select words from the appropriate language. Less research, however, has investigated whether production and comprehension

  8. Bilinguals' Existing Languages Benefit Vocabulary Learning in a Third Language.

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    Bartolotti, James; Marian, Viorica

    2017-03-01

    Learning a new language involves substantial vocabulary acquisition. Learners can accelerate this process by relying on words with native-language overlap, such as cognates. For bilingual third language learners, it is necessary to determine how their two existing languages interact during novel language learning. A scaffolding account predicts transfer from either language for individual words, whereas an accumulation account predicts cumulative transfer from both languages. To compare these accounts, twenty English-German bilingual adults were taught an artificial language containing 48 novel written words that varied orthogonally in English and German wordlikeness (neighborhood size and orthotactic probability). Wordlikeness in each language improved word production accuracy, and similarity to one language provided the same benefit as dual-language overlap. In addition, participants' memory for novel words was affected by the statistical distributions of letters in the novel language. Results indicate that bilinguals utilize both languages during third language acquisition, supporting a scaffolding learning model.

  9. Language choice in bimodal bilingual development

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    Diane eLillo-Martin

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available Bilingual children develop sensitivity to the language used by their interlocutors at an early age, reflected in differential use of each language by the child depending on their interlocutor. Factors such as discourse context and relative language dominance in the community may mediate the degree of language differentiation in preschool age children.Bimodal bilingual children, acquiring both a sign language and a spoken language, have an even more complex situation. Their Deaf parents vary considerably in access to the spoken language. Furthermore, in addition to code-mixing and code-switching, they use code-blending – expressions in both speech and sign simultaneously – an option uniquely available to bimodal bilinguals. Code-blending is analogous to code-switching sociolinguistically, but is also a way to communicate without suppressing one language. For adult bimodal bilinguals, complete suppression of the non-selected language is cognitively demanding. We expect that bimodal bilingual children also find suppression difficult, and use blending rather than suppression in some contexts. We also expect relative community language dominance to be a factor in children’s language choices.This study analyzes longitudinal spontaneous production data from four bimodal bilingual children and their Deaf and hearing interlocutors. Even at the earliest observations, the children produced more signed utterances with Deaf interlocutors and more speech with hearing interlocutors. However, while three of the four children produced >75% speech alone in speech target sessions, they produced <25% sign alone in sign target sessions. All four produced bimodal utterances in both, but more frequently in the sign sessions, potentially because they find suppression of the dominant language more difficult.Our results indicate that these children are sensitive to the language used by their interlocutors, while showing considerable influence from the dominant

  10. Iconic Native Culture Cues Inhibit Second Language Production in a Non-immigrant Population: Evidence from Bengali-English Bilinguals.

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    Roychoudhuri, Kesaban S; Prasad, Seema G; Mishra, Ramesh K

    2016-01-01

    We examined if iconic pictures belonging to one's native culture interfere with second language production in bilinguals in an object naming task. Bengali-English bilinguals named pictures in both L1 and L2 against iconic cultural images representing Bengali culture or neutral images. Participants named in both "Blocked" and "Mixed" language conditions. In both conditions, participants were significantly slower in naming in English when the background was an iconic Bengali culture picture than a neutral image. These data suggest that native language culture cues lead to activation of the L1 lexicon that competed against L2 words creating an interference. These results provide further support to earlier observations where such culture related interference has been observed in bilingual language production. We discuss the results in the context of cultural influence on the psycholinguistic processes in bilingual object naming.

  11. Language Control Abilities of Late Bilinguals

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    Festman, Julia

    2012-01-01

    Although all bilinguals encounter cross-language interference (CLI), some bilinguals are more susceptible to interference than others. Here, we report on language performance of late bilinguals (Russian/German) on two bilingual tasks (interview, verbal fluency), their language use and switching habits. The only between-group difference was CLI:…

  12. Neural convergence for language comprehension and grammatical class production in highly proficient bilinguals is independent of age of acquisition.

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    Consonni, Monica; Cafiero, Riccardo; Marin, Dario; Tettamanti, Marco; Iadanza, Antonella; Fabbro, Franco; Perani, Daniela

    2013-05-01

    In bilinguals, native (L1) and second (L2) languages are processed by the same neural resources that can be modulated by age of second language acquisition (AOA), proficiency level, and daily language exposure and usage. AOA seems to particularly affect grammar processing, where a complete neural convergence has been shown only in bilinguals with parallel language acquisition from birth. Despite the fact that proficiency-related neuroanatomical differences have been well documented in language comprehension (LC) and production, few reports have addressed the influence of language exposure. A still unanswered question pertains to the role of AOA, when proficiency is comparably high across languages, with respect to its modulator effects both on LC and production. Here, we evaluated with fMRI during sentence comprehension and verb and noun production tasks, two groups of highly proficient bilinguals only differing in AOA. One group learned Italian and Friulian in parallel from birth, whereas the second group learned Italian between 3 and 6 years. All participants were highly exposed to both languages, but more to Italian than Friulian. The results indicate a complete overlap of neural activations for the comprehension of both languages, not only in bilinguals from birth, but also in late bilinguals. A slightly extra activation in the left thalamus for the less-exposed language confirms that exposure may affect language processing. Noteworthy, we report for the first time that, when proficiency and exposure are kept high, noun and verb production recruit the same neural networks for L1 and L2, independently of AOA. These results support the neural convergence hypothesis. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  13. Accessibility of the Nondominant Language in Picture Naming: A Counterintuitive Effect of Dementia on Bilingual Language Production

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    Gollan, Tamar H.; Salmon, David P.; Montoya, Rosa I.; da Pena, Eileen

    2010-01-01

    The current study tested the assumption that bilinguals with dementia regress to using primarily the dominant language. Spanish-English bilinguals with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD; n = 29), and matched bilingual controls (n = 42) named Boston Naming Test pictures in their dominant and nondominant languages. Surprisingly, differences between…

  14. Asymmetric Switch Costs in numeral naming and number word reading: Implications for models of bilingual language production

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    Michael eReynolds

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available One approach used to gain insight into the processes underlying bilingual language comprehension and production examines the costs that arise from switching languages. For unbalanced bilinguals, asymmetric switch costs are reported in speech production, where the switch cost for L1 is larger than the switch cost for L2, whereas, symmetric switch costs are reported in language comprehension tasks, where the cost of switching is the same for L1 and L2. Presently, it is unclear why asymmetric switch costs are observed in speech production, but not in language comprehension. Three experiments are reported that simultaneously examine methodological explanations of task related differences in the switch cost asymmetry and the predictions of three accounts of the switch cost asymmetry in speech production. The results of these experiments suggest that (1 the type of language task (comprehension vs. production determines whether an asymmetric switch cost is observed and (2 at least some of the switch cost asymmetry arises within the language system.

  15. Speech and language intervention in bilinguals

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    Eliane Ramos

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Increasingly, speech and language pathologists (SLPs around the world are faced with the unique set of issues presented by their bilingual clients. Some professional associations in different countries have presented recommendations when assessing and treating bilingual populations. In children, most of the studies have focused on intervention for language and phonology/ articulation impairments and very few focus on stuttering. In general, studies of language intervention tend to agree that intervention in the first language (L1 either increase performance on L2 or does not hinder it. In bilingual adults, monolingual versus bilingual intervention is especially relevant in cases of aphasia; dysarthria in bilinguals has been barely approached. Most studies of cross-linguistic effects in bilingual aphasics have focused on lexical retrieval training. It has been noted that even though a majority of studies have disclosed a cross-linguistic generalization from one language to the other, some methodological weaknesses are evident. It is concluded that even though speech and language intervention in bilinguals represents a most important clinical area in speech language pathology, much more research using larger samples and controlling for potentially confounding variables is evidently required.

  16. Parallel language activation during word processing in bilinguals: Evidence from word production in sentence context

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    Starreveld, P.A.; de Groot, A.M.B.; Rossmark, B.M.M.; van Hell, J.G.

    2014-01-01

    In two picture-naming experiments we examined whether bilinguals co-activate the non-target language during word production in the target language. The pictures were presented out-of-context (Experiment 1) or in visually presented sentence contexts (Experiment 2). In both experiments different

  17. Self-Repair and Language Selection in Bilingual Speech Processing

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    Inga Hennecke

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available In psycholinguistic research the exact level of language selection in bilingual lexical access is still controversial and current models of bilingual speech production offer conflicting statements about the mechanisms and location of language selection. This paper aims to provide a corpus analysis of self-repair mechanisms in code-switching contexts of highly fluent bilingual speakers in order to gain further insights into bilingual speech production. The present paper follows the assumptions of the Selection by Proficiency model, which claims that language proficiency and lexical robustness determine the mechanism and level of language selection. In accordance with this hypothesis, highly fluent bilinguals select languages at a prelexical level, which should influence the occurrence of self-repairs in bilingual speech. A corpus of natural speech data of highly fluent and balanced bilingual French-English speakers of the Canadian French variety Franco-Manitoban serves as the basis for a detailed analysis of different self-repair mechanisms in code-switching environments. Although the speech data contain a large amount of code-switching, results reveal that only a few speech errors and self-repairs occur in direct code-switching environments. A detailed analysis of the respective starting point of code-switching and the different repair mechanisms supports the hypothesis that highly proficient bilinguals do not select languages at the lexical level.Le niveau exact de la sélection des langues lors de l’accès lexical chez le bilingue reste une question controversée dans la recherche psycholinguistique. Les modèles actuels de la production verbale bilingue proposent des arguments contradictoires concernant le mécanisme et le lieu de la sélection des langues. La présente recherche vise à fournir une analyse de corpus mettant l’accent sur les mécanismes d’autoréparation dans le contexte d’alternance codique dans la production verbale

  18. Recognizing the Effects of Language Mode on the Cognitive Advantages of Bilingualism

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    Ziying Yu

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available For bilinguals, it is argued that a cognitive advantage can be linked to the constant management and need for conflict resolution that occurs when the two languages are co-activated (Bialystok, 2015. Language mode (Grosjean, 1998, 2001 is a significant variable that defines and shapes the language experiences of bilinguals and consequently, the cognitive advantages of bilingualism. Previous work, however, has not sufficiently tested the effects of language mode on the bilingual experience. In this brief conceptual analysis, we discuss the significance of language mode in bilingual work on speech perception, production, and reading. We offer possible explanations for conflicting findings and ways in which future work should control for its modulating effects.

  19. Recognizing the Effects of Language Mode on the Cognitive Advantages of Bilingualism

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    Yu, Ziying; Schwieter, John W.

    2018-01-01

    For bilinguals, it is argued that a cognitive advantage can be linked to the constant management and need for conflict resolution that occurs when the two languages are co-activated (Bialystok, 2015). Language mode (Grosjean, 1998, 2001) is a significant variable that defines and shapes the language experiences of bilinguals and consequently, the cognitive advantages of bilingualism. Previous work, however, has not sufficiently tested the effects of language mode on the bilingual experience. In this brief conceptual analysis, we discuss the significance of language mode in bilingual work on speech perception, production, and reading. We offer possible explanations for conflicting findings and ways in which future work should control for its modulating effects. PMID:29615949

  20. Recognizing the Effects of Language Mode on the Cognitive Advantages of Bilingualism.

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    Yu, Ziying; Schwieter, John W

    2018-01-01

    For bilinguals, it is argued that a cognitive advantage can be linked to the constant management and need for conflict resolution that occurs when the two languages are co-activated (Bialystok, 2015). Language mode (Grosjean, 1998, 2001) is a significant variable that defines and shapes the language experiences of bilinguals and consequently, the cognitive advantages of bilingualism. Previous work, however, has not sufficiently tested the effects of language mode on the bilingual experience. In this brief conceptual analysis, we discuss the significance of language mode in bilingual work on speech perception, production, and reading. We offer possible explanations for conflicting findings and ways in which future work should control for its modulating effects.

  1. Grammatical encoding in bilingual language production: A focus on code switching

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    MEHDI ePURMOHAMMAD

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available I report three experiments that examined whether words from one language of bilinguals can use the syntactic features form the other language and how such syntactic co-activation might influence syntactic processing. In other words, I examined whether there are any cases in which a lexical item inhibits its inherent syntactic feature and uses the syntactic feature(s that belongs to the other language, instead. In the non-switch condition in experiment 1 and 2, Persian-English bilinguals described pictures using an adjective-noun string from the same language requested. In the switch condition, they used the nouns and adjectives from the other language. In Experiment 3, in the switch condition participants used only the adjectives of noun phrases from the other language. The results showed that bilinguals may inhibit the activation of a word’s syntactic feature and use the syntactic property from the other language instead (e.g., pirāhane (N black. As the combinatorial node (the node that specify different kinds of syntactic structures in which a word can be used of a used adjective retains activation at least temporarily, bilinguals are more likely to use the same combinatorial node even for an adjective from the other language. Using the syntactic features from the other language increased in the switch conditions. Moreover, more inappropriate responses observed when switching from bilinguals’ L2 to L1. The results also revealed that different experimental contexts may lead to different patterns of the control mechanism. The results will be interpreted in terms of Hartsuiker and Pickering’s (2008 model of syntactic representation

  2. Input and language development in bilingually developing children.

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    Hoff, Erika; Core, Cynthia

    2013-11-01

    Language skills in young bilingual children are highly varied as a result of the variability in their language experiences, making it difficult for speech-language pathologists to differentiate language disorder from language difference in bilingual children. Understanding the sources of variability in bilingual contexts and the resulting variability in children's skills will help improve language assessment practices by speech-language pathologists. In this article, we review literature on bilingual first language development for children under 5 years of age. We describe the rate of development in single and total language growth, we describe effects of quantity of input and quality of input on growth, and we describe effects of family composition on language input and language growth in bilingual children. We provide recommendations for language assessment of young bilingual children and consider implications for optimizing children's dual language development. Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.

  3. SALT 2010 Bilingual S/E Version: A Tool for Assessing the Language Production of Bilingual (Spanish/English) Children

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    Miller, Jon F.; Iglesias, Aquiles; Rojas, Raul

    2010-01-01

    Assessing the language development of bilingual children can be a challenge--too often, children in the complex process of learning both Spanish and English are under- or over-diagnosed with language disorders. SLPs can change that with "SALT 2010 Bilingual S/E Version" for grades K-3, the first tool to comprehensively assess children's language…

  4. Being Bilingual: Issues for Cross-Language Research

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    Bogusia Temple

    2006-01-01

    Full Text Available The current political debates in England highlight the role of language in citizenship, social exclusion, and discrimination. Similar debates can also be found around the world. Correspondingly, research addressing different language communities is burgeoning. Service providers and academics are increasingly employing bilingual community researchers or interpreters to carry out research. However, there is very little written about the effect of working with bilingual researchers. What it means to be bilingual is often essentialised and rarely problematised. Bilingual researchers are seen as unproblematically acting as bridges between communities just because they are bilingual. Their ties to communities, their use of language, and their perspectives on the research are rarely investigated. Language is tied in an unproblematic way to meaning, values, and beliefs. In this article, I use examples from my own research to question what it means to be bilingual and to do cross-language research. I argue that there is no straightforward way in which meanings can be read off from researchers’ ties to language and that being bilingual is not the same for everyone.

  5. When learning a second language does not mean losing the first: bilingual language development in low-income, Spanish-speaking children attending bilingual preschool.

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    Winsler, A; Díaz, R M; Espinosa, L; Rodríguez, J L

    1999-01-01

    This article discusses two investigations which explored the bilingual language development outcomes of comparable groups of low-income, Spanish-speaking, Mexican American children who either did or did not attended a bilingual (Spanish/English) preschool. Study 1 is a replication of a study by Rodríguez, Díaz, Duran, and Espinosa, involving a new sample of 26 children who attended bilingual preschool for one year and 20 control children who remained at home. Study 2 represents a 1-year, longitudinal follow-up of Rodríguez et al.'s, sample of children during and after the children spent another year at home or in the preschool. In both investigations, standardized, objective measures of three components of children's language proficiency (productive language, receptive language, and language complexity) in English and Spanish were obtained at the beginning and end of the academic year. Contrary to fears that have been expressed by some that early exposure to English would lead to children's native language loss, the results of both studies offered no evidence of Spanish proficiency loss for children attending bilingual preschool. Children who attended bilingual preschool, compared to those who remained at home, showed significant and parallel gains in Spanish language development as well as significant and greater increases in English language proficiency over time. Results are discussed in terms of the need for more systematic research to be conducted in this area to inform policy and practice in the early education and development of language-minority children.

  6. Towards culturally competent health care: language use of bilingual staff.

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    Johnson, M; Noble, C; Matthews, C; Aguilar, N

    1998-01-01

    The presence of diverse language skills within health staff provides opportunities to better meet the needs of a multicultural population. A cross-sectional survey of all staff within the South Western Sydney Area Health Service was undertaken to compare language skills with population needs and examine the context of language use. Thirty-one per cent of staff (n = 964) were bilingual or multilingual, with the predominant languages spoken being Tagalog (Filipino), Cantonese, Hindi, Spanish, Vietnamese and Italian. Thirty-seven per cent of bilingual staff used their language skills at least weekly, predominantly in situations of simple conversation and giving directions. Bilingual staff are a valuable resource for the organisation and the presence of a similar overall proportion of bilingual and bicultural staff may engender tolerance and adaptability in providing care to a diverse population. However, supply does not directly match community demand. This mismatch will continue unless recruitment is focused towards identified language groups. The high proportion of staff who rarely used their language skills (37%) may be due to lack of opportunity or limited need, and suggests that further research needs to examine service models that locate bilingual workers close to client need. This study takes a crucial first step towards realising equitable and culturally appropriate care utilising the principles of productive diversity.

  7. Does simultaneous bilingualism aggravate children's specific language problems?

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    Korkman, Marit; Stenroos, Maria; Mickos, Annika; Westman, Martin; Ekholm, Pia; Byring, Roger

    2012-09-01

    There is little data on whether or not a bilingual upbringing may aggravate specific language problems in children. This study analysed whether there was an interaction of such problems and simultaneous bilingualism. Participants were 5- to 7-year-old children with specific language problems (LANG group, N = 56) or who were typically developing (CONTR group, N = 60). Seventy-three children were Swedish-Finnish bilingual and 43 were Swedish-speaking monolingual. Assessments (in Swedish) included tests of expressive language, comprehension, repetition and verbal memory. Per definition, the LANG group had lower scores than the CONTR group on all language tests. The bilingual group had lower scores than the monolingual group only on a test of body part naming. Importantly, the interaction of group (LANG or CONTR) and bilingualism was not significant on any of the language scores. Simultaneous bilingualism does not aggravate specific language problems but may result in a slower development of vocabulary both in children with and without specific language problems. Considering also advantages, a bilingual upbringing is an option also for children with specific language problems. In assessment, tests of vocabulary may be sensitive to bilingualism, instead tests assessing comprehension, syntax and nonword repetition may provide less biased methods. © 2012 The Author(s)/Acta Paediatrica © 2012 Foundation Acta Paediatrica.

  8. Asymmetrical Switch Costs in Bilingual Language Production Induced by Reading Words

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    Peeters, David; Runnqvist, Elin; Bertrand, Daisy; Grainger, Jonathan

    2014-01-01

    We examined language-switching effects in French-English bilinguals using a paradigm where pictures are always named in the same language (either French or English) within a block of trials, and on each trial, the picture is preceded by a printed word from the same language or from the other language. Participants had to either make a language…

  9. Bilingual children referred for psychiatric services: associations of language disorders, language skills, and psychopathology.

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    Toppelberg, Claudio O; Medrano, Laura; Peña Morgens, Liana; Nieto-Castañon, Alfonso

    2002-06-01

    To investigate (1) the prevalence of language deficits and disorders and (2) the relationship of bilingual language skills and psychopathology, in Spanish-English bilingual children referred for child and adolescent psychiatry services. Bilingual language skills, emotional/behavioral problems, sociodemographics, immigration variables, and nonverbal IQ were studied in 50 consecutively referred children. Estimated prevalence was high for language deficits (48%) and disorders (41%), with most cases (>79%) being of the mixed receptive-expressive type. In children with clinically significant emotional/behavioral problems, bilingual language skills were strongly and inversely correlated with problem scores, particularly global problems (r = -0.67, p or = -0.54; p language disorders and delays and (2) the close tie between poor language skills and emotional/behavioral problems. The data strongly suggest the clinical importance and feasibility of language assessment and the significance of receptive problems in bilingual children referred for psychiatric services. A safe approach is to fully assess language skills, rather than misattributing these children's language delays to normal bilingual acquisition processes.

  10. Language control in bilinguals: Intention to speak vs. execution of speech.

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    Reverberi, Carlo; Kuhlen, Anna; Abutalebi, Jubin; Greulich, R Stefan; Costa, Albert; Seyed-Allaei, Shima; Haynes, John-Dylan

    2015-05-01

    Bilinguals require a high degree of cognitive control to select the language intended for speaking and inhibit the unintended. Previous neuroimaging studies have not teased apart brain regions for generating the intention to use a given language, and those for speaking in that language. Separating these two phases can clarify at what stage competition between languages occurs. In this fMRI study German-English bilinguals were first cued to use German or English. After a delay, they named a picture in the cued language. During the intention phase, the precuneus, right superior lateral parietal lobule, and middle temporal gyrus were more activated when participants had to update the currently active language. During language execution activation was higher for English compared to German in brain areas associated with cognitive control, most notably the anterior cingulate and the caudate. Our results suggest two different systems enabling cognitive control during bilingual language production. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  11. Assessing multilingual children: disentangling bilingualism from language impairment

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    Armon-Lotem, S.; de Jong, J.; Meir, N.

    2015-01-01

    This book presents a comprehensive set of tools for assessing the linguistic abilities of bilingual children. It aims to disentangle effects of bilingualism from those of Specific Language Impairment (SLI), making use of both models of bilingualism and models of language impairment.

  12. Lithuanian speaking childrens' bilingualism. language situation and policy

    OpenAIRE

    Paškauskaitė, Ieva

    2017-01-01

    Lithuanian Speaking Childrens' Bilingualism. Language Situation and Policy The purpose of this study is to investigate the language situation of Lithuanian speaking children in Sweden and its causes. This study is specifically concerned with the subjects of bilingualism and family language policy: language strategies and methods. The concept of bilingualism is complex and can be defined in different ways, therefore this study is based on a table which was introduced by T. Skutnabb-Kangas in 1...

  13. Example sentences in bilingual specialised dictionaries assisting communication in a foreign language

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nielsen, Sandro

    2014-01-01

    production process reveal that this also includes grammar, language conventions, genre conventions and style. Specialists can be expected to know conventions and style in their own source language culture but cannot be expected to know how these are realised in a foreign language. Bilingual specialised...... dictionaries can help users if they contain domain-specific example sentences illustrating how source language convention and style can be transposed to a foreign language. This means that bilingual specialised dictionaries should not merely help users translate terms but be lexicographical tools designed...

  14. Which Language R You Speaking? /r/ as a Language Marker in Tyrolean and Italian Bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kaland, Constantijn; Galatà, Vincenzo; Spreafico, Lorenzo; Vietti, Alessandro

    2017-12-01

    Across languages of the world the /r/ sound is known for its variability. This variability has been investigated using articulatory models as well as in sociolinguistic studies. The current study investigates to what extent /r/ is a marker of a bilingual's dominant language. To this end, a reading task was carried out by bilingual speakers from South Tyrol, who produce /r/ differently according to whether they dominantly speak Tyrolean or Italian. The recorded reading data were subsequently used in a perception experiment to investigate whether South Tyrolean bilingual listeners are able to identify the dominant language of the speaker. Results indicate that listeners use /r/ as a cue to determine the dominant language of the speaker whilst relying on articulatory distinctions between the variants. It is furthermore shown that /r/ correlates with three interdependent variables: the sociolinguistic background of the speakers, their speech production, and how their speech is perceived.

  15. Language profiles of monolingual and bilingual Finnish preschool children at risk for language impairment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Westman, Martin; Korkman, Marit; Mickos, Annika; Byring, Roger

    2008-01-01

    A large proportion of children are exposed to more than one language, yet research on simultaneous bilingualism has been relatively sparse. Traditionally, there has been concern that bilingualism may aggravate language difficulties of children with language impairment. However, recent studies have not found specific language impairment (SLI) or language-related problems to be increased by bilingualism. The topic of bilingualism and its effects has high actuality in Finland, where increasing numbers of children in the country's 6% Swedish-speaking minority grow up in bilingual families, where one parent's primary language is Swedish and the other's Finnish. The present study aimed at exploring the influence of such bilingualism on the language profiles of children from this population at risk for language impairment (LI). Participants were recruited from a language screening of 339 children from kindergartens with instruction only in Swedish, from the Swedish-speaking parts of Finland. Of these children, 33 (9.7%) were defined as a Risk Group for LI, whereas 48 non-risk children were randomly selected to form a control group. When subdividing the children according to home language, 35 were found to be monolingual, Swedish-speaking, and 46 were Swedish-Finnish bilingual. The children underwent neuropsychological assessment during their preschool year. Assessment methods included subtests from the Wechsler Primary and Preschool Scale of Intelligence - Revised and the NEPSY Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment. A repeated-measures multiple analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) showed a significant effect of risk of LI on the NEPSY language scores. The effect of home language was not significant and there was no interaction between home language and risk for LI. Non-verbal IQ was controlled for. Across groups, bilingual children scored lower than monolingual children only on measures of vocabulary and sentence repetition. Although a slight general cost of

  16. Bilingual infants control their languages as they listen.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Byers-Heinlein, Krista; Morin-Lessard, Elizabeth; Lew-Williams, Casey

    2017-08-22

    Infants growing up in bilingual homes learn two languages simultaneously without apparent confusion or delay. However, the mechanisms that support this remarkable achievement remain unclear. Here, we demonstrate that infants use language-control mechanisms to preferentially activate the currently heard language during listening. In a naturalistic eye-tracking procedure, bilingual infants were more accurate at recognizing objects labeled in same-language sentences ("Find the dog!") than in switched-language sentences ("Find the chien !"). Measurements of infants' pupil size over time indicated that this resulted from increased cognitive load during language switches. However, language switches did not always engender processing difficulties: the switch cost was reduced or eliminated when the switch was from the nondominant to the dominant language, and when it crossed a sentence boundary. Adults showed the same patterns of performance as infants, even though target words were simple and highly familiar. Our results provide striking evidence from infancy to adulthood that bilinguals monitor their languages for efficient comprehension. Everyday practice controlling two languages during listening is likely to explain previously observed bilingual cognitive advantages across the lifespan.

  17. Developing the Bilingual Competence in Learning Foreign Languages

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    T. A. Znamenskaya

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper considers the problem of bilingualism and its effect on the personality of the speaker. Various types of bilingualism are described along with the factors determining the bilingual competence formation: age, individual experience, socio-cultural conditions of the native and foreign language interaction. The author points out both the positive and negative impact on the native language as the result of the second language learning. The special emphasis is on language interference in the process of learning a foreign language. To make sure the students achieve the adequate degree of its authenticity, and therefore the bilingual competence, the teacher should take into account the specificity of national styles, communicative strategies and speech tactics of both languages. A comparative analysis of linguistic differences of the English and Russian languages is demonstrated on the level of phonetics, vocabulary, grammar and national communicative stylistics. The author maintains that successful inter-language and cross-cultural communication requires the integrative cross-disciplinary approach, consolidation of the linguistic theory and methods of foreign language teaching. 

  18. Bilingual First Language Acquisition: Exploring the Limits of the Language Faculty.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Genesee, Fred

    2001-01-01

    Reviews current research in three domains of bilingual acquisition: pragmatic features of bilingual code mixing, grammatical constraints on child bilingual code mixing, and bilingual syntactic development. Examines implications from these domains for the understanding of the limits of the mental faculty to acquire language. (Author/VWL)

  19. Traces of an Early Learned Second Language in Discontinued Bilingualism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sadat, Jasmin; Pureza, Rita; Alario, F.-Xavier

    2016-01-01

    Can an early learned second language influence speech production after living many years in an exclusively monolingual environment? To address this issue, we investigated the consequences of discontinued early bilingualism in heritage speakers who moved abroad and switched language dominance from the second to the primary learned language. We used…

  20. Bilingualism alters brain functional connectivity between "control" regions and "language" regions: Evidence from bimodal bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Le; Abutalebi, Jubin; Zou, Lijuan; Yan, Xin; Liu, Lanfang; Feng, Xiaoxia; Wang, Ruiming; Guo, Taomei; Ding, Guosheng

    2015-05-01

    Previous neuroimaging studies have revealed that bilingualism induces both structural and functional neuroplasticity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the left caudate nucleus (LCN), both of which are associated with cognitive control. Since these "control" regions should work together with other language regions during language processing, we hypothesized that bilingualism may also alter the functional interaction between the dACC/LCN and language regions. Here we tested this hypothesis by exploring the functional connectivity (FC) in bimodal bilinguals and monolinguals using functional MRI when they either performed a picture naming task with spoken language or were in resting state. We found that for bimodal bilinguals who use spoken and sign languages, the FC of the dACC with regions involved in spoken language (e.g. the left superior temporal gyrus) was stronger in performing the task, but weaker in the resting state as compared to monolinguals. For the LCN, its intrinsic FC with sign language regions including the left inferior temporo-occipital part and right inferior and superior parietal lobules was increased in the bilinguals. These results demonstrate that bilingual experience may alter the brain functional interaction between "control" regions and "language" regions. For different control regions, the FC alters in different ways. The findings also deepen our understanding of the functional roles of the dACC and LCN in language processing. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. Scaffolding Productive Language Skills through Sociodramatic Play

    Science.gov (United States)

    Galeano, Rebecca

    2011-01-01

    This article reviews how a receptive, bilingual four-year-old increased her Spanish productive-language skills over five weeks as she engaged in Spanish-language play sessions with bilingual peers. The data show her growing participation in group verbal interactions along with her growing production of her weaker language. In addition, a…

  2. Language and executive functioning in the context of specific language impairment and bilingualism

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Laloi, A.

    2015-01-01

    The present thesis has investigated how French-speaking monolingual and bilingual children with SLI (specific language impairment) performed on various tasks examining language and executive functioning (EF) abilities, in comparison to monolingual and bilingual peers without SLI. Language was

  3. Spontaneous Language Production in Bilingual Parkinson's Disease Patients: Evidence of Greater Phonological, Morphological and Syntactic Impairments in Native Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zanini, Sergio; Tavano, Alessandro; Fabbro, Franco

    2010-01-01

    Nine early non-demented bilingual (L1--Friulian, L2--Italian) patients with Parkinson's disease and nine normal controls matched for age, sex and years of education were studied on a spontaneous language production task. All subjects had acquired L1 from birth in a home environment and L2 at the age of six at school formally. Patients with PD…

  4. Executive functions in mono- and bilingual children with language impairment - issues for speech-language pathology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sandgren, Olof; Holmström, Ketty

    2015-01-01

    The clinical assessment of language impairment (LI) in bilingual children imposes challenges for speech-language pathology services. Assessment tools standardized for monolingual populations increase the risk of misinterpreting bilingualism as LI. This Perspective article summarizes recent studies on the assessment of bilingual LI and presents new results on including non-linguistic measures of executive functions in the diagnostic assessment. Executive functions shows clinical utility as less subjected to language use and exposure than linguistic measures. A possible bilingual advantage, and consequences for speech-language pathology practices and future research are discussed.

  5. Balanced bilingualism and early age of second language acquisition as the underlying mechanisms of a bilingual executive control advantage: why variations in bilingual experiences matter.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yow, W Quin; Li, Xiaoqian

    2015-01-01

    Recent studies revealed inconsistent evidences of a bilingual advantage in executive processing. One potential source of explanation is the multifaceted experience of the bilinguals in these studies. This study seeks to test whether bilinguals who engage in language selection more frequently would perform better in executive control tasks than those bilinguals who engage in language selection less frequently. We examined the influence of the degree of bilingualism (i.e., language proficiency, frequency of use of two languages, and age of second language acquisition) on executive functioning in bilingual young adults using a comprehensive battery of executive control tasks. Seventy-two 18- to 25-years-old English-Mandarin bilinguals performed four computerized executive function (EF) tasks (Stroop, Eriksen flanker, number-letter switching, and n-back task) that measure the EF components: inhibition, mental-set shifting, and information updating and monitoring. Results from multiple regression analyses, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping supported the positive association between age of second language acquisition and the interference cost in the Stroop task. Most importantly, we found a significant effect of balanced bilingualism (balanced usage of and balanced proficiency in two languages) on the Stroop and number-letter task (mixing cost only), indicating that a more balanced use and a more balanced level of proficiency in two languages resulted in better executive control skills in the adult bilinguals. We did not find any significant effect of bilingualism on flanker or n-back task. These findings provided important insights to the underlying mechanisms of the bilingual cognitive advantage hypothesis, demonstrating that regular experience with extensive practice in controlling attention to their two language systems results in better performance in related EFs such as inhibiting prepotent responses and global set-shifting.

  6. Balanced bilingualism and early age of second language acquisition as the underlying mechanisms of a bilingual executive control advantage: why variations in bilingual experiences matter

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yow, W. Quin; Li, Xiaoqian

    2015-01-01

    Recent studies revealed inconsistent evidences of a bilingual advantage in executive processing. One potential source of explanation is the multifaceted experience of the bilinguals in these studies. This study seeks to test whether bilinguals who engage in language selection more frequently would perform better in executive control tasks than those bilinguals who engage in language selection less frequently. We examined the influence of the degree of bilingualism (i.e., language proficiency, frequency of use of two languages, and age of second language acquisition) on executive functioning in bilingual young adults using a comprehensive battery of executive control tasks. Seventy-two 18- to 25-years-old English–Mandarin bilinguals performed four computerized executive function (EF) tasks (Stroop, Eriksen flanker, number–letter switching, and n-back task) that measure the EF components: inhibition, mental-set shifting, and information updating and monitoring. Results from multiple regression analyses, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping supported the positive association between age of second language acquisition and the interference cost in the Stroop task. Most importantly, we found a significant effect of balanced bilingualism (balanced usage of and balanced proficiency in two languages) on the Stroop and number–letter task (mixing cost only), indicating that a more balanced use and a more balanced level of proficiency in two languages resulted in better executive control skills in the adult bilinguals. We did not find any significant effect of bilingualism on flanker or n-back task. These findings provided important insights to the underlying mechanisms of the bilingual cognitive advantage hypothesis, demonstrating that regular experience with extensive practice in controlling attention to their two language systems results in better performance in related EFs such as inhibiting prepotent responses and global set-shifting. PMID:25767451

  7. Balanced bilingualism and early age of second language acquisition as the underlying mechanisms of a bilingual executive control advantage: Why variations in bilingual experiences matter.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    W. Quin eYow

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available Recent studies revealed inconsistent evidences of a bilingual advantage in executive processing. One potential source of explanation is the multifaceted experience of the bilinguals in these studies. This study seeks to test whether bilinguals who engage in language selection more frequently would perform better in executive control tasks than those bilinguals who engage in language selection less frequently. We examined the influence of the degree of bilingualism (i.e., language proficiency, frequency of use of two languages, and age of second language acquisition on executive functioning in bilingual young adults using a comprehensive battery of executive control tasks. Seventy-two 18- to 25-year-old English-Mandarin bilinguals performed four computerized executive function tasks (Stroop, Eriksen flanker, number-letter switching and n-back task that measure the executive function components: inhibition, mental-set shifting, and information updating and monitoring. Results from multiple regression analyses, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping supported the positive association between age of second language acquisition and the interference cost in the Stroop task. Most importantly, we found a significant effect of balanced bilingualism (balanced usage of and balanced proficiency in two languages on the Stroop and number-letter task (mixing cost only, indicating that a more balanced use and a more balanced level of proficiency in two languages resulted in better executive control skills in the adult bilinguals. We did not find any significant effect of bilingualism on flanker or n-back task. These findings provided important insights to the underlying mechanisms of the bilingual cognitive advantage hypothesis, demonstrating that regular experience with extensive practice in controlling attention to their two language systems results in better performance in related executive functions such as inhibiting prepotent responses and global

  8. A Multidimensional Review of Bilingual Aphasia as a Language Disorder

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mohsen Akbari

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available Aphasia as a multifaceted language disorder associated with the complicated links between language and brain has been and is of interest and significance to the stream of research in different disciplines including neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive studies and language acquisition. Along with explorations into the manifestations of aphasia in monolingual speakers, bilingual aphasia has similarly become the most current form of this language disorder due to the rising number of bilingual speakers in recent decades all over the world and the probability of facing bilinguals suffering from this language deficit. To paint a picture of this multidimensional linguistic impairment and to get out of the labyrinth of aphasia and in particular bilingual aphasia, the present review study aims to provide a summary of aphasia-related studies in different contexts worldwide and run through the variables affecting the manifestations and language recovery patterns in bilingual aphasic speakers.

  9. How Language Is Embodied in Bilinguals and Children with Specific Language Impairment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Adams, Ashley M.

    2016-01-01

    This manuscript explores the role of embodied views of language comprehension and production in bilingualism and specific language impairment. Reconceptualizing popular models of bilingual language processing, the embodied theory is first extended to this area. Issues such as semantic grounding in a second language and potential differences between early and late acquisition of a second language are discussed. Predictions are made about how this theory informs novel ways of thinking about teaching a second language. Secondly, the comorbidity of speech, language, and motor impairments and how embodiment theory informs the discussion of the etiology of these impairments is examined. A hypothesis is presented suggesting that what is often referred to as specific language impairment may not be so specific due to widespread subclinical motor deficits in this population. Predictions are made about how weaknesses and instabilities in speech motor control, even at a subclinical level, may disrupt the neural network that connects acoustic input, articulatory motor plans, and semantics. Finally, I make predictions about how this information informs clinical practice for professionals such as speech language pathologists and occupational and physical therapists. These new hypotheses are placed within the larger framework of the body of work pertaining to semantic grounding, action-based language acquisition, and action-perception links that underlie language learning and conceptual grounding. PMID:27582716

  10. Reframing Language Allocation Policy in Dual Language Bilingual Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sánchez, María Teresa; García, Ofelia; Solorza, Cristian

    2018-01-01

    This article addresses language allocation policies in what is increasingly called "Dual Language Education" (DLE) in the U.S., offering a challenge to the strict language separation policies in those programs and a proposal for flexibility that transforms them into "Dual Language Bilingual Education" (DLBE). The article offers…

  11. Executive functions in mono- and bilingual children with language impairment - issues for speech-language pathology.

    OpenAIRE

    Sandgren, Olof; Holmström, Ketty

    2015-01-01

    The clinical assessment of language impairment (LI) in bilingual children imposes challenges for speech-language pathology services. Assessment tools standardized for monolingual populations increase the risk of misinterpreting bilingualism as language impairment. This Perspective article summarizes recent studies on the assessment of bilingual LI and presents new results on including nonlinguistic measures of executive functions in the diagnostic assessment. Executive functions shows clinica...

  12. Language preference and development of dementia among bilingual individuals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McMurtray, Aaron; Saito, Erin; Nakamoto, Beau

    2009-10-01

    In bilingual individuals, regression to a primary language may be associated with development of cognitive impairment and increased risk for development of dementia. This report describes two bilingual patients who presented with early symptoms of dementia after regression to their primary language. The results of this study may help clinicians identify aging bilingual patients who are beginning to develop cognitive impairment or dementia and suggest that further studies on the long term cognitive effects of bilingualism and interactions with the aging process are indicated.

  13. The Value of Bilingualism in Pupils' Understanding of Scientific Language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kearsey, John; Turner, Sheila

    1999-01-01

    Argues that, although some bilingual pupils may be at a disadvantage in understanding scientific language, there may be some circumstances where being bilingual is an advantage in understanding scientific language. Presents evidence of circumstances where being bilingual was an advantage and circumstances where it was a disadvantage in…

  14. Lexical processing and organization in bilingual first language acquisition: Guiding future research.

    Science.gov (United States)

    DeAnda, Stephanie; Poulin-Dubois, Diane; Zesiger, Pascal; Friend, Margaret

    2016-06-01

    A rich body of work in adult bilinguals documents an interconnected lexical network across languages, such that early word retrieval is language independent. This literature has yielded a number of influential models of bilingual semantic memory. However, extant models provide limited predictions about the emergence of lexical organization in bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA). Empirical evidence from monolingual infants suggests that lexical networks emerge early in development as children integrate phonological and semantic information. These findings tell us little about the interaction between 2 languages in early bilingual memory. To date, an understanding of when and how languages interact in early bilingual development is lacking. In this literature review, we present research documenting lexical-semantic development across monolingual and bilingual infants. This is followed by a discussion of current models of bilingual language representation and organization and their ability to account for the available empirical evidence. Together, these theoretical and empirical accounts inform and highlight unexplored areas of research and guide future work on early bilingual memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

  15. Contribution of Bilingualism in Language Teaching

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sipra, Muhammad Aslam

    2013-01-01

    This study is an investigation into the contribution of the use of bilingualism as an aid in learning/teaching English as a foreign language and bilingualism in EFL classroom does not reduce students' communicative abilities but in effect can assist in teaching and learning process. The study employed a qualitative, interpretive research design…

  16. Implications of Bilingual Development for Specific Language Impairments in Turkey

    Science.gov (United States)

    Topbas, Seyhun

    2011-01-01

    The potential impact of bilingualism on children's language development has emerged as a crucial concern for Turkey, but so far it has not been addressed from the point of view of language disorders. This short review examines the potential impact of bilingual language development for language impairments in Turkey, with special emphasis on the…

  17. Task-based Language Learning in Bilingual Montessori Elementary Schools: Customizing Foreign Language Learning and Promoting L2 Speaking Skills

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jana Winnefeld

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available Foreign language learning has been a part of German elementary schools for several years now. Montessori schools focusing on individual learning, i.e. mostly independent from the teacher and based on auto-education, interest, and free choice, are also asked to teach an L2. The original lack of a concept of L2 learning for this environment has brought forth different approaches. Bilingual education seems to be feasible and applicable in Montessori education. The downside to this is that even in a bilingual classroom the Montessori way of learning may not allow for very much oral production of the foreign language. The role of L2 production (cf. Swain 1985, 1995, 2005 for language acquisition has been theoretically claimed and empirically investigated. Output can have a positive influence on L2 learning (cf. e.g. Izumi 2002, Keck et al. 2006. This also applies to interaction (cf. Long 1996, where negotiation of meaning and modified output are factors supporting L2 development (cf. e.g. de la Fuente 2002, McDonough 2005. Task-based Language Learning (TBLL presents itself as one way to promote oral language production and to provide opportunities for meaning-negotiation. Especially tasks with required information exchange and a closed outcome have been shown to be beneficial for the elicitation of negotiation of meaning and modified output. This paper argues that TBLL is a promising approach for the facilitation of L2 production and thus the development of speaking skills in a Montessori context. It also hypothesizes that TBLL can be implemented in a bilingual Montessori environment while still making the Montessori way of learning possible. Different tasks on various topics, examples of which are presented in this article, can lay the foundation for this. Offering such tasks in a bilingual Montessori elementary classroom promises to foster language production and the use of communication strategies like negotiation of meaning, both being

  18. The relation between language and arithmetic in bilinguals: insights from different stages of language acquisition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Amandine eVan Rinsveld

    2015-03-01

    Full Text Available Solving arithmetic problems is a cognitive task that heavily relies on language processing. One might thus wonder whether this language-reliance leads to qualitative differences (e.g. greater difficulties, error types, etc. in arithmetic for bilingual individuals who frequently have to solve arithmetic problems in more than one language. The present study investigated how proficiency in two languages interacts with arithmetic problem solving throughout language acquisition in adolescents and young adults. Additionally, we examined whether the number word structure that is specific to a given language plays a role in number processing over and above bilingual proficiency. We addressed these issues in a German-French educational bilingual setting, where there is a progressive transition from German to French as teaching language. Importantly, German and French number naming structures differ clearly, as two-digit number names follow a unit-ten order in German, but a ten-unit order in French. We implemented a transversal developmental design in which bilingual pupils from grades 7, 8, 10, 11, and young adults were asked to solve simple and complex additions in both languages. The results confirmed that language proficiency is crucial especially for complex addition computation. Simple additions in contrast can be retrieved equally well in both languages after extended language practice. Additional analyses revealed that over and above language proficiency, language-specific number word structures (e.g. unit-ten vs. ten-unit also induced significant modulations of bilinguals’ arithmetic performances. Taken together, these findings support the view of a strong relation between language and arithmetic in bilinguals.

  19. Language Mediated Concept Activation in Bilingual Memory Facilitates Cognitive Flexibility

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    Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available This is the first attempt of empirical investigation of language mediated concept activation (LMCA in bilingual memory as a cognitive mechanism facilitating divergent thinking. Russian–English bilingual and Russian monolingual college students were tested on a battery of tests including among others Abbreviated Torrance Tests for Adults assessing divergent thinking traits and translingual priming (TLP test assessing the LMCA. The latter was designed as a lexical decision priming test, in which a prime and a target were not related in Russian (language of testing, but were related through their translation equivalents in English (spoken only by bilinguals. Bilinguals outperformed their monolingual counterparts on divergent thinking trait of cognitive flexibility, and bilinguals’ performance on this trait could be explained by their TLP effect. Age of second language acquisition and proficiency in this language were found to relate to the TLP effect, and therefore were proposed to influence the directionality and strength of connections in bilingual memory.

  20. Evaluation of speech and language assessment approaches with bilingual children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    De Lamo White, Caroline; Jin, Lixian

    2011-01-01

    British society is multicultural and multilingual, thus for many children English is not their main or only language. Speech and language therapists are required to assess accurately the speech and language skills of bilingual children if they are suspected of having a disorder. Cultural and linguistic diversity means that a more complex assessment procedure is needed and research suggests that bilingual children are at risk of misdiagnosis. Clinicians have identified a lack of suitable assessment instruments for use with this client group. This paper highlights the challenges of assessing bilingual children and reviews available speech and language assessment procedures and approaches for use with this client group. It evaluates different approaches for assessing bilingual children to identify approaches that may be more appropriate for carrying out assessments effectively. This review discusses and evaluates the efficacy of norm-referenced standardized measures, criterion-referenced measures, language-processing measures, dynamic assessment and a sociocultural approach. When all named procedures and approaches are compared, the sociocultural approach appears to hold the most promise for accurate assessment of bilingual children. Research suggests that language-processing measures are not effective indicators for identifying speech and language disorders in bilingual children, but further research is warranted. The sociocultural approach encompasses some of the other approaches discussed, including norm-referenced measures, criterion-referenced measures and dynamic assessment. The sociocultural approach enables the clinician to interpret results in the light of the child's linguistic and cultural background. In addition, combining approaches mitigates the weaknesses inherent in each approach. © 2011 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

  1. Bilingual language control and general purpose cognitive control among individuals with bilingual aphasia: evidence based on negative priming and flanker tasks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dash, Tanya; Kar, Bhoomika R

    2014-01-01

    Bilingualism results in an added advantage with respect to cognitive control. The interaction between bilingual language control and general purpose cognitive control systems can also be understood by studying executive control among individuals with bilingual aphasia. objectives: The current study examined the subcomponents of cognitive control in bilingual aphasia. A case study approach was used to investigate whether cognitive control and language control are two separate systems and how factors related to bilingualism interact with control processes. Four individuals with bilingual aphasia performed a language background questionnaire, picture description task, and two experimental tasks (nonlinguistic negative priming task and linguistic and nonlinguistic versions of flanker task). A descriptive approach was used to analyse the data using reaction time and accuracy measures. The cumulative distribution function plots were used to visualize the variations in performance across conditions. The results highlight the distinction between general purpose cognitive control and bilingual language control mechanisms. All participants showed predominant use of the reactive control mechanism to compensate for the limited resources system. Independent yet interactive systems for bilingual language control and general purpose cognitive control were postulated based on the experimental data derived from individuals with bilingual aphasia.

  2. Language Proficiency and Sustained Attention in Monolingual and Bilingual Children with and without Language Impairment

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tessel Boerma

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available Background: The language profiles of children with language impairment (LI and bilingual children can show partial, and possibly temporary, overlap. The current study examined the persistence of this overlap over time. Furthermore, we aimed to better understand why the language profiles of these two groups show resemblance, testing the hypothesis that the language difficulties of children with LI reflect a weakened ability to maintain attention to the stream of linguistic information. Consequent incomplete processing of language input may lead to delays that are similar to those originating from reductions in input frequency.Methods: Monolingual and bilingual children with and without LI (N = 128, aged 5–8 years old, participated in this study. Dutch receptive vocabulary and grammatical morphology were assessed at three waves. In addition, auditory and visual sustained attention were tested at wave 1. Mediation analyses were performed to examine relationships between LI, sustained attention, and language skills.Results: Children with LI and bilingual children were outperformed by their typically developing (TD and monolingual peers, respectively, on vocabulary and morphology at all three waves. The vocabulary difference between monolinguals and bilinguals decreased over time. In addition, children with LI had weaker auditory and visual sustained attention skills relative to TD children, while no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals emerged. Auditory sustained attention mediated the effect of LI on vocabulary and morphology in both the monolingual and bilingual groups of children. Visual sustained attention only acted as a mediator in the bilingual group.Conclusion: The findings from the present study indicate that the overlap between the language profiles of children with LI and bilingual children is particularly large for vocabulary in early (preschool years and reduces over time. Results furthermore suggest that the overlap may be

  3. Methods for Identifying Specific Language Impairment in Bilingual Populations in Germany

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Cornelia Hamann

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available This study investigates the performance of 22 monolingual and 54 bilingual children with and without specific language impairment (SLI, in a non-word repetition task (NWRT and a sentence repetition task (SRT. Both tasks were constructed according to the principles for LITMUS tools (Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings developed within COST Action IS0804 and incorporated phonological or syntactic structures that are linguistically complex and have been shown to be difficult for children with SLI across languages. For phonology these are in particular (nonwords containing consonant clusters. In morphosyntax, complexity has been attributed to factors such as embedding and/or syntactic movement. Tasks focusing on such structures are expected to identify SLI in bilinguals across language combinations. This is notoriously difficult because structures that are problematic for typically developing bilinguals (BiTDs and monolingual children with SLI (MoSLI often overlap. We show that the NWRT and the SRT are reliable tools for identification of SLI in bilingual contexts. However, interpretation of the performance of bilingual children depends on background information as provided by parental questionnaires. To evaluate the accuracy of our tasks, we recruited children in ordinary kindergartens or schools and in speech language therapy centers and verified their status with a battery of standardized language tests, assessing bilingual children in both their languages. We consider a bilingual child language impaired if she shows impairments in two language domains in both her languages. For assessment, we used tests normed for monolinguals (with one exception and adjusted the norms for bilingualism and for language dominance. This procedure established the following groups: 10 typical monolinguals (MoTD, 12 MoSLI, 46 BiTD, and 8 bilingual children with SLI (BiSLI. Our results show that both tasks target relevant structures: monolingual

  4. Language-invariant verb processing regions in Spanish-English bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Willms, Joanna L; Shapiro, Kevin A; Peelen, Marius V; Pajtas, Petra E; Costa, Albert; Moo, Lauren R; Caramazza, Alfonso

    2011-07-01

    Nouns and verbs are fundamental grammatical building blocks of all languages. Studies of brain-damaged patients and healthy individuals have demonstrated that verb processing can be dissociated from noun processing at a neuroanatomical level. In cases where bilingual patients have a noun or verb deficit, the deficit has been observed in both languages. This suggests that the noun-verb distinction may be based on neural components that are common across languages. Here we investigated the cortical organization of grammatical categories in healthy, early Spanish-English bilinguals using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a morphophonological alternation task. Four regions showed greater activity for verbs than for nouns in both languages: left posterior middle temporal gyrus (LMTG), left middle frontal gyrus (LMFG), pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA), and right middle occipital gyrus (RMOG); no regions showed greater activation for nouns. Multi-voxel pattern analysis within verb-specific regions showed indistinguishable activity patterns for English and Spanish, indicating language-invariant bilingual processing. In LMTG and LMFG, patterns were more similar within than across grammatical category, both within and across languages, indicating language-invariant grammatical class information. These results suggest that the neural substrates underlying verb-specific processing are largely independent of language in bilinguals, both at the macroscopic neuroanatomical level and at the level of voxel activity patterns. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  5. Early bilingualism, language attainment, and brain development.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berken, Jonathan A; Gracco, Vincent L; Klein, Denise

    2017-04-01

    The brain demonstrates a remarkable capacity to undergo structural and functional change in response to experience throughout the lifespan. Evidence suggests that, in many domains of skill acquisition, the manifestation of this neuroplasticity depends on the age at which learning begins. The fact that most skills are acquired late in childhood or in adulthood has proven to be a limitation in studies aimed at determining the relationship between age of acquisition and brain plasticity. Bilingualism, however, provides an optimal model for discerning differences in how the brain wires when a skill is acquired from birth, when the brain circuitry for language is being constructed, versus later in life, when the pathways subserving the first language are already well developed. This review examines some of the existing knowledge about optimal periods in language development, with particular attention to the attainment of native-like phonology. It focuses on the differences in brain structure and function between simultaneous and sequential bilinguals and the compensatory mechanisms employed when bilingualism is achieved later in life, based on evidence from studies using a variety of neuroimaging modalities, including positron emission tomography (PET), task-based and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and structural MRI. The discussion concludes with the presentation of recent neuroimaging studies that explore the concept of nested optimal periods in language development and the different neural paths to language proficiency taken by simultaneous and sequential bilinguals, with extrapolation to general notions of the relationship between age of acquisition and ultimate skill performance. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  6. Monolingual or bilingual intervention for primary language impairment? A randomized control trial.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thordardottir, Elin; Cloutier, Geneviève; Ménard, Suzanne; Pelland-Blais, Elaine; Rvachew, Susan

    2015-04-01

    This study investigated the clinical effectiveness of monolingual versus bilingual language intervention, the latter involving speech-language pathologist-parent collaboration. The study focuses on methods that are currently being recommended and that are feasible within current clinical contexts. Bilingual children with primary language impairment who speak a minority language as their home language and French as their second (n=29, mean age=5 years) were randomly assigned to monolingual treatment, bilingual treatment, and no-treatment (delayed-treatment) conditions. Sixteen sessions of individual language intervention were offered, targeting vocabulary and syntactic skills in French only or bilingually, through parent collaboration during the clinical sessions. Language evaluations were conducted before and after treatment by blinded examiners; these evaluations targeted French as well as the home languages. An additional evaluation was conducted 2 months after completion of treatment to assess maintenance of gains. Both monolingual and bilingual treatment followed a focused stimulation approach. Results in French showed a significant treatment effect for vocabulary but no difference between treatment conditions. Gains were made in syntax, but these gains could not be attributed to treatment given that treatment groups did not improve more than the control group. Home language probes did not suggest that the therapy had resulted in gains in the home language. The intervention used in this study is in line with current recommendations of major speech-language pathology organizations. However, the findings indicate that the bilingual treatment created through collaboration with parents was not effective in creating a sufficiently intense bilingual context to make it significantly different from the monolingual treatment. Further studies are needed to assess the gains associated with clinical modifications made for bilingual children and to search for effective ways

  7. Bilingual Language Control and General Purpose Cognitive Control among Individuals with Bilingual Aphasia: Evidence Based on Negative Priming and Flanker Tasks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dash, Tanya; Kar, Bhoomika R.

    2014-01-01

    Background. Bilingualism results in an added advantage with respect to cognitive control. The interaction between bilingual language control and general purpose cognitive control systems can also be understood by studying executive control among individuals with bilingual aphasia. Objectives. The current study examined the subcomponents of cognitive control in bilingual aphasia. A case study approach was used to investigate whether cognitive control and language control are two separate systems and how factors related to bilingualism interact with control processes. Methods. Four individuals with bilingual aphasia performed a language background questionnaire, picture description task, and two experimental tasks (nonlinguistic negative priming task and linguistic and nonlinguistic versions of flanker task). Results. A descriptive approach was used to analyse the data using reaction time and accuracy measures. The cumulative distribution function plots were used to visualize the variations in performance across conditions. The results highlight the distinction between general purpose cognitive control and bilingual language control mechanisms. Conclusion. All participants showed predominant use of the reactive control mechanism to compensate for the limited resources system. Independent yet interactive systems for bilingual language control and general purpose cognitive control were postulated based on the experimental data derived from individuals with bilingual aphasia. PMID:24982591

  8. Language and mathematical problem solving among bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bernardo, Allan B I

    2002-05-01

    Does using a bilingual's 1st or 2nd language have an effect on problem solving in semantically rich domains like school mathematics? The author conducted a study to determine whether Filipino-English bilingual students' understanding and solving of word problems in arithmetic differed when the problems were in the students' 1st and 2nd languages. Two groups participated-students whose 1st language was Filipino and students whose 1st language was English-and easy and difficult arithmetic problems were used. The author used a recall paradigm to assess how students understood the word problems and coded the solution accuracy to assess problem solving. The results indicated a 1st-language advantage; that is, the students were better able to understand and solve problems in their 1st language, whether the 1st language was English or Filipino. Moreover, the advantage was more marked with the easy problems. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.

  9. The perception and expression of verb morphology in bilinguals with specific language impairment

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hourieh Ahadi

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available Background and Aim: Most of the researches are about bilingual children with specific language impairment and importance of it in recognition and treatment. This study aimed to assess verb morphology in bilinguals with specific language impairment (SLI and compare them with normal bilinguals.Methods: Six bilingual (Azeri and Persian children with specific language impairment at the age of 7-8 years were collected from clinics of Tehran, Iran. They were evaluated about verb morphology using narrative speech and specific language impairment test and then, compared with six age-matched and six other language-matched children as control group. Children with specific language impairment were diagnosed by exhibiting a significant delay (more than one year in language that can not be explained by intelligence deficits, hearing loss or visual impairment. We used Man-Whitney test for comparing the groups.Results: Bilingual children with specific language impairment had delay in comparison with their age-matched group in subject-verb agreement (p=0.020 and articulating tense morphemes (p=0.019. They also had meaningful delay in using proper tense of verbs (past, present, and future in comparison with language-matched control group (p=0.029.Conclusion: Comparison of typical development of bilingual children and bilinguals with specific language impairment shows that verb morphology is a good clinical marker for diagnosing and treatment of these children.

  10. Language specificity of lexical-phonological therapy in bilingual aphasia: A clinical and electrophysiological study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Radman, Narges; Spierer, Lucas; Laganaro, Marina; Annoni, Jean-Marie; Colombo, Françoise

    2016-08-01

    Based on findings for overlapping representations of bilingual people's first (L1) and second (L2) languages, unilingual therapies of bilingual aphasia have been proposed to benefit the untrained language. However, the generalisation patterns of intra- and cross-language and phonological therapy and their neural bases remain unclear. We tested whether the effects of an intensive lexical-phonological training (LPT) in L2 transferred to L1 word production in a Persian-French bilingual stroke patient with Broca's aphasia. Language performance was assessed using the Bilingual Aphasia Test, a 144-item picture naming (PN) task and a word-picture verification (WPV) task. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded during PN and WPV in both languages before and after an LPT in French on a wordlist from the PN task. After the therapy, naming improved only for the treated L2 items. The naming performance improved neither in the untrained L2 items nor in the corresponding items in L1. EEG analyses revealed a Language x Session topographic interaction at 540 ms post-stimulus, driven by a modification of the electrophysiological response to the treated L2 but not L1 items. These results indicate that LPT modified the brain networks engaged in the phonological-phonetic processing during naming only in the trained language for the trained items.

  11. Use of Language Resources by Teachers at Bilingual Schools in Prekmurje

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Iztok Kosem

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper presents the results of a survey on the use of different language resources (dictionaries, orthographies, thesauri, etc. by teachers at bilingual schools in Prekmurje. The survey was conducted as part of the project focussed on developing a concept of a new comprehensive Slovenian-Hungarian dictionary. The dictionary aims to meet the needs of a wider community, as well as needs specific to bilingual education. The main aim of the survey was thus to establish how well teachers know language resources available to them, how often they use them during their work, and which types of dictionary information do they find useful. Furthermore, the survey also tried to find out which communication activities in the Hungarian language pose most problems to teachers. The analysis of the survey has shown that majority of teachers know available language resources, and also used them at their work. Due to various problems with communication in Hungarian, teachers need to use a wide variety of language resources, both bilingual and monolingual. The fact that many of the existing resources, especially bilingual ones, are not available in digital form, is definitely a major obstacle. Teachers consider all types of dictionary information to be important/useful, but especially translation equivalents, indication of the correct spelling, explanations of word meanings, and dictionary examples. Importantly, the types of information not available in existing resources, such as audio pronunciation and whole-sentence examples, are considered to be very useful. The survey findings will be considered in the preparation of a new comprehensive Slovenian-Hungarian dictionary, from headword selection to selecting the parts of dictionary microstructure. However, even more important is the fact that the findings have made us consider a more substantial inclusion of contents relevant for language production, gradual publication of the dictionary, prioritizing the

  12. Learning across Languages: Bilingual Experience Supports Dual Language Statistical Word Segmentation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Antovich, Dylan M.; Graf Estes, Katharine

    2018-01-01

    Bilingual acquisition presents learning challenges beyond those found in monolingual environments, including the need to segment speech in two languages. Infants may use statistical cues, such as syllable-level transitional probabilities, to segment words from fluent speech. In the present study we assessed monolingual and bilingual 14-month-olds'…

  13. Translanguaging Pedagogies for Positive Identities in Two-Way Dual Language Bilingual Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    García-Mateus, Suzanne; Palmer, Deborah

    2017-01-01

    Research suggests that identity matters for school success and that language and identity are powerfully intertwined. A monolingual solitudes understanding of bilingualism undermines children's bilingual identities, yet in most bilingual education classrooms, academic instruction is segregated by language and children are encouraged to engage in…

  14. Bilingualism modulates the white matter structure of language-related pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hämäläinen, Sini; Sairanen, Viljami; Leminen, Alina; Lehtonen, Minna

    2017-05-15

    Learning and speaking a second language (L2) may result in profound changes in the human brain. Here, we investigated local structural differences along two language-related white matter trajectories, the arcuate fasciculus and the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), between early simultaneous bilinguals and late sequential bilinguals. We also examined whether early exposure to two languages might lead to a more bilateral structural organization of the arcuate fasciculus. Fractional anisotropy, mean and radial diffusivities (FA, MD, and RD respectively) were extracted to analyse tract-specific changes. Additionally, global voxel-wise effects were investigated with Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS). We found that relative to late exposure, early exposure to L2 leads to increased FA along a phonology-related segment of the arcuate fasciculus, but induces no modulations along the IFOF, associated to semantic processing. Late sequential bilingualism, however, was associated with decreased MD along the bilateral IFOF. Our results suggest that early vs. late bilingualism may lead to qualitatively different kind of changes in the structural language-related network. Furthermore, we show that early bilingualism contributes to the structural laterality of the arcuate fasciculus, leading to a more bilateral organization of these perisylvian language-related tracts. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  15. Bilingual Mothers' Language Choice in Child-directed Speech: Continuity and Change

    OpenAIRE

    De Houwer, Annick; Bornstein, Marc H.

    2016-01-01

    An important aspect of Family Language Policy in bilingual families is parental language choice. Little is known about the continuity in parental language choice and the factors affecting it. This longitudinal study explores maternal language choice over time. Thirty-one bilingual mothers provided reports of what language(s) they spoke with their children. Mother-child interactions were videotaped when children were pre-verbal (5M), producing words in two languages (20M), and fluent speakers ...

  16. Connective processing by bilingual children and monolinguals with specific language impairment : distinct profiles

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Mak, W.M.; Tribushinina, E.; Lomako, Julia; Gagarina, N.; Abrosova, Ekaterina; Sanders, T.J.M.

    2017-01-01

    Production studies show that both Russian-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and bilingual children for whom Russian is a non-dominant language have difficulty distinguishing between the near-synonymous connectives i ‘and’ and a ‘and/but’. I is a preferred connective when

  17. The effects of bilingual status on lexical comprehension and production in Maltese five-year-old children: A LITMUS-CLT study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gatt, Daniela; Attard, Donna; Łuniewska, Magdalena; Haman, Ewa

    2017-01-01

    This article investigates whether the bilingual status of 56 typically developing children aged 60-69 months influenced their lexical abilities. The participants were identified as Maltese-dominant (Me) (n = 21), English-dominant (Em) (n = 15) and balanced bilingual (ME) (n = 20) on the basis of language exposure and proficiency, as reported by their parents. Comprehension and production of nouns and verbs were measured using Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT) in Maltese (CLT-MT) and British English (CLT-EN). Significant effects of bilingual group were identified for performance on lexical comprehension. For production, consistent bilingual group effects resulted when accurate concepts lexicalised in the test language were scored. Lexical mixing was more pronounced when children were tested in their non-dominant language. Maltese noun production elicited the highest levels of mixing across all groups. Findings point towards the need to consider specific exposure dynamics to each language within a single language pair when assessing children's bilingual lexical skills.

  18. Identifying language impairment in bilingual children in France and in Germany.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tuller, Laurice; Hamann, Cornelia; Chilla, Solveig; Ferré, Sandrine; Morin, Eléonore; Prevost, Philippe; Dos Santos, Christophe; Abed Ibrahim, Lina; Zebib, Racha

    2018-05-23

    The detection of specific language impairment (SLI) in children growing up bilingually presents particular challenges for clinicians. Non-word repetition (NWR) and sentence repetition (SR) tasks have proven to be the most accurate diagnostic tools for monolingual populations, raising the question of the extent of their usefulness in different bilingual populations. To determine the diagnostic accuracy of NWR and SR tasks that incorporate phonological/syntactic complexity as discussed in recent linguistic theory. The tasks were developed as part of the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) toolkit, in two different national settings, France and Germany, and investigated children with three different home languages: Arabic, Portuguese and Turkish. NWR and SR tasks developed in parallel were administered to 151 bilingual children, aged 5;6-8;11, in France and in Germany, to 64 children in speech-language therapy (SLT) and to 87 children not in SLT, whose first language (L1) was Arabic, Portuguese or Turkish. Children were also administered standardized language tests in each of their languages to determine likely clinical status (typical development (TD) or SLI), and parents responded to a questionnaire including questions about early and current language use (bilingualism factors) and early language development (risk factors for SLI). Monolingual controls included 47 TD children and 29 children with SLI. Results were subjected to inter-group comparisons, to diagnostic accuracy calculation, and to correlation and multiple regression analyses. In accordance with previous studies, NWR and SR identified SLI in the monolingual children, yielding good to excellent diagnostic accuracy. Diagnostic accuracy in bilingual children was fair to good, generally distinguishing children likely to have SLI from children likely to have TD. Accuracy was necessarily linked to the determination of clinical status, which was based on standardized assessment in each

  19. Bilingual Language Switching in the Laboratory versus in the Wild: The Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Adaptive Language Control.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blanco-Elorrieta, Esti; Pylkkänen, Liina

    2017-09-13

    For a bilingual human, every utterance requires a choice about which language to use. This choice is commonly regarded as part of general executive control, engaging prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices similarly to many types of effortful task switching. However, although language control within artificial switching paradigms has been heavily studied, the neurobiology of natural switching within socially cued situations has not been characterized. Additionally, although theoretical models address how language control mechanisms adapt to the distinct demands of different interactional contexts, these predictions have not been empirically tested. We used MEG (RRID: NIFINV:nlx_inv_090918) to investigate language switching in multiple contexts ranging from completely artificial to the comprehension of a fully natural bilingual conversation recorded "in the wild." Our results showed less anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex involvement for more natural switching. In production, voluntary switching did not engage the prefrontal cortex or elicit behavioral switch costs. In comprehension, while laboratory switches recruited executive control areas, fully natural switching within a conversation only engaged auditory cortices. Multivariate pattern analyses revealed that, in production, interlocutor identity was represented in a sustained fashion throughout the different stages of language planning until speech onset. In comprehension, however, a biphasic pattern was observed: interlocutor identity was first represented at the presentation of the interlocutor and then again at the presentation of the auditory word. In all, our findings underscore the importance of ecologically valid experimental paradigms and offer the first neurophysiological characterization of language control in a range of situations simulating real life to various degrees. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Bilingualism is an inherently social phenomenon, interactional context fully determining language

  20. Language Policy, Language Ideology, and Visual Art Education for Emergent Bilingual Students

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thomas, Beth A.

    2017-01-01

    In 1968 the Bilingual Education Act marked the first comprehensive federal intervention in the schooling of language minoritized students by creating financial incentives for bilingual education in an effort to address social and educational inequities created by poverty and linguistic isolation in schools. Since that time federal education…

  1. Language and modeling word problems in mathematics among bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bernardo, Allan B I

    2005-09-01

    The study was conducted to determine whether the language of math word problems would affect how Filipino-English bilingual problem solvers would model the structure of these word problems. Modeling the problem structure was studied using the problem-completion paradigm, which involves presenting problems without the question. The paradigm assumes that problem solvers can infer the appropriate question of a word problem if they correctly grasp its problem structure. Arithmetic word problems in Filipino and English were given to bilingual students, some of whom had Filipino as a first language and others who had English as a first language. The problem-completion data and solution data showed similar results. The language of the problem had no effect on problem-structure modeling. The results were discussed in relation to a more circumscribed view about the role of language in word problem solving among bilinguals. In particular, the results of the present study showed that linguistic factors do not affect the more mathematically abstract components of word problem solving, although they may affect the other components such as those related to reading comprehension and understanding.

  2. The role of language familiarity in bilingual stuttering assessment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Amanda Savio; Robb, Michael P; Ormond, Tika; Blomgren, Michael

    2014-10-01

    The aim of this study was to evaluate the ability of English-speaking speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to evaluate stuttering behaviour in two Spanish-English bilingual adults who stutter (AWS1 and AWS2). The English-speaking SLPs were asked to judge the frequency, severity, type, duration, and physical concomitants of stuttering in both languages of the two AWS. The combined results from the English-speaking SLPs were then compared to the judgements of three Spanish-English bilingual SLPs. Results indicated that English-speaking SLPs (1) judged stuttering frequency to be greater in Spanish than English for AWS1, and equal in Spanish and English for AWS2, (2) were more accurate at evaluating individual moments of stuttering for the English samples compared to the Spanish samples, (3) identified fewer and less severe stuttering behaviours than the bilingual SLPs in both languages, and (4) were accurate judges of overall stuttering severity in both languages. The results correspond to past research examining the accuracy of stuttering evaluations in unfamiliar languages. Possible explanations for the findings, clinical implications, and future research directions are discussed.

  3. Bilingual Language Assessment: Contemporary Versus Recommended Practice in American Schools.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arias, Graciela; Friberg, Jennifer

    2017-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to identify current practices of school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in the United States for bilingual language assessment and compare them to American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) best practice guidelines and mandates of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004). The study was modeled to replicate portions of Caesar and Kohler's (2007) study and expanded to include a nationally representative sample. A total of 166 respondents completed an electronic survey. Results indicated that the majority of respondents have performed bilingual language assessments. Furthermore, the most frequently used informal and standardized assessments were identified. SLPs identified supports, and barriers to assessment, as well as their perceptions of graduate preparation. The findings of this study demonstrated that although SLPs have become more compliant to ASHA and IDEA guidelines, there is room for improvement in terms of adequate training in bilingual language assessment.

  4. How much exposure to English is necessary for a bilingual toddler to perform like a monolingual peer in language tests?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cattani, Allegra; Abbot-Smith, Kirsten; Farag, Rafalla; Krott, Andrea; Arreckx, Frédérique; Dennis, Ian; Floccia, Caroline

    2014-11-01

    Bilingual children are under-referred due to an ostensible expectation that they lag behind their monolingual peers in their English acquisition. The recommendations of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) state that bilingual children should be assessed in both the languages known by the children. However, despite these recommendations, a majority of speech and language professionals report that they assess bilingual children only in English as bilingual children come from a wide array of language backgrounds and standardized language measures are not available for the majority of these. Moreover, even when such measures do exist, they are not tailored for bilingual children. It was asked whether a cut-off exists in the proportion of exposure to English at which one should expect a bilingual toddler to perform as well as a monolingual on a test standardized for monolingual English-speaking children. Thirty-five bilingual 2;6-year-olds exposed to British English plus an additional language and 36 British monolingual toddlers were assessed on the auditory component of the Preschool Language Scale, British Picture Vocabulary Scale and an object-naming measure. All parents completed the Oxford Communicative Development Inventory (Oxford CDI) and an exposure questionnaire that assessed the proportion of English in the language input. Where the CDI existed in the bilingual's additional language, these data were also collected. Hierarchical regression analyses found the proportion of exposure to English to be the main predictor of the performance of bilingual toddlers. Bilingual toddlers who received 60% exposure to English or more performed like their monolingual peers on all measures. K-means cluster analyses and Levene variance tests confirmed the estimated English exposure cut-off at 60% for all language measures. Finally, for one additional language for which we had multiple participants, additional language CDI production scores were

  5. Syntactic Processing in Korean-English Bilingual Production: Evidence from Cross-Linguistic Structural Priming

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shin, Jeong-Ah; Christianson, Kiel

    2009-01-01

    A structural priming experiment investigated whether grammatical encoding in production consists of one or two stages and whether oral bilingual language production is shared at the functional or positional level [Bock, J. K., Levelt, W. (1994). Language production. Grammatical encoding. In M. A. Gernsbacher (Ed.), "Handbook of psycholinguistics"…

  6. Study of functional brain imaging for bilingual language cognition

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sun Da

    2008-01-01

    Bilingual and multilingual brain studies of language recognition is an interdisciplinary subject which needs to identify different levels involved in the neural representation of languages, such as neuroanatomical, neurofunctional, biochemical, psychological and linguistic levels. Furthermore, specific factor's such as age, manner of acquisition and environmental factors seem to affect the neural representation. Functional brain imaging, such as PET, SPECT and functional MRI can explore the neurolinguistics representation of bilingualism in the brain in subjects, and elucidate the neuronal mechanisms of bilingual language processing. Functional imaging methods show differences in the pattern of cerebral activation associated with a second language compared with the subject's native language. It shows that verbal memory processing in two unrelated languages is mediated by a common neural system with some distinct cortical areas. The different patterns of activation differ according to the language used. It also could be ascribed either to age of acquisition or to proficiency level. And attained proficiency is more important than age of acquisition as a determinant of the cortical representation of the second language. The study used PET and SPECT shows that sign and spoken language seem to be localized in the same brain areas, and elicit similar regional cerebral blood flow patterns. But for sign language perception, the functional anatomy overlaps that of language processing contain both auditory and visual components. And the sign language is dependent on spatial information too. (authors)

  7. Language Multiplicity and Dynamism: Emergent Bilinguals Taking Ownership of Language Use in a Hybrid Curricular Space

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martínez-Álvarez, Patricia

    2017-01-01

    This study explores the impact of hybrid instructional spaces on the purposeful and expansive use of translanguaging practices. Utilizing technology, the study explores the role of multimodality in bilinguals' language multiplicity and dynamism. The research addresses: (a) how do emergent bilinguals in dual language programs deploy their full…

  8. Speech language therapy bilingual clinic, a written language therapeutical proposal to deaf people: case report.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guarinello, Ana Cristina; Massi, Giselle; Berberian, Ana Paula; Tonocchi, Rita; Lustosa, Sandra Silva

    2015-01-01

    This study aimed to analyze the written production of a deaf person who is in the process of written language acquisition. One person with hearing disability, called R., participated in this study together with his Speech Language Pathologist. The therapist, proficient in sign language, acted as an interlocutor and interpreter, prioritizing the interactive nature of language and interfering in the written production only when it was requested. During the 3 years of work with R., a change in stance toward written language was observed. In addition, he began to reflect on his texts and utilize written Portuguese in a way that allowed his texts to be more coherent. Writing became an opportunity to show his singularity and to begin reconstructing his relationship with language. Speech language pathology and audiology therapy, at a bilingual clinic, can allow people with hearing disability early access to sign language and, consequently, enable the development of the written form of Portuguese.

  9. The Influence of Bilingualism on Third Language Acquisition: Focus on Multilingualism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cenoz, Jasone

    2013-01-01

    This paper focuses on the advantages that bilinguals have over monolinguals when acquiring an additional language. Bilinguals are more experienced language learners and have potentially developed learning strategies to a larger extent than monolinguals. They also have a larger linguistic and intercultural repertoire at their disposal. In this…

  10. How age of bilingual exposure can change the neural systems for language in the developing brain: a functional near infrared spectroscopy investigation of syntactic processing in monolingual and bilingual children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jasinska, K K; Petitto, L A

    2013-10-01

    Is the developing bilingual brain fundamentally similar to the monolingual brain (e.g., neural resources supporting language and cognition)? Or, does early-life bilingual language experience change the brain? If so, how does age of first bilingual exposure impact neural activation for language? We compared how typically-developing bilingual and monolingual children (ages 7-10) and adults recruit brain areas during sentence processing using functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) brain imaging. Bilingual participants included early-exposed (bilingual exposure from birth) and later-exposed individuals (bilingual exposure between ages 4-6). Both bilingual children and adults showed greater neural activation in left-hemisphere classic language areas, and additionally, right-hemisphere homologues (Right Superior Temporal Gyrus, Right Inferior Frontal Gyrus). However, important differences were observed between early-exposed and later-exposed bilinguals in their earliest-exposed language. Early bilingual exposure imparts fundamental changes to classic language areas instead of alterations to brain regions governing higher cognitive executive functions. However, age of first bilingual exposure does matter. Later-exposed bilinguals showed greater recruitment of the prefrontal cortex relative to early-exposed bilinguals and monolinguals. The findings provide fascinating insight into the neural resources that facilitate bilingual language use and are discussed in terms of how early-life language experiences can modify the neural systems underlying human language processing. Copyright © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

  11. Errors in the Production of Adult Early and Late Bilinguals

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Teresa Lee

    2014-08-01

    Full Text Available This study examines the grammatical knowledge of adult second language (L2 learners and heritage speakers. Given the differences in the mode and age of acquisition between L2 learners (late bilinguals and heritage speakers (early bilinguals, the question arises as to whether and how these groups differ from each other in their knowledge of Korean. To address this question, the present study looks at the production of Korean relative clauses by three groups of learners (26 L2 learners, 11 simultaneous bilinguals, and 38 early sequential bilinguals. The results of a written production task showed that all three groups made similar types of errors such as those involving the use of incorrect word order and case markers. Yet differences were also observed in the nature of errors made by these three groups. Based on the findings, pedagogical implications are drawn for classroom instruction.

  12. Executive functions and inhibitory control in multilingual children: evidence from second-language learners, bilinguals, and trilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Poarch, Gregory J; van Hell, Janet G

    2012-12-01

    In two experiments, we examined inhibitory control processes in three groups of bilinguals and trilinguals that differed in nonnative language proficiency and language learning background. German 5- to 8-year-old second-language learners of English, German-English bilinguals, German-English-Language X trilinguals, and 6- to 8-year-old German monolinguals performed the Simon task and the Attentional Networks Task (ANT). Language proficiencies and socioeconomic status were controlled. We found that the Simon effect advantage, reported in earlier research for bilingual children and adults over monolinguals, differed across groups, with bilinguals and trilinguals showing enhanced conflict resolution over monolinguals and marginally so over second-language learners. In the ANT, bilinguals and trilinguals displayed enhanced conflict resolution over second-language learners. This extends earlier research to child second-language learners and trilinguals, who were in the process of becoming proficient in an additional language, while corroborating earlier findings demonstrating enhanced executive control in bilinguals assumed to be caused by continuous inhibitory control processes necessary in competition resolution between two (or possibly more) languages. The results are interpreted against the backdrop of the developing language systems of the children, both for early second-language learners and for early bilinguals and trilinguals. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  13. Assessment of second language proficiency in bilingual children with specific language impairment: a clinical perspective.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Verhoeven, Ludo; Steenge, Judit; van Weerdenburg, Marjolijn; van Balkom, Hans

    2011-01-01

    The goal of this study was to examine to what extent the conditions of restricted input of L2 and SLI have an additive impact on language acquisition. Therefore, the Dutch language achievement of 6-, 7-, and 8-year-old bilingual children with SLI was compared with that of typically developing monolingual Dutch children, typically developing bilingual children, and monolingual Dutch children with SLI. Assuming that speaking a language in varying environments involves distinct subskills that can be acquired in differential patterns, the achievement of phonological, lexical, morphosyntactic and textual abilities were assessed separately. For each of these abilities, it was determined to what extent the conditions of restricted input (first vs. second language) and language deficit (typically developing vs. SLI) cause stagnation or a delay in language acquisition. Bilingual children with SLI perform at a lower level than the other groups in almost all aspects of achievement in Dutch. For language tasks related to the mental lexicon and grammar, an additional disadvantage was evidenced as a result of the combination of learning Dutch as second language and having SLI. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  14. Language and number: a bilingual training study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Spelke, E S; Tsivkin, S

    2001-01-01

    Three experiments investigated the role of a specific language in human representations of number. Russian-English bilingual college students were taught new numerical operations (Experiment 1), new arithmetic equations (Experiments 1 and 2), or new geographical or historical facts involving numerical or non-numerical information (Experiment 3). After learning a set of items in each of their two languages, subjects were tested for knowledge of those items, and new items, in both languages. In all the studies, subjects retrieved information about exact numbers more effectively in the language of training, and they solved trained problems more effectively than untrained problems. In contrast, subjects retrieved information about approximate numbers and non-numerical facts with equal efficiency in their two languages, and their training on approximate number facts generalized to new facts of the same type. These findings suggest that a specific, natural language contributes to the representation of large, exact numbers but not to the approximate number representations that humans share with other mammals. Language appears to play a role in learning about exact numbers in a variety of contexts, a finding with implications for practice in bilingual education. The findings prompt more general speculations about the role of language in the development of specifically human cognitive abilities.

  15. Mandarin-English Bilinguals Process Lexical Tones in Newly Learned Words in Accordance with the Language Context.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Quam, Carolyn; Creel, Sarah C

    2017-01-01

    Previous research has mainly considered the impact of tone-language experience on ability to discriminate linguistic pitch, but proficient bilingual listening requires differential processing of sound variation in each language context. Here, we ask whether Mandarin-English bilinguals, for whom pitch indicates word distinctions in one language but not the other, can process pitch differently in a Mandarin context vs. an English context. Across three eye-tracked word-learning experiments, results indicated that tone-intonation bilinguals process tone in accordance with the language context. In Experiment 1, 51 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 26 English speakers without tone experience were taught Mandarin-compatible novel words with tones. Mandarin-English bilinguals out-performed English speakers, and, for bilinguals, overall accuracy was correlated with Mandarin dominance. Experiment 2 taught 24 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 25 English speakers novel words with Mandarin-like tones, but English-like phonemes and phonotactics. The Mandarin-dominance advantages observed in Experiment 1 disappeared when words were English-like. Experiment 3 contrasted Mandarin-like vs. English-like words in a within-subjects design, providing even stronger evidence that bilinguals can process tone language-specifically. Bilinguals (N = 58), regardless of language dominance, attended more to tone than English speakers without Mandarin experience (N = 28), but only when words were Mandarin-like-not when they were English-like. Mandarin-English bilinguals thus tailor tone processing to the within-word language context.

  16. Home and Community Language Proficiency in Spanish-English Early Bilingual University Students.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schmidtke, Jens

    2017-10-17

    This study assessed home and community language proficiency in Spanish-English bilingual university students to investigate whether the vocabulary gap reported in studies of bilingual children persists into adulthood. Sixty-five early bilinguals (mean age = 21 years) were assessed in English and Spanish vocabulary and verbal reasoning ability using subtests of the Woodcock-Muñoz Language Survey-Revised (Schrank & Woodcock, 2009). Their English scores were compared to 74 monolinguals matched in age and level of education. Participants also completed a background questionnaire. Bilinguals scored below the monolingual control group on both subtests, and the difference was larger for vocabulary compared to verbal reasoning. However, bilinguals were close to the population mean for verbal reasoning. Spanish scores were on average lower than English scores, but participants differed widely in their degree of balance. Participants with an earlier age of acquisition of English and more current exposure to English tended to be more dominant in English. Vocabulary tests in the home or community language may underestimate bilingual university students' true verbal ability and should be interpreted with caution in high-stakes situations. Verbal reasoning ability may be more indicative of a bilingual's verbal ability.

  17. Language shift, bilingualism and the future of Britain's Celtic languages.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kandler, Anne; Unger, Roman; Steele, James

    2010-12-12

    'Language shift' is the process whereby members of a community in which more than one language is spoken abandon their original vernacular language in favour of another. The historical shifts to English by Celtic language speakers of Britain and Ireland are particularly well-studied examples for which good census data exist for the most recent 100-120 years in many areas where Celtic languages were once the prevailing vernaculars. We model the dynamics of language shift as a competition process in which the numbers of speakers of each language (both monolingual and bilingual) vary as a function both of internal recruitment (as the net outcome of birth, death, immigration and emigration rates of native speakers), and of gains and losses owing to language shift. We examine two models: a basic model in which bilingualism is simply the transitional state for households moving between alternative monolingual states, and a diglossia model in which there is an additional demand for the endangered language as the preferred medium of communication in some restricted sociolinguistic domain, superimposed on the basic shift dynamics. Fitting our models to census data, we successfully reproduce the demographic trajectories of both languages over the past century. We estimate the rates of recruitment of new Scottish Gaelic speakers that would be required each year (for instance, through school education) to counteract the 'natural wastage' as households with one or more Gaelic speakers fail to transmit the language to the next generation informally, for different rates of loss during informal intergenerational transmission.

  18. Language shift, bilingualism and the future of Britain's Celtic languages

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kandler, Anne; Unger, Roman; Steele, James

    2010-01-01

    Language shift’ is the process whereby members of a community in which more than one language is spoken abandon their original vernacular language in favour of another. The historical shifts to English by Celtic language speakers of Britain and Ireland are particularly well-studied examples for which good census data exist for the most recent 100–120 years in many areas where Celtic languages were once the prevailing vernaculars. We model the dynamics of language shift as a competition process in which the numbers of speakers of each language (both monolingual and bilingual) vary as a function both of internal recruitment (as the net outcome of birth, death, immigration and emigration rates of native speakers), and of gains and losses owing to language shift. We examine two models: a basic model in which bilingualism is simply the transitional state for households moving between alternative monolingual states, and a diglossia model in which there is an additional demand for the endangered language as the preferred medium of communication in some restricted sociolinguistic domain, superimposed on the basic shift dynamics. Fitting our models to census data, we successfully reproduce the demographic trajectories of both languages over the past century. We estimate the rates of recruitment of new Scottish Gaelic speakers that would be required each year (for instance, through school education) to counteract the ‘natural wastage’ as households with one or more Gaelic speakers fail to transmit the language to the next generation informally, for different rates of loss during informal intergenerational transmission. PMID:21041210

  19. Child healthcare nurses believe that bilingual children show slower language development, simplify screening procedures and delay referrals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nayeb, Laleh; Wallby, Thomas; Westerlund, Monica; Salameh, Eva-Kristina; Sarkadi, Anna

    2015-02-01

    A significant number of children living in Sweden are bilingual, but how language screening is performed in this group is unknown. We investigated child healthcare nurses' perceptions of the language screening of bilingual children aged 30-36 months, together with their clinical practices. An online questionnaire was completed by 863 nurses who performed language screening of bilingual children in Sweden at least once a month, corresponding to 89% of the target population. Cox regression identified predictors of the nurses' tendency to simplify the screening of bilingual children. The nurses reported a greater lack of confidence and more difficulties in interpreting screening outcomes for bilingual than monolingual children (p bilingual children and 74% postponed referrals to speech and language services, basing these adaptations on their perceptions of the children's Swedish language skills (p bilingual children, and this was the strongest predictor of simplified screening practices (RR=2.00, 95% CI 1.44-2.77). Child healthcare nurses need easily accessible information and clear guidelines on the language development of bilingual children to ensure that bilingual and monolingual children receive equitable language screening services. ©2014 Foundation Acta Paediatrica. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  20. Language-as-resource and language-as-political: tensions in the bilingual mathematics classroom

    Science.gov (United States)

    Planas, Núria; Civil, Marta

    2013-09-01

    In this article we reflect on the learning of mathematics in bilingual settings from a social and a political perspective. In particular we highlight two concepts that are key to our work: language-as-resource and language-as-political. To do so, we draw on classroom data from students of Mexican origin in Tucson, USA, and students from Latin America in Barcelona, Spain. The language policies in our contexts share a message of privileging the language of instruction (English or Catalan) over other languages. Our analysis of the two sets of data points to differences in the mathematical participation of students on the basis of which language they use. We develop the argument that, even if languages other than Catalan and English are accepted and certain pedagogies may be close to a language-as-resource approach, the use of the students' languages is politically mediated in such a way that its pedagogical value (as a medium of communication and learning) is not always taken into account in the bilingual mathematics classroom.

  1. Mandarin-English Bilinguals Process Lexical Tones in Newly Learned Words in Accordance with the Language Context

    Science.gov (United States)

    Quam, Carolyn; Creel, Sarah C.

    2017-01-01

    Previous research has mainly considered the impact of tone-language experience on ability to discriminate linguistic pitch, but proficient bilingual listening requires differential processing of sound variation in each language context. Here, we ask whether Mandarin-English bilinguals, for whom pitch indicates word distinctions in one language but not the other, can process pitch differently in a Mandarin context vs. an English context. Across three eye-tracked word-learning experiments, results indicated that tone-intonation bilinguals process tone in accordance with the language context. In Experiment 1, 51 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 26 English speakers without tone experience were taught Mandarin-compatible novel words with tones. Mandarin-English bilinguals out-performed English speakers, and, for bilinguals, overall accuracy was correlated with Mandarin dominance. Experiment 2 taught 24 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 25 English speakers novel words with Mandarin-like tones, but English-like phonemes and phonotactics. The Mandarin-dominance advantages observed in Experiment 1 disappeared when words were English-like. Experiment 3 contrasted Mandarin-like vs. English-like words in a within-subjects design, providing even stronger evidence that bilinguals can process tone language-specifically. Bilinguals (N = 58), regardless of language dominance, attended more to tone than English speakers without Mandarin experience (N = 28), but only when words were Mandarin-like—not when they were English-like. Mandarin-English bilinguals thus tailor tone processing to the within-word language context. PMID:28076400

  2. Componential Skills in Second Language Development of Bilingual Children with Specific Language Impairment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Verhoeven, Ludo; Steenge, Judit; van Leeuwe, Jan; van Balkom, Hans

    2017-01-01

    In this study, we investigated which componential skills can be distinguished in the second language (L2) development of 140 bilingual children with specific language impairment in the Netherlands, aged 6-11 years, divided into 3 age groups. L2 development was assessed by means of spoken language tasks representing different language skills…

  3. The French-Farsi Simultaneous Early Bilingualism in an Iranian Child--Study on the Regularity of the Presence of the Minority Language in the First Lexical Productions of a Bilingual Child

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jalilian, Sahar; Rahmatian, Rouhollah; Safa, Parivash; Letafati, Roya

    2017-01-01

    In a simultaneous bilingual education, there are many factors that can affect its success, primarily the age of the child and socio-cognitive elements. This phenomenon can be initially studied in the first lexical productions of either language in a child. The present study focuses on the early lexical developments of a child, who lives in the…

  4. Lexical activation in bilinguals’ speech production is dynamic: How language ambiguous words can affect cross-language activation

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hermans, D.; Ormel, E.A.; Besselaar, R. van; Hell, J.G. van

    2011-01-01

    Is the bilingual language production system a dynamic system that can operate in different language activation states? Three experiments investigated to what extent cross-language phonological co-activation effects in language production are sensitive to the composition of the stimulus list. L1

  5. Simultaneous bilingual language acquisition: The role of parental input on receptive vocabulary development.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Macleod, Andrea An; Fabiano-Smith, Leah; Boegner-Pagé, Sarah; Fontolliet, Salomé

    2013-02-01

    Parents often turn to educators and healthcare professionals for advice on how to best support their child's language development. These professionals frequently suggest implementing the 'one-parent-one-language' approach to ensure consistent exposure to both languages. The goal of this study was to understand how language exposure influences the receptive vocabulary development of simultaneous bilingual children. To this end, we targeted nine German-French children growing up in bilingual families. Their exposure to each language within and outside the home was measured, as were their receptive vocabulary abilities in German and French. The results indicate that children are receiving imbalanced exposure to each language. This imbalance is leading to a slowed development of the receptive vocabulary in the minority language, while the majority language is keeping pace with monolingual peers. The one-parent-one-language approach does not appear to support the development of both of the child's languages in the context described in the present study. Bilingual families may need to consider other options for supporting the bilingual language development of their children. As professionals, we need to provide parents with advice that is based on available data and that is flexible with regards to the current and future needs of the child and his family.

  6. Onset age of L2 acquisition influences language network in early and late Cantonese-Mandarin bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Xiaojin; Tu, Liu; Wang, Junjing; Jiang, Bo; Gao, Wei; Pan, Ximin; Li, Meng; Zhong, Miao; Zhu, Zhenzhen; Niu, Meiqi; Li, Yanyan; Zhao, Ling; Chen, Xiaoxi; Liu, Chang; Lu, Zhi; Huang, Ruiwang

    2017-11-01

    Early second language (L2) experience influences the neural organization of L2 in neuro-plastic terms. Previous studies tried to reveal these plastic effects of age of second language acquisition (AoA-L2) and proficiency-level in L2 (PL-L2) on the neural basis of language processing in bilinguals. Although different activation patterns have been observed during language processing in early and late bilinguals by task-fMRI, few studies reported the effect of AoA-L2 and high PL-L2 on language network at resting state. In this study, we acquired resting-state fMRI (R-fMRI) data from 10 Cantonese (L1)-Mandarin (L2) early bilinguals (acquired L2: 3years old) and 11 late bilinguals (acquired L2: 6years old), and analyzed their topological properties of language networks after controlling the language daily exposure and usage as well as PL in L1 and L2. We found that early bilinguals had significantly a higher clustering coefficient, global and local efficiency, but significantly lower characteristic path length compared to late bilinguals. Modular analysis indicated that compared to late bilinguals, early bilinguals showed significantly stronger intra-modular functional connectivity in the semantic and phonetic modules, stronger inter-modular functional connectivity between the semantic and phonetic modules as well as between the phonetic and syntactic modules. Differences in global and local parameters may reflect different patterns of neuro-plasticity respectively for early and late bilinguals. These results suggested that different L2 experience influences topological properties of language network, even if late bilinguals achieve high PL-L2. Our findings may provide a new perspective of neural mechanisms related to early and late bilinguals. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. How Bilingual Is Bilingual? Mother-Tongue Proficiency and Learning through a Second Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yazici, Zeliha; Ilter, Binnur Genc; Glover, Philip

    2010-01-01

    In a bilingual context, the mother tongue plays a key role in a child's social and personal development, in education and in second-language learning. There is a complex relationship between these three areas. Support for children receiving education through a second language is often in the form of additional learning opportunities in the second…

  8. Lexical diversity and omission errors as predictors of language ability in the narratives of sequential Spanish-English bilinguals: a cross-language comparison.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jacobson, Peggy F; Walden, Patrick R

    2013-08-01

    This study explored the utility of language sample analysis for evaluating language ability in school-age Spanish-English sequential bilingual children. Specifically, the relative potential of lexical diversity and word/morpheme omission as predictors of typical or atypical language status was evaluated. Narrative samples were obtained from 48 bilingual children in both of their languages using the suggested narrative retell protocol and coding conventions as per Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT; Miller & Iglesias, 2008) software. An additional lexical diversity measure, VocD, was also calculated. A series of logistical hierarchical regressions explored the utility of the number of different words, VocD statistic, and word and morpheme omissions in each language for predicting language status. Omission errors turned out to be the best predictors of bilingual language impairment at all ages, and this held true across languages. Although lexical diversity measures did not predict typical or atypical language status, the measures were significantly related to oral language proficiency in English and Spanish. The results underscore the significance of omission errors in bilingual language impairment while simultaneously revealing the limitations of lexical diversity measures as indicators of impairment. The relationship between lexical diversity and oral language proficiency highlights the importance of considering relative language proficiency in bilingual assessment.

  9. When Bilinguals Choose a Single Word to Speak: Electrophysiological Evidence for Inhibition of the Native Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Misra, Maya; Guo, Taomei; Bobb, Susan C.; Kroll, Judith F.

    2012-01-01

    Behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures are reported for a study in which relatively proficient Chinese-English bilinguals named identical pictures in each of their two languages. Production occurred only in Chinese (the first language, L1) or only in English (the second language, L2) in a given block with the order counterbalanced…

  10. Emergent Literacy Performance across Two Languages: Assessing Four-Year-Old Bilingual Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Westerveld, Marleen F.

    2014-01-01

    There are few emergent literacy assessments available for bilingual children. This study investigated the usefulness of a screening battery of oral language and print-related measures as an assessment tool for bilingual Samoan-English speaking children. A total of 18 children were recruited from three Samoan language immersion kindergartens (Aoga…

  11. Bilingual children with primary language impairment: 3 months after treatment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pham, Giang; Ebert, Kerry Danahy; Kohnert, Kathryn

    2015-01-01

    Evidence on the treatment effectiveness for bilingual children with primary language impairment (PLI) is needed to advance both theory and clinical practice. Of key interest is whether treatment effects are maintained following the completion of short-term intense treatments. To investigate change in select language and cognitive skills in Spanish-English bilingual children with PLI 3 months after children have completed one of three experimental treatment conditions. There are two main study aims. First, to determine if skills in Spanish, English and cognitive processing decline, improve or are maintained after treatment has been completed. Second, to determine if differential rates of change are a function of the type of treatment children received. Participants were 48 children, aged 5:6-11:3, who spoke Spanish and English and were diagnosed with moderate to severe PLI. Participants received 6 weeks of treatment focused on English only (EO), bilingual skills in Spanish and English (BI) or nonlinguistic cognitive processing (NCP). Treatment effects reported in a previous study were determined by comparing pre- and post-treatment performance on a variety of language and cognitive measures. Here we re-administered each measure 3 months after completion of the experimental treatments. Hierarchical linear models were calculated for each measure using pre-, post- and follow-up testing scores to estimate change trajectories and compare outcomes between treatment conditions. Participants in all three treatment conditions either maintained skills or showed improvement even after treatment was discontinued for 3 months. Main findings included (1) comparable, positive rates of change on all English language outcomes for EO and BI conditions; (2) maintenance of Spanish language skills, and (3) modest improvements in NCP following the discontinuation of treatment. This study is the first to examine longer-term treatment effects for bilingual school-age children with PLI

  12. Relationship between the linguistic environments and early bilingual language development of hearing children in deaf-parented families.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kanto, Laura; Huttunen, Kerttu; Laakso, Marja-Leena

    2013-04-01

    We explored variation in the linguistic environments of hearing children of Deaf parents and how it was associated with their early bilingual language development. For that purpose we followed up the children's productive vocabulary (measured with the MCDI; MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory) and syntactic complexity (measured with the MLU10; mean length of the 10 longest utterances the child produced during videorecorded play sessions) in both Finnish Sign Language and spoken Finnish between the ages of 12 and 30 months. Additionally, we developed new methodology for describing the linguistic environments of the children (N = 10). Large variation was uncovered in both the amount and type of language input and language acquisition among the children. Language exposure and increases in productive vocabulary and syntactic complexity were interconnected. Language acquisition was found to be more dependent on the amount of exposure in sign language than in spoken language. This was judged to be related to the status of sign language as a minority language. The results are discussed in terms of parents' language choices, family dynamics in Deaf-parented families and optimal conditions for bilingual development.

  13. The Home Language Environment of Monolingual and Bilingual Children and Their Language Proficiency

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scheele, Anna F.; Leseman, Paul P. M.; Mayo, Aziza Y.

    2010-01-01

    This study investigated the relationships between home language learning activities and vocabulary in a sample of monolingual native Dutch (n = 58) and bilingual immigrant Moroccan-Dutch (n = 46) and Turkish-Dutch (n = 55) 3-year-olds, speaking Tarifit-Berber, a nonscripted language, and Turkish as their first language (L1), respectively. Despite…

  14. Exploring Bilingual Pedagogies in Dual Language Preschool Classrooms

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gort, Mileidis; Pontier, Ryan W.

    2013-01-01

    In this paper, we present an analysis of the language practices of four Spanish/English dual language (DL) preschool teachers, focusing on the ways in which the teachers mediate bilingual interactions with students and distribute Spanish and English across different classroom discourse functions. Findings reveal teachers' flexible and strategic…

  15. Retrieval of bilingual autobiographical memories: effects of cue language and cue imageability.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mortensen, Linda; Berntsen, Dorthe; Bohn, Ocke-Schwen

    2015-01-01

    An important issue in theories of bilingual autobiographical memory is whether linguistically encoded memories are represented in language-specific stores or in a common language-independent store. Previous research has found that autobiographical memory retrieval is facilitated when the language of the cue is the same as the language of encoding, consistent with language-specific memory stores. The present study examined whether this language congruency effect is influenced by cue imageability. Danish-English bilinguals retrieved autobiographical memories in response to Danish and English high- or low-imageability cues. Retrieval latencies were shorter to Danish than English cues and shorter to high- than low-imageability cues. Importantly, the cue language effect was stronger for low-than high-imageability cues. To examine the relationship between cue language and the language of internal retrieval, participants identified the language in which the memories were internally retrieved. More memories were retrieved when the cue language was the same as the internal language than when the cue was in the other language, and more memories were identified as being internally retrieved in Danish than English, regardless of the cue language. These results provide further evidence for language congruency effects in bilingual memory and suggest that this effect is influenced by cue imageability.

  16. Bilingual children with primary language impairment: 3 months after treatment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pham, Giang; Ebert, Kerry Danahy; Kohnert, Kathryn

    2018-01-01

    Background Evidence on the treatment effectiveness for bilingual children with primary language impairment (PLI) is needed to advance both theory and clinical practice. Of key interest is whether treatment effects are maintained following the completion of short-term intense treatments. Aims To investigate change in select language and cognitive skills in Spanish–English bilingual children with PLI 3 months after children have completed one of three experimental treatment conditions. There are two main study aims. First, to determine if skills in Spanish, English and cognitive processing decline, improve or are maintained after treatment has been completed. Second, to determine if differential rates of change are a function of the type of treatment children received. Methods & Procedures Participants were 48 children, aged 5:6–11:3, who spoke Spanish and English and were diagnosed with moderate to severe PLI. Participants received 6 weeks of treatment focused on English only (EO), bilingual skills in Spanish and English (BI) or nonlinguistic cognitive processing (NCP). Treatment effects reported in a previous study were determined by comparing pre- and post-treatment performance on a variety of language and cognitive measures. Here we re-administered each measure 3 months after completion of the experimental treatments. Hierarchical linear models were calculated for each measure using pre-, post- and follow-up testing scores to estimate change trajectories and compare outcomes between treatment conditions. Outcomes & Results Participants in all three treatment conditions either maintained skills or showed improvement even after treatment was discontinued for 3 months. Main findings included (1) comparable, positive rates of change on all English language outcomes for EO and BI conditions; (2) maintenance of Spanish language skills, and (3) modest improvements in NCP following the discontinuation of treatment. Conclusions & Implications This study is the first

  17. Bilingualism as a Window into the Language Faculty: The Acquisition of Objects in French-Speaking Children in Bilingual and Monolingual Contexts

    Science.gov (United States)

    Perez-Leroux, Ana T.; Pirvulescu, Mihaela; Roberge, Yves

    2009-01-01

    Where do the two languages of the bilingual child interact? The literature has debated whether bilingual children have delays in the acquisition of direct objects. The variety of methods and languages involved have prevented clear conclusions. In a transitivity-based approach, null objects are a default structural possibility, present in all…

  18. The language and social background questionnaire: Assessing degree of bilingualism in a diverse population.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anderson, John A E; Mak, Lorinda; Keyvani Chahi, Aram; Bialystok, Ellen

    2018-02-01

    Research examining the cognitive consequences of bilingualism has expanded rapidly in recent years and has revealed effects on aspects of cognition across the lifespan. However, these effects are difficult to find in studies investigating young adults. One problem is that there is no standard definition of bilingualism or means of evaluating degree of bilingualism in individual participants, making it difficult to directly compare the results of different studies. Here, we describe an instrument developed to assess degree of bilingualism for young adults who live in diverse communities in which English is the official language. We demonstrate the reliability and validity of the instrument in analyses based on 408 participants. The relevant factors for describing degree of bilingualism are: (1) the extent of non-English language proficiency and use at home, and (2) non-English language use socially. We then use the bilingualism scores obtained from the instrument to demonstrate their association with: (1) performance on executive function tasks, and (2) previous classifications of participants into categories of monolinguals and bilinguals.

  19. A Comparison between Verbal Working Memory and Vocabulary in Bilingual and Monolingual South African School Beginners: Implications for Bilingual Language Assessment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cockcroft, Kate

    2016-01-01

    This study compared bilingual and monolingual school beginners on measures of simple and complex verbal working memory and receptive and expressive vocabulary. The aim was to determine whether the tests of working memory are fairer measures of language ability than the vocabulary tests for bilingual children when tested in their second language.…

  20. Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Fifth Edition. Bilingual Education & Bilingualism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baker, Colin

    2011-01-01

    The fifth edition of this bestselling book provides a comprehensive introduction to bilingualism and bilingual education. In a compact and clear style, its 19 chapters cover all the crucial issues in bilingualism at individual, group and national levels. These include: (1) defining who is bilingual and multilingual; (2) testing language abilities…

  1. Language control in different contexts: the behavioural ecology of bilingual speakers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    David William Green

    2011-05-01

    Full Text Available This paper proposes that different experimental contexts (single or dual language contexts permit different neural loci at which words in the target language can be selected. However, in order to develop a fuller understanding of the neural circuit mediating language control we need to consider the community context in which bilingual speakers typically use their two languages (the behavioural ecology of bilingual speakers. The contrast between speakers from code-switching and non-code switching communities offers a way to increase our understanding of the cortical, subcortical and, in particular, cerebellar structures involved in language control. It will also help us identify the non-verbal behavioural correlates associated with these control processes.

  2. Speech language therapy practice in a bilingual dialogical clinic: case report.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mariani, Beatriz Zaki Porcelli; Guarinello, Ana Cristina; Massi, Giselle; Tonocchi, Rita; Berberian, Ana Paula

    this study aims to discuss the use of Brazilian sign language as the first language for a deaf individual going to a bilingual dialogic clinic from dialogic activities. This is a longitudinal study, including one deaf individual, called N, interacting with his family and speech therapists. During the therapeutic process developed inside the bilingual dialogical clinic, N participated in interactive contexts and could constitute himself as author of his sign language texts. In addition, he started to act dialogically and use verbal and nonverbal signs. Through interactive and dialogical situations developed inside the speech language therapy clinic, this deaf participant got control of his sign language, and started to get interest in and control of the Portuguese language, especially in the written form.

  3. BILINGUALISM AMONG STUDENTS OF THE FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, SALATIGA, INDONESIA: A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anne Indrayanti Timotius

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available Although bilingualism is an interesting phenomenon these days, not many researchers explore bilingualism in Asia. Most research in a similar field, like that done by Yip and Matthews (2007, and Harding-Esch and Riley (2003, show that children become bilingual because their parents are from countries with different mother tongues. This is not necessarily true in Asian countries like Indonesia. In Indonesia, most of its citizens are bilingual, even though both parents are Indonesian. This happens because children are not only exposed to and taught one language from a young age. Many of them are exposed to at least two languages, which are Indonesian (the national language and lingua franca of Indonesia and their local language – which is different depending on which area of Indonesia they were born or grew up. In addition, it is highly possible that exposure to other languages, such as English, may add to their capability to speak more than just two languages and thus, they become multilingual. This phenomenon has piqued the interest of the writers to conduct a study on bilingualism in Indonesia. The aim of the study is to describe bilingualism/multilingualism among a group of students in Indonesia. The data is collected by distributing questionnaires to 240 participants who are students in the Faculty of Language and Literature (FLL, Satya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga. The study reveals that there are three languages mostly spoken or used by the participants. They are Indonesian, English, and a regional language (mostly Javanese. Also, most of the students‘ first language is Indonesian. As for the second language, it is quite varied, including regional languages and English.

  4. The Issues in the Measurement of Bilingual Language Dominance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yeh, Mary C. L.

    This paper deals with measurement of language dominance at the early-childhood level using a rating scale to help bilingual programs with student classification and placement. Some of the assumptions unique in the measurement of language dominance are discussed and applied to the validation procedure on a Spanish/English language dominance scale…

  5. Independent effects of bilingualism and socioeconomic status on language ability and executive functioning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Calvo, Alejandra; Bialystok, Ellen

    2014-03-01

    One hundred and seventy-five children who were 6-years old were assigned to one of four groups that differed in socioeconomic status (SES; working class or middle class) and language background (monolingual or bilingual). The children completed tests of nonverbal intelligence, language tests assessing receptive vocabulary and attention based on picture naming, and two tests of executive functioning. All children performed equivalently on the basic intelligence tests, but performance on the language and executive functioning tasks was influenced by both SES and bilingualism. Middle-class children outperformed working-class children on all measures, and bilingual children obtained lower scores than monolingual children on language tests but higher scores than monolingual children on the executive functioning tasks. There were no interactions with either group factors or task factors. Thus, each of SES and bilingualism contribute significantly and independently to children's development irrespective of the child's level on the other factor. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  6. Language-Mixing, Discourse Length and Discourse Quality in Bilingual Aphasia

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    Avanthi Paplikar

    2014-04-01

    In sum, while PWA may not altogether avoid language-mixing with monolingual listeners, they appear to mix less when they know their listeners are monolinguals, not bilinguals. PWAs’ personal narratives are markedly longer when their listener is bilingual, though ratings of ‘overall success’ of the discourse are not linked to the degree of patients’ mixing. The lack of differences in the rated success of the more- and less-mixed samples suggests that, contrary to our hypothesis, language-mixing did not improve quality of communication.

  7. How Deaf American Sign Language/English Bilingual Children Become Proficient Readers: An Emic Perspective

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mounty, Judith L.; Pucci, Concetta T.; Harmon, Kristen C.

    2014-01-01

    A primary tenet underlying American Sign Language/English bilingual education for deaf students is that early access to a visual language, developed in conjunction with language planning principles, provides a foundation for literacy in English. The goal of this study is to obtain an emic perspective on bilingual deaf readers transitioning from…

  8. Differences in the Association between Segment and Language: Early Bilinguals Pattern with Monolinguals and Are Less Accurate than Late Bilinguals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blanco, Cynthia P.; Bannard, Colin; Smiljanic, Rajka

    2016-01-01

    Early bilinguals often show as much sensitivity to L2-specific contrasts as monolingual speakers of the L2, but most work on cross-language speech perception has focused on isolated segments, and typically only on neighboring vowels or stop contrasts. In tasks that include sounds in context, listeners’ success is more variable, so segment discrimination in isolation may not adequately represent the phonetic detail in stored representations. The current study explores the relationship between language experience and sensitivity to segmental cues in context by comparing the categorization patterns of monolingual English listeners and early and late Spanish–English bilinguals. Participants categorized nonce words containing different classes of English- and Spanish-specific sounds as being more English-like or more Spanish-like; target segments included phonemic cues, cues for which there is no analogous sound in the other language, or phonetic cues, cues for which English and Spanish share the category but for which each language varies in its phonetic implementation. Listeners’ language categorization accuracy and reaction times were analyzed. Our results reveal a largely uniform categorization pattern across listener groups: Spanish cues were categorized more accurately than English cues, and phonemic cues were easier for listeners to categorize than phonetic cues. There were no differences in the sensitivity of monolinguals and early bilinguals to language-specific cues, suggesting that the early bilinguals’ exposure to Spanish did not fundamentally change their representations of English phonology. However, neither did the early bilinguals show more sensitivity than the monolinguals to Spanish sounds. The late bilinguals however, were significantly more accurate than either of the other groups. These findings indicate that listeners with varying exposure to English and Spanish are able to use language-specific cues in a nonce-word language categorization

  9. Executive functions and inhibitory control in multilingual children: Evidence from second-language learners, bilinguals, and trilinguals

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Poarch, G.J.; Hell, J.G. van

    2012-01-01

    In two experiments, we examined inhibitory control processes in three groups of bilinguals and trilinguals that differed in nonnative language proficiency and language learning background. German 5- to 8-year-old second-language learners of English, German–English bilinguals, German–English–Language

  10. The Minimal and Short-Lived Effects of Minority Language Exposure on the Executive Functions of Frisian-Dutch Bilingual Children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bosma, Evelyn; Hoekstra, Eric; Versloot, Arjen; Blom, Elma

    2017-01-01

    Various studies have shown that bilingual children need a certain degree of proficiency in both languages before their bilingual experiences enhance their executive functioning (EF). In the current study, we investigated if degree of bilingualism in Frisian-Dutch children influenced EF and if this effect was sustained over a 3-year period. To this end, longitudinal data were analyzed from 120 Frisian-Dutch bilingual children who were 5- or 6-years-old at the first time of testing. EF was measured with two attention and two working memory tasks. Degree of bilingualism was defined as language balance based on receptive vocabulary and expressive morphology scores in both languages. In a context with a minority and a majority language, such as the Frisian-Dutch context, chances for becoming proficient in both languages are best for children who speak the minority language at home. Therefore, in a subsequent analysis, we examined whether minority language exposure predicted language balance and whether there was a relationship between minority language exposure and EF, mediated by language balance. The results showed that intensity of exposure to Frisian at home, mediated by language balance, had an impact on one of the attention tasks only. It predicted performance on this task at time 1, but not at time 2 and 3. This partially confirms previous evidence that the cognitive effects of bilingualism are moderated by degree of bilingualism and furthermore reveals that substantial minority language exposure at home indirectly affects bilingual children's cognitive development, namely through mediation with degree of bilingualism. However, the findings also demonstrate that the effect of bilingualism on EF is limited and unstable.

  11. The Minimal and Short-Lived Effects of Minority Language Exposure on the Executive Functions of Frisian-Dutch Bilingual Children

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Evelyn Bosma

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available Various studies have shown that bilingual children need a certain degree of proficiency in both languages before their bilingual experiences enhance their executive functioning (EF. In the current study, we investigated if degree of bilingualism in Frisian-Dutch children influenced EF and if this effect was sustained over a 3-year period. To this end, longitudinal data were analyzed from 120 Frisian-Dutch bilingual children who were 5- or 6-years-old at the first time of testing. EF was measured with two attention and two working memory tasks. Degree of bilingualism was defined as language balance based on receptive vocabulary and expressive morphology scores in both languages. In a context with a minority and a majority language, such as the Frisian-Dutch context, chances for becoming proficient in both languages are best for children who speak the minority language at home. Therefore, in a subsequent analysis, we examined whether minority language exposure predicted language balance and whether there was a relationship between minority language exposure and EF, mediated by language balance. The results showed that intensity of exposure to Frisian at home, mediated by language balance, had an impact on one of the attention tasks only. It predicted performance on this task at time 1, but not at time 2 and 3. This partially confirms previous evidence that the cognitive effects of bilingualism are moderated by degree of bilingualism and furthermore reveals that substantial minority language exposure at home indirectly affects bilingual children’s cognitive development, namely through mediation with degree of bilingualism. However, the findings also demonstrate that the effect of bilingualism on EF is limited and unstable.

  12. The Minimal and Short-Lived Effects of Minority Language Exposure on the Executive Functions of Frisian-Dutch Bilingual Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bosma, Evelyn; Hoekstra, Eric; Versloot, Arjen; Blom, Elma

    2017-01-01

    Various studies have shown that bilingual children need a certain degree of proficiency in both languages before their bilingual experiences enhance their executive functioning (EF). In the current study, we investigated if degree of bilingualism in Frisian-Dutch children influenced EF and if this effect was sustained over a 3-year period. To this end, longitudinal data were analyzed from 120 Frisian-Dutch bilingual children who were 5- or 6-years-old at the first time of testing. EF was measured with two attention and two working memory tasks. Degree of bilingualism was defined as language balance based on receptive vocabulary and expressive morphology scores in both languages. In a context with a minority and a majority language, such as the Frisian-Dutch context, chances for becoming proficient in both languages are best for children who speak the minority language at home. Therefore, in a subsequent analysis, we examined whether minority language exposure predicted language balance and whether there was a relationship between minority language exposure and EF, mediated by language balance. The results showed that intensity of exposure to Frisian at home, mediated by language balance, had an impact on one of the attention tasks only. It predicted performance on this task at time 1, but not at time 2 and 3. This partially confirms previous evidence that the cognitive effects of bilingualism are moderated by degree of bilingualism and furthermore reveals that substantial minority language exposure at home indirectly affects bilingual children’s cognitive development, namely through mediation with degree of bilingualism. However, the findings also demonstrate that the effect of bilingualism on EF is limited and unstable. PMID:28900405

  13. How Do Siblings Shape the Language Environment in Bilingual Families?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Obied, Vicky Macleroy

    2009-01-01

    This article investigates the home literacy practices of Portuguese-English bilingual children raised in Portugal. The ethnographic research was inspired by experience with bilingual families, whose children were all of school age, so acquisition of literacy in English as the non-school language had surfaced as an issue. The research opens up new…

  14. Speaking two languages with different number naming systems: What implications for magnitude judgments in bilinguals at different stages of language acquisition?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van Rinsveld, Amandine; Schiltz, Christine; Landerl, Karin; Brunner, Martin; Ugen, Sonja

    2016-08-01

    Differences between languages in terms of number naming systems may lead to performance differences in number processing. The current study focused on differences concerning the order of decades and units in two-digit number words (i.e., unit-decade order in German but decade-unit order in French) and how they affect number magnitude judgments. Participants performed basic numerical tasks, namely two-digit number magnitude judgments, and we used the compatibility effect (Nuerk et al. in Cognition 82(1):B25-B33, 2001) as a hallmark of language influence on numbers. In the first part we aimed to understand the influence of language on compatibility effects in adults coming from German or French monolingual and German-French bilingual groups (Experiment 1). The second part examined how this language influence develops at different stages of language acquisition in individuals with increasing bilingual proficiency (Experiment 2). Language systematically influenced magnitude judgments such that: (a) The spoken language(s) modulated magnitude judgments presented as Arabic digits, and (b) bilinguals' progressive language mastery impacted magnitude judgments presented as number words. Taken together, the current results suggest that the order of decades and units in verbal numbers may qualitatively influence magnitude judgments in bilinguals and monolinguals, providing new insights into how number processing can be influenced by language(s).

  15. PROPOSING A LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE AND SELF-ASSESSMENT OF PROFICIENCY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR BILINGUAL BRAZILIAN SIGN LANGUAGE/PORTUGUESE HEARING TEACHERS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ingrid FINGER

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available This article presents a language experience and self-assessment of proficiency questionnaire for hearing teachers who use Brazilian Sign Language and Portuguese in their teaching practice. By focusing on hearing teachers who work in Deaf education contexts, this questionnaire is presented as a tool that may complement the assessment of linguistic skills of hearing teachers. This proposal takes into account important factors in bilingualism studies such as the importance of knowing the participant’s context with respect to family, professional and social background (KAUFMANN, 2010. This work uses as model the following questionnaires: LEAP-Q (MARIAN; BLUMENFELD; KAUSHANSKAYA, 2007, SLSCO – Sign Language Skills Classroom Observation (REEVES et al., 2000 and the Language Attitude Questionnaire (KAUFMANN, 2010, taking into consideration the different kinds of exposure to Brazilian Sign Language. The questionnaire is designed for bilingual bimodal hearing teachers who work in bilingual schools for the Deaf or who work in the specialized educational department who assistdeaf students.

  16. Family Language Policies, Reported Language Use and Proficiency in Russian-Hebrew Bilingual Children in Israel

    Science.gov (United States)

    Altman, Carmit; Burstein Feldman, Zhanna; Yitzhaki, Dafna; Armon Lotem, Sharon; Walters, Joel

    2014-01-01

    The relationship between family language policy (FLP) and language choice, language use, proficiency in Russian and Hebrew, codeswitching (CS) and linguistic performance was studied in Russian-speaking immigrant parents and their Russian-Hebrew bilingual preschool children. By means of Glaser's Grounded Theory, the content of sociolinguistic…

  17. Linguistic and Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism with Regional Minority Languages: A Study of Sardinian–Italian Adult Speakers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Garraffa, Maria; Obregon, Mateo; Sorace, Antonella

    2017-01-01

    This study explores the effects of bilingualism in Sardinian as a regional minority language on the linguistic competence in Italian as the dominant language and on non-linguistic cognitive abilities. Sardinian/Italian adult speakers and monolingual Italian speakers living in the same geographical area of Sardinia were compared in two kinds of tasks: (a) verbal and non-verbal cognitive tasks targeting working memory and attentional control and (b) tasks of linguistic abilities in Italian focused on the comprehension of sentences differing in grammatical complexity. Although no difference was found between bilinguals and monolinguals in the cognitive control of attention, bilinguals performed better on working memory tasks. Bilinguals with lower formal education were found to be faster at comprehension of one type of complex sentence (center embedded object relative clauses). In contrast, bilinguals and monolinguals with higher education showed comparable slower processing of complex sentences. These results show that the effects of bilingualism are modulated by type of language experience and education background: positive effects of active bilingualism on the dominant language are visible in bilinguals with lower education, whereas the effects of higher literacy in Italian obliterate those of active bilingualism in bilinguals and monolinguals with higher education. PMID:29163288

  18. Semantic and Conceptual Factors in Spanish-English Bilinguals' Processing of Lexical Categories in Their Two Languages

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gathercole, Virginia C. Mueller; Stadthagen-González, Hans; Pérez-Tattam, Rocío; Yava?, Feryal

    2016-01-01

    This study examines possible semantic interaction in fully fluent adult simultaneous and early second language (L2) bilinguals. Monolingual and bilingual speakers of Spanish and English (n = 144) were tested for their understanding of lexical categories that differed in their two languages. Simultaneous bilinguals came from homes in which Spanish…

  19. Bilingual Children as Policy Agents: Language Policy and Education Policy in Minority Language Medium Early Childhood Education and Care

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bergroth, Mari; Palviainen, Åsa

    2017-01-01

    The current study examines bilingual children as language policy agents in the interplay between official language policy and education policy at three Swedish-medium preschools in Finland. For this purpose we monitored nine Finnish-Swedish bilingual children aged 3 to 5 years for 18 months. The preschools were located in three different parts of…

  20. Early Language and Reading Development of Bilingual Preschoolers From Low-Income Families.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hammer, Carol Scheffner; Miccio, Adele W

    2006-01-01

    Learning to read is a complex process and a number of factors affect a child's success in beginning reading. This complexity increases when a child's home language differs from that of the school and when the child comes from a home with limited economic resources. This article discusses factors that have been shown to contribute to children's success in early reading, namely-phonological awareness, letter-word identification, oral language, and the home literacy environment. Preliminary evidence suggests that bilingual children from low-income backgrounds initially perform poorly on phonological awareness and letter identification tasks, but appear to acquire these abilities quickly in kindergarten once these abilities are emphasized in early reading instruction. In addition, the findings show that bilingual preschoolers' receptive language abilities in English and Spanish positively impact their early letter-word identification abilities at the end of kindergarten. A positive relationship between bilingual preschoolers' home literacy environment and early reading outcomes has not been found to date. Educational implications for serving young, bilingual children from programs such as Head Start are discussed.

  1. Executive Functions and Inhibitory Control in Multilingual Children: Evidence from Second-Language Learners, Bilinguals, and Trilinguals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Poarch, Gregory J.; van Hell, Janet G.

    2012-01-01

    In two experiments, we examined inhibitory control processes in three groups of bilinguals and trilinguals that differed in nonnative language proficiency and language learning background. German 5- to 8-year-old second-language learners of English, German-English bilinguals, German-English-Language X trilinguals, and 6- to 8-year-old German…

  2. Cultivating Bilingual Learners' Language Arts Knowledge: A Framework for Successful Teaching

    Science.gov (United States)

    Almaguer, Isela; Esquierdo, J. Joy

    2013-01-01

    It is essential to support bilingual learners' language and academic development; however, teaching second language learners English has taken precedence over teaching content area knowledge and vocabulary, specifically for language arts. The focus has shifted from content area instruction to primarily second language instruction due to an…

  3. Second language as a compensatory resource for maintaining verbal fluency in bilingual immigrants with schizophrenia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smirnova, D; Walters, J; Fine, J; Muchnik-Rozanov, Y; Paz, M; Lerner, V; Belmaker, R H; Bersudsky, Y

    2015-08-01

    Due to the large migrations over the past three decades, large numbers of individuals with schizophrenia are learning a second language and being seen in clinics in that second language. We conducted within-subject comparisons to clarify the contribution of clinical, linguistic and bilingual features in the first and second languages of bilinguals with schizophrenia. Ten bilingual Russian(L1) and Hebrew(L2) proficient patients, who developed clinical schizophrenia after achieving proficiency in both languages, were selected from 60 candidates referred for the study; they were resident in Israel 7-32 years with 3-10 years from immigration to diagnosis. Clinical, linguistic and fluency markers were coded in transcripts of clinical interviews. There was a trend toward more verbal productivity in the first language (L1) than the second language (L2). Clinical speech markers associated with thought disorder and cognitive impairment (blocking and topic shift) were similar in both languages. Among linguistic markers of schizophrenia, Incomplete syntax and Speech role reference were significantly more frequent in L2 than L1; Lexical repetition and Unclear reference demonstrated a trend in the same direction. For fluency phenomena, Discourse markers were more prevalent in L1 than L2, and Codeswitching was similar across languages, showing that the patients were attuned to the socio-pragmatics of language use. More frequent linguistic markers of schizophrenia in L2 show more impairment in the syntactic/semantic components of language, reflecting greater thought and cognitive dysfunction. Patients are well able to acquire a second language. Nevertheless, schizophrenia finds expression in that language. Finally, more frequent fluency markers in L1 suggests motivation to maintain fluency, evidenced in particular by codeswitched L2 lexical items, a compensatory resource. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  4. Core vocabulary in the narratives of bilingual children with and without language impairment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shivabasappa, Prarthana; Peña, Elizabeth D; Bedore, Lisa M

    2017-09-22

    Children with primary language impairment (PLI) demonstrate deficits in morphosyntax and vocabulary. We studied how these deficits may manifest in the core vocabulary use of bilingual children with PLI. Thirty bilingual children with and without PLI who were matched pairwise (experimental group) narrated two Spanish and two English stories in kindergarten and first grade. Core vocabulary was derived from the 30 most frequently used words in the stories of 65 and 37 typically developing (TD) first graders (normative group) for Spanish and English, respectively. The number of words each child in the experimental group produced out of the 30 identified core vocabulary words and frequency of each of the core words produced each year were analysed. Children with PLI produced fewer core vocabulary words compared to their TD peers after controlling for total words produced. This difference was more pronounced in first grade. They produced core vocabulary words less frequently in kindergarten than their TD peers. Both groups produced core vocabulary words more frequently in English than Spanish. Bilingual children with PLI demonstrate a less productive core vocabulary use compared to their TD peers in both their languages illustrating the nature of their grammatical and lexical-semantic deficits.

  5. English as a Foreign Language in Bilingual Language-minority Children, Children with Dyslexia and Monolingual Typical Readers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bonifacci, Paola; Canducci, Elisa; Gravagna, Giulia; Palladino, Paola

    2017-05-01

    The present study was aimed at investigating literacy skills in English as a foreign language in three different groups of children: monolinguals with dyslexia (n = 19), typically developing bilinguals (language-minority) (n = 19) and a control group of monolinguals (Italian) (n = 76). Bilinguals were not expected to fail in English measures, and their gap with monolinguals would be expected to be limited to the instructional language, owing to underexposure. All participants were enrolled in Italian primary schools (fourth and fifth grades). A non-verbal reasoning task and Italian and English literacy tasks were administered. The Italian battery included word and non-word reading (speed and accuracy), word and non-word writing, and reading comprehension; the English battery included similar tasks, except for the non-word writing. Bilingual children performed similarly to typical readers in English tasks, whereas in Italian tasks, their performance was similar to that of typical readers in reading speed but not in reading accuracy and writing. Children with dyslexia underperformed compared with typically developing children in all English and Italian tasks, except for reading comprehension in Italian. Profile analysis and correlational analyses were further discussed. These results suggest that English as a foreign language might represent a challenge for students with dyslexia but a strength for bilingual language-minority children. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  6. Issues in bilingualism and heritage language maintenance: perspectives of minority-language mothers of children with autism spectrum disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yu, Betty

    2013-02-01

    The author investigated the language practices of 10 bilingual, Chinese/English-speaking, immigrant mothers with their children with autism spectrum disorders. The aim was to understand (a) the nature of the language practices, (b) their constraints, and (c) their impact. The author employed in-depth phenomenological interviews with thematic and narrative analyses to yield themes. Interviewees reported that they adopted language practices perceived to be advantageous to intervention access and wellness. They valued Chinese language but did not pursue its use if it was believed to hinder the children's overall development of English acquisition. All of the mothers believed that bilingualism made learning more challenging. Many believed that it caused confusion or exacerbated disabilities. These deficit views of bilingualism were commonly reinforced by professionals. All of the mothers were motivated to help their children learn English but had no assistance to do so. Practices were sustainable only when they were aligned with families' preferred communication patterns. There is an urgent need for practitioners to be better informed about issues related to intergenerational language practices in minority-language families. Language use between parents and children is a complex matter that is unique to each family. Parents need to be supported to make language use decisions that are self-enhancing and congruent with their families' needs.

  7. Bilingualism--A Sanguine Step in ELT

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anil, Beena

    2014-01-01

    Bilingualism can be used as a teaching aid in teaching and learning English language in an Indian classroom and to improve the language accuracy, fluency, and clarity of learners. Bilingualism can aid the teaching and learning process productively in the classroom. In India, most of the students consider English as a subject rather than a tool of…

  8. Plasticity, Variability and Age in Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Birdsong, David

    2018-01-01

    Much of what is known about the outcome of second language acquisition and bilingualism can be summarized in terms of inter-individual variability, plasticity and age. The present review looks at variability and plasticity with respect to their underlying sources, and at age as a modulating factor in variability and plasticity. In this context we consider critical period effects vs. bilingualism effects, early and late bilingualism, nativelike and non-nativelike L2 attainment, cognitive aging, individual differences in learning, and linguistic dominance in bilingualism. Non-uniformity is an inherent characteristic of both early and late bilingualism. This review shows how plasticity and age connect with biological and experiential sources of variability, and underscores the value of research that reveals and explains variability. In these ways the review suggests how plasticity, variability and age conspire to frame fundamental research issues in L2 acquisition and bilingualism, and provides points of reference for discussion of the present Frontiers in Psychology Research Topic.

  9. The Impact of the "First Language First" Model on Vocabulary Development among Preschool Bilingual Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schwartz, Mila

    2014-01-01

    The aim of this exploratory study was to examine the role of the "First Language First" model for preschool bilingual education in the development of vocabulary depth. The languages studied were Russian (L1) and Hebrew (L2) among bilingual children aged 4-5 years in Israel. According to this model, the children's first language of…

  10. Patterns of Language Preference Among Bilingual (Filipino-English) Boys

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ledesma, Heloise Marie L.; Morris, Robin D.

    2005-01-01

    The pattern of language preference in a simultaneous bilingual (Filipino-English) population was examined, including changes in the pattern of preference over time. Participants were 81 Filipino boys (Mean age=6 years, 2 months) recruited from two schools in the Philippines. A language preference checklist was completed by the parents of the…

  11. Bilingualism yields language-specific plasticity in left hemisphere's circuitry for learning to read in young children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jasińska, K K; Berens, M S; Kovelman, I; Petitto, L A

    2017-04-01

    How does bilingual exposure impact children's neural circuitry for learning to read? Theories of bilingualism suggests that exposure to two languages may yield a functional and neuroanatomical adaptation to support the learning of two languages (Klein et al., 2014). To test the hypothesis that this neural adaptation may vary as a function of structural and orthographic characteristics of bilinguals' two languages, we compared Spanish-English and French-English bilingual children, and English monolingual children, using functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy neuroimaging (fNIRS, ages 6-10, N =26). Spanish offers consistent sound-to-print correspondences ("phonologically transparent" or "shallow"); such correspondences are more opaque in French and even more opaque in English (which has both transparent and "phonologically opaque" or "deep" correspondences). Consistent with our hypothesis, both French- and Spanish-English bilinguals showed hyperactivation in left posterior temporal regions associated with direct sound-to-print phonological analyses and hypoactivation in left frontal regions associated with assembled phonology analyses. Spanish, but not French, bilinguals showed a similar effect when reading Irregular words. The findings inform theories of bilingual and cross-linguistic literacy acquisition by suggesting that structural characteristics of bilinguals' two languages and their orthographies have a significant impact on children's neuro-cognitive architecture for learning to read. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

  12. A Quasi-Universal Nonword Repetition Task as a Diagnostic Tool for Bilingual Children Learning Dutch as a Second Language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boerma, Tessel; Chiat, Shula; Leseman, Paul; Timmermeister, Mona; Wijnen, Frank; Blom, Elma

    2015-12-01

    This study evaluated a newly developed quasi-universal nonword repetition task (Q-U NWRT) as a diagnostic tool for bilingual children with language impairment (LI) who have Dutch as a 2nd language. The Q-U NWRT was designed to be minimally influenced by knowledge of 1 specific language in contrast to a language-specific NWRT with which it was compared. One hundred twenty monolingual and bilingual children with and without LI participated (30 per group). A mixed-design analysis of variance was used to investigate the effects of LI and bilingualism on the NWRTs. Receiver operating characteristic analyses were conducted to evaluate the instruments' diagnostic value. Large negative effects of LI were found on both NWRTs, whereas negative effects of bilingualism only occurred on the language-specific NWRT. Both instruments had high clinical accuracy in the monolingual group, but only the Q-U NWRT had high clinical accuracy in the bilingual group. This study indicates that the Q-U NWRT is a promising diagnostic tool to help identify LI in bilingual children learning Dutch as a 2nd language. The instrument was clinically accurate in both a monolingual and bilingual group of children and seems better able to disentangle LI from language disadvantage than more language-specific measures.

  13. A Switch Is Not a Switch: Syntactically-Driven Bilingual Language Control

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gollan, Tamar H.; Goldrick, Matthew

    2018-01-01

    The current study investigated the possibility that language switches could be relatively automatically triggered by context. "Single-word switches," in which bilinguals switched languages on a single word in midsentence and then immediately switched back, were contrasted with more complete "whole-language switches," in which…

  14. The Complex Relationship between Bilingual Home Language Input and Kindergarten Children's Spanish and English Oral Proficiencies

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cha, Kijoo; Goldenberg, Claude

    2015-01-01

    This study examined how emergent bilingual children's English and Spanish proficiencies moderated the relationships between Spanish and English input at home (bilingual home language input [BHLI]) and children's oral language skills in each language. The sample comprised over 1,400 Spanish-dominant kindergartners in California and Texas. BHLI was…

  15. Language dominance shapes non-linguistic rhythmic grouping in bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Molnar, Monika; Carreiras, Manuel; Gervain, Judit

    2016-07-01

    To what degree non-linguistic auditory rhythm perception is governed by universal biases (e.g., Iambic-Trochaic Law; Hayes, 1995) or shaped by native language experience is debated. It has been proposed that rhythmic regularities in spoken language, such as phrasal prosody affect the grouping abilities of monolinguals (e.g., Iversen, Patel, & Ohgushi, 2008). Here, we assessed the non-linguistic tone grouping biases of Spanish monolinguals, and three groups of Basque-Spanish bilinguals with different levels of Basque experience. It is usually assumed in the literature that Basque and Spanish have different phrasal prosodies and even linguistic rhythms. To confirm this, first, we quantified Basque and Spanish phrasal prosody (Experiment 1a) and duration patterns used in the classification of languages into rhythm classes (Experiment 1b). The acoustic measurements revealed that regularities in phrasal prosody systematically differ across Basque and Spanish; by contrast, the rhythms of the two languages are only minimally dissimilar. In Experiment 2, participants' non-linguistic rhythm preferences were assessed in response to non-linguistic tones alternating in either intensity (Intensity condition) or in duration (Duration condition). In the Intensity condition, all groups showed a trochaic grouping bias, as predicted by the Iambic-Trochaic Law. In the Duration Condition the Spanish monolingual and the most Basque-dominant bilingual group exhibited opposite grouping preferences in line with the phrasal prosodies of their native/dominant languages, trochaic in Basque, iambic in Spanish. The two other bilingual groups showed no significant biases, however. Overall, results indicate that duration-based grouping mechanisms are biased toward the phrasal prosody of the native and dominant language; also, the presence of an L2 in the environment interacts with the auditory biases. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  16. What can speech production errors tell us about cross-linguistic processing in bilingual aphasia? Evidence from four English/Afrikaans bilingual individuals with aphasia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Diane Kendall

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available Introduction: The aim of this study is contribute to clinical practice of bilinguals around the globe, as well as to add to our understanding of bilingual aphasia processing, by analysing confrontation naming data from four Afrikaans/English bilingual individuals with acquired aphasia due to a left hemisphere stroke. Methods: This is a case series analysis of four Afrikaans/English bilingual aphasic individuals following a left cerebrovascular accident. Error analysis of confrontation naming data in both languages was performed. Research questions were directed toward the between language differences in lexical retrieval abilities, types of errors produced and degree of cognate overlap. Results: Three of the four participants showed significantly higher naming accuracy in first acquired language (L1 relative to the second acquired language (L2 and the largest proportion of error type for those three participants in both L1 and L2 was omission. One of the four participants (linguistically balanced showed no between language accuracy difference. Regarding cognate overlap, there was a trend for higher accuracy for higher cognate words (compared to low. Discussion: This study showed that naming performance in these four individuals was reflective of their relative language proficiency and use patterns prior to their stroke. These findings are consistent with the hierarchical model, in normal bilingual speakers and with persons with bilingual aphasia.

  17. Bilingual Mothers' Language Choice in Child-directed Speech: Continuity and Change.

    Science.gov (United States)

    De Houwer, Annick; Bornstein, Marc H

    2016-01-01

    An important aspect of Family Language Policy in bilingual families is parental language choice. Little is known about the continuity in parental language choice and the factors affecting it. This longitudinal study explores maternal language choice over time. Thirty-one bilingual mothers provided reports of what language(s) they spoke with their children. Mother-child interactions were videotaped when children were pre-verbal (5M), producing words in two languages (20M), and fluent speakers (53M). All children had heard two languages from birth in the home. Most mothers reported addressing children in the same single language. Observational data confirmed mothers' use of mainly a single language in interactions with their children, but also showed the occasional use of the other language in over half the sample when children were 20 months. Once children were 53 months mothers again used only the same language they reported speaking to children. These findings reveal a possible effect of children's overall level of language development and demonstrate the difficulty of adhering to a strict "one person, one language" policy. The fact that there was longitudinal continuity in the language most mothers mainly spoke with children provided children with cumulative language input learning opportunities.

  18. The Relationship between Applied Linguistic Research and Language Policy for Bilingual Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Johnson, David Cassels

    2010-01-01

    Currently, restrictive-language policies seem to threaten bilingual education throughout the USA. Anti-bilingual education initiatives have passed easily in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts, while one was closely defeated in Colorado, and federal education policy has re-invigorated the focus on English education for English language…

  19. Bimodal Bilingual Language Development of Hearing Children of Deaf Parents

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hofmann, Kristin; Chilla, Solveig

    2015-01-01

    Adopting a bimodal bilingual language acquisition model, this qualitative case study is the first in Germany to investigate the spoken and sign language development of hearing children of deaf adults (codas). The spoken language competence of six codas within the age range of 3;10 to 6;4 is assessed by a series of standardised tests (SETK 3-5,…

  20. Bilingual Language Acquisition in a Minority Context: Using the Irish-English Communicative Development Inventory to Track Acquisition of an Endangered Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    O'Toole, Ciara; Hickey, Tina M.

    2017-01-01

    This study investigated the role of language exposure in vocabulary acquisition in Irish, a threatened minority language in Ireland which is usually acquired with English in a bilingual context. Using a bilingual Irish-English adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories) [Fenson, L., V. A. Marchman, D. J. Thal, P. S.…

  1. Bilingual Children with Primary Language Impairment: 3 Months after Treatment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pham, Giang; Ebert, Kerry Danahy; Kohnert, Kathryn

    2015-01-01

    Background: Evidence on the treatment effectiveness for bilingual children with primary language impairment (PLI) is needed to advance both theory and clinical practice. Of key interest is whether treatment effects are maintained following the completion of short-term intense treatments. Aims: To investigate change in select language and cognitive…

  2. Language proficiency and health status: are bilingual immigrants healthier?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schachter, Ariela; Kimbro, Rachel T; Gorman, Bridget K

    2012-03-01

    Bilingual immigrants appear to have a health advantage, and identifying the mechanisms responsible for this is of increasing interest to scholars and policy makers in the United States. Utilizing the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS; n = 3,264), we investigate the associations between English and native-language proficiency and usage and self-rated health for Asian and Latino U.S. immigrants from China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. The findings demonstrate that across immigrant ethnic groups, being bilingual is associated with better self-rated physical and mental health relative to being proficient in only English or only a native language, and moreover, these associations are partially mediated by socioeconomic status and family support but not by acculturation, stress and discrimination, or health access and behaviors.

  3. How bilingualism protects the brain from aging: Insights from bimodal bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Le; Abutalebi, Jubin; Emmorey, Karen; Gong, Gaolang; Yan, Xin; Feng, Xiaoxia; Zou, Lijuan; Ding, Guosheng

    2017-08-01

    Bilingual experience can delay cognitive decline during aging. A general hypothesis is that the executive control system of bilinguals faces an increased load due to controlling two languages, and this increased load results in a more "tuned brain" that eventually creates a neural reserve. Here we explored whether such a neuroprotective effect is independent of language modality, i.e., not limited to bilinguals who speak two languages but also occurs for bilinguals who use a spoken and a signed language. We addressed this issue by comparing bimodal bilinguals to monolinguals in order to detect age-induced structural brain changes and to determine whether we can detect the same beneficial effects on brain structure, in terms of preservation of gray matter volume (GMV), for bimodal bilinguals as has been reported for unimodal bilinguals. Our GMV analyses revealed a significant interaction effect of age × group in the bilateral anterior temporal lobes, left hippocampus/amygdala, and left insula where bimodal bilinguals showed slight GMV increases while monolinguals showed significant age-induced GMV decreases. We further found through cortical surface-based measurements that this effect was present for surface area and not for cortical thickness. Moreover, to further explore the hypothesis that overall bilingualism provides neuroprotection, we carried out a direct comparison of GMV, extracted from the brain regions reported above, between bimodal bilinguals, unimodal bilinguals, and monolinguals. Bilinguals, regardless of language modality, exhibited higher GMV compared to monolinguals. This finding highlights the general beneficial effects provided by experience handling two language systems, whether signed or spoken. Hum Brain Mapp 38:4109-4124, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  4. Language Skills of Bidialectal and Bilingual Children: Considering a Strengths-Based Perspective

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee-James, Ryan; Washington, Julie A.

    2018-01-01

    This article examines the language and cognitive skills of bidialectal and bilingual children, focusing on African American English bidialectal speakers and Spanish-English bilingual speakers. It contributes to the discussion by considering two themes in the extant literature: (1) linguistic and cognitive strengths can be found in speaking two…

  5. An exploratory longitudinal study of social and language outcomes in children with autism in bilingual home environments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhou, Vanessa; Munson, Jeffrey A; Greenson, Jessica; Hou, Yan; Rogers, Sally; Estes, Annette M

    2017-12-01

    Little is known about outcomes of early intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder reared in bilingual homes. There are concerns that social communication deficits among children with autism spectrum disorder may reduce the developmental benefits of early intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder raised in bilingual environments. We conducted an exploratory analysis of cross-sectional and longitudinal data from a larger study to explore associations between home language environment and language ability and social skills in response to early autism spectrum disorder intervention. Participants, aged 12-26 months when recruited, were a subset of a larger 2-year, randomized intervention trial (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00698997). Children from bilingual homes ( n = 13) began intervention with lower gesture use but otherwise demonstrated equal baseline language and social abilities as compared with age and nonverbal IQ-matched children from monolingual homes ( n = 24). Significant language growth was exhibited by children from both language groups and there was no moderating effect of home language environment. The bilingual home group demonstrated increased gesture use over the course of intervention as compared with the monolingual home group. Preliminary data revealed no basis for concerns regarding negative impact of a bilingual home environment on language or social development in young children with autism spectrum disorder.

  6. Two languages, two personalities? Examining language effects on the expression of personality in a bilingual context.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Sylvia Xiaohua; Bond, Michael Harris

    2010-11-01

    The issue of whether personality changes as a function of language is controversial. The present research tested the cultural accommodation hypothesis by examining the impact of language use on personality as perceived by the self and by others. In Study 1, Hong Kong Chinese-English bilinguals responded to personality inventories in Chinese or English on perceived traits for themselves, typical native speakers of Chinese, and typical native speakers of English. Study 2 adopted a repeated measures design and collected data at three time points from written measures and actual conversations to examine whether bilinguals exhibited different patterns of personality, each associated with one of their two languages and the ethnicity of their interlocutors. Self-reports and behavioral observations confirmed the effects of perceived cultural norms, language priming, and interlocutor ethnicity on various personality dimensions. It is suggested that use of a second language accesses the perceived cultural norms of the group most associated with that language, especially its prototypic trait profiles, thus activating behavioral expressions of personality that are appropriate in the corresponding linguistic-social context.

  7. Three treatments for bilingual children with primary language impairment: Examining cross-linguistic and cross-domain effects

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ebert, Kerry Danahy; Kohnert, Kathryn; Pham, Giang; Disher, Jill Rentmeester; Payesteh, Bita

    2014-01-01

    Purpose This study examines the absolute and relative effects of three different treatment programs for school-aged bilingual children with primary or specific language impairment (PLI). It serves to expand the evidence base on which service providers can base treatment decisions. It also explores hypothesized relations between languages and cognition in bilinguals with PLI. Method Fifty-nine school-aged Spanish-English bilingual children with PLI were assigned to receive nonlinguistic cognitive processing, English, bilingual (Spanish-English), or deferred treatment. Participants in each of the three active treatments received treatment administered by nationally certified speech-language pathologists. Pre- and post-treatment assessments measured change in nonlinguistic cognitive processing, English, and Spanish skills, and analyses examined change within and across both treatment groups and skill domains. Results All active treatment groups made significant pre- to post-treatment improvement on multiple outcome measures. There were fewer significant changes in Spanish than in English across groups. Between group comparisons indicate that the active treatment groups generally outperformed the deferred treatment control, reaching statistical significance for two tasks. Conclusions Results provide insight into cross-language transfer in bilingual children and advance understanding of the general PLI profile with respect to relationships between basic cognitive processing and higher level language skills. PMID:23900032

  8. The English proficiency and academic language skills of Australian bilingual children during the primary school years.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dennaoui, Kamelia; Nicholls, Ruth Jane; O'Connor, Meredith; Tarasuik, Joanne; Kvalsvig, Amanda; Goldfeld, Sharon

    2016-04-01

    Evidence suggests that early proficiency in the language of school instruction is an important predictor of academic success for bilingual children. This study investigated whether English-proficiency at 4-5 years of age predicts academic language and literacy skills among Australian bilingual children at 10-11 years of age, as part of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children ( LSAC, 2012 ). The LSAC comprises a nationally representative clustered cross-sequential sample of Australian children. Data were analysed from a sub-sample of 129 bilingual children from the LSAC Kindergarten cohort (n = 4983), for whom teachers completed the Australian Early Development Index (AEDI) checklist (a population measure of early childhood development) and the Academic Rating Scale (ARS) language and literacy subscale. Linear regression analyses revealed that bilingual children who commenced school with stronger English proficiency had higher academic language and literacy scores at the end of primary school (β = 0.45). English proficiency remained a significant predictor, even when accounting for gender and socio-economic disadvantage (β = 0.38). The findings indicate that bilingual children who begin school without English proficiency are at risk of difficulties with academic language and literacy, even after 6 years of schooling. Risk factors need to be identified so early support can be targeted towards the most vulnerable children.

  9. Game Based Language Learning for Bilingual Adults

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hautopp, Heidi; Hanghøj, Thorkild

    2014-01-01

    experiences with the central goals in communicative language teaching (CLT). The paper is based on a study of The Danish Simulator when integrated in a game‐based language course with 15 students at a language center in Copenhagen during spring, 2013. The Danish Simulator consists of language drills......, the analysis presents preliminary findings in relation to students’ different experiences of The Danish Simulator and the teacher’s redesign of the game based teaching. It is concluded that the meaningful use of The Danish Simulator in a game‐based language course for bilingual adults depends on the students......What happens when a single‐player training game enters a classroom context? The use of training activities in game‐based learning (GBL) has often been criticized for letting players perform mechanical operations with no reflection upon the learning experiences involved (e.g. Egenfeldt‐Nielsen, 2005...

  10. On the facilitatory effects of cognate words in bilingual speech production.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Costa, Albert; Santesteban, Mikel; Caño, Agnès

    2005-07-01

    There is a growing body of evidence showing that a word's cognate status is an important dimension affecting the naming performance of bilingual speakers. In a recent article, Kohnert extended this observation to the naming performance of an aphasic bilingual (DJ). DJ named pictures with cognate names more accurately than pictures with non-cognate names. Furthermore, having named the pictures in Spanish helped the subsequent retrieval (with a delay of one week between the two tests) of the same pictures' names in English, but only for pictures with cognate names. That is, there was a language transfer but only for those translation words that were phonologically similar. In this article we first evaluate the conclusions drawn from these results by Kohnert, and second we discuss the theoretical implications of the facilitatory effects of cognate words for models of speech production in bilingual speakers.

  11. Qualitative differences between bilingual language control and executive control: evidence from task switching

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marco eCalabria

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available Previous research has shown that highly-proficient bilinguals have comparable switch costs in both directions when they switch between languages (L1 and L2, the so called ‘symmetrical switch cost’ effect. Interestingly, the same symmetry is also present when they switch between L1 and a much weaker L3. These findings suggest that highly proficient bilinguals develop a language control system that seems to be insensitive to language proficiency. In the present study, we explore whether the pattern of symmetrical switch costs in language switching tasks generalizes to a non-linguistic switching task in the same group of highly-proficient bilinguals. The end goal of this is to assess whether bilingual language control (bLC can be considered as subsidiary to domain-general executive control (EC. We tested highly-proficient Catalan-Spanish bilinguals both in a linguistic switching task and in a non-linguistic switching task. In the linguistic task, participants named pictures in L1 and L2 (Experiment 1 or L3 (Experiment 2 depending on a cue presented with the picture (a flag. In the non-linguistic task, the same participants had to switch between two card sorting rule-sets (colour and shape. Overall, participants showed symmetrical switch costs in the linguistic switching task, but not in the non-linguistic switching task. In a further analysis, we observed that in the linguistic switching task the asymmetry of the switch costs changed across blocks, while in the non-linguistic switching task an asymmetrical switch cost was observed throughout the task. The observation of different patterns of switch costs in the linguistic and the non-linguistic switching tasks suggest that the bLC system is not completely subsidiary to the domain-general EC system.

  12. The Development of Bimodal Bilingualism: Implications for Linguistic Theory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lillo-Martin, Diane; de Quadros, Ronice Müller; Pichler, Deborah Chen

    2016-01-01

    A wide range of linguistic phenomena contribute to our understanding of the architecture of the human linguistic system. In this paper we present a proposal dubbed Language Synthesis to capture bilingual phenomena including code-switching and 'transfer' as automatic consequences of the addition of a second language, using basic concepts of Minimalism and Distributed Morphology. Bimodal bilinguals, who use a sign language and a spoken language, provide a new type of evidence regarding possible bilingual phenomena, namely code-blending, the simultaneous production of (aspects of) a message in both speech and sign. We argue that code-blending also follows naturally once a second articulatory interface is added to the model. Several different types of code-blending are discussed in connection to the predictions of the Synthesis model. Our primary data come from children developing as bimodal bilinguals, but our proposal is intended to capture a wide range of bilingual effects across any language pair.

  13. Students' Perceptions of Bilingualism in Spanish and Mandarin Dual Language Programs

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lindholm-Leary, Kathryn

    2016-01-01

    Considerable research documents students' outcomes in dual language (DL) programs, but there is little examination of students' perceptions of bilingualism and its impact on students' cognitive functioning and social relationships, especially with comparative studies across different target languages and student backgrounds. This study, which…

  14. Listening to Graduates of a K-12 Bilingual Program: Language Ideologies and Literacy Practices of Former Bilingual Students

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dworin, Joel

    2011-01-01

    This study investigated the language and literacy practices of five graduates of a Spanish-English K-12 dual language immersion program through semistructured interviews to understand the residual impact of thirteen years in a Spanish-English bilingual school program. Drawing from sociocultural theory, the interviews also sought to provide an…

  15. Language-specific memory for everyday arithmetic facts in Chinese-English bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Yalin; Yanke, Jill; Campbell, Jamie I D

    2016-04-01

    The role of language in memory for arithmetic facts remains controversial. Here, we examined transfer of memory training for evidence that bilinguals may acquire language-specific memory stores for everyday arithmetic facts. Chinese-English bilingual adults (n = 32) were trained on different subsets of simple addition and multiplication problems. Each operation was trained in one language or the other. The subsequent test phase included all problems with addition and multiplication alternating across trials in two blocks, one in each language. Averaging over training language, the response time (RT) gains for trained problems relative to untrained problems were greater in the trained language than in the untrained language. Subsequent analysis showed that English training produced larger RT gains for trained problems relative to untrained problems in English at test relative to the untrained Chinese language. In contrast, there was no evidence with Chinese training that problem-specific RT gains differed between Chinese and the untrained English language. We propose that training in Chinese promoted a translation strategy for English arithmetic (particularly multiplication) that produced strong cross-language generalization of practice, whereas training in English strengthened relatively weak, English-language arithmetic memories and produced little generalization to Chinese (i.e., English training did not induce an English translation strategy for Chinese language trials). The results support the existence of language-specific strengthening of memory for everyday arithmetic facts.

  16. Second language proficiency modulates conflict-monitoring in an oculomotor Stroop task: evidence from Hindi-English bilinguals.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Niharika eSingh

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available Many studies have confirmed the presence of a bilingual advantage which is manifested as enhanced cognitive and attention control. However, very few studies have investigated the role of second language proficiency on the modulation of conflict-monitoring in bilinguals. We investigated this by comparing high and low proficient Hindi-English bilinguals on a modified saccadic arrow Stroop task under different monitoring conditions, and tested the predictions of the bilingual executive control advantage proposal. The task of the participants was to make an eye movement towards the colour patch in the same colour as the central arrow, ignoring the patch to which the arrow was pointing. High-proficient bilinguals had overall faster saccade latency on all types of trials as compared to the low proficient bilinguals. The overall saccadic latency for high proficiency bilinguals was similarly affected by the different types of monitoring conditions, whereas conflict resolution advantage was found only for high monitoring demanding condition. The results support a conflict-monitoring account in a novel oculomotor task and also suggest that language proficiency could modulate executive control in bilinguals.

  17. Bilingual Word Recognition in Deaf and Hearing Signers: Effects of Proficiency and Language Dominance on Cross-Language Activation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morford, Jill P.; Kroll, Judith F.; Piñar, Pilar; Wilkinson, Erin

    2014-01-01

    Recent evidence demonstrates that American Sign Language (ASL) signs are active during print word recognition in deaf bilinguals who are highly proficient in both ASL and English. In the present study, we investigate whether signs are active during print word recognition in two groups of unbalanced bilinguals: deaf ASL-dominant and hearing…

  18. Advertising to Italian English Bilinguals in Australia: Attitudes and Response to Language Selection

    Science.gov (United States)

    Santello, Marco

    2015-01-01

    This article explores attitudes and response to language selection in advertising targeting Italian bilinguals who belong to a defined speech community. The research builds upon (i) research on multilingual advertising by investigating its attitudinal correlates, and (ii) studies on advertising to bilinguals through the verification of the…

  19. Associations between Preschool Language and First Grade Reading Outcomes in Bilingual Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Davison, Megan Dunn; Hammer, Carol; Lawrence, Frank R.

    2011-01-01

    It is well established that monolingual preschoolers' oral language development (vocabulary and oral comprehension) contributes to their later reading abilities; however, less is known about this relationship in bilingual populations where children are developing knowledge of two languages. It may be that children's abilities in one language do…

  20. Review and Analysis of the Colombian Foreign Language Bilingualism Policies and Plans

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gómez Sará, Mary Mily

    2017-01-01

    This article reviews the background of the foreign language bilingualism in Colombia, as well as the Colombian bilingualism plans and the policy launched between 2004 and 2016. Then, these plans and policy are analyzed taking into account the most common criticisms from the academic community. In this sense, aspects such as the lack of continuity,…

  1. Language Deficits in a Bilingual Child with Cerebral Cysticercosis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McMenamin, Jerry

    1984-01-01

    Presents a case report of cysticercosis (a parasitic infestation which results in inflammation of the brain, eye, muscles, liver, and lung tissues) and the resulting language pathology in a nine-year-old Mexican American girl who is bilingual in Spanish and English. (SED)

  2. The case for bilingual language tests: a study of test adaptation and ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The justification for the use of language tests in education in multilingual and multicultural societies needs to include both the aims of bilingual education, and evidence that the international standards for tests that are available in two or more languages are being met. In multilingual and multicultural societies, language tests ...

  3. "'Puro' Spelling and Grammar": Conceptualizations of Language and the Marginalization of Emergent Bilinguals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Poza, Luis E.

    2016-01-01

    Conceptualizations of language and language learning underlie language pedagogies (Valdés, Poza, & Brooks, 2015). The present work relies on ethnographic observation and interviews in a dual immersion (DI) bilingual program, as well as a content analysis of the research foundation of the English Language Development intervention curriculum, to…

  4. Compositions in English: Comparing the Works of Monolinguals, Passive Bilinguals, and Active Bilinguals

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Julia Eka Rini

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available This study tries to see whether the subjects’ “monolingualism” and “bilingualism” (monolinguals learning an L2 and bilinguals learning an L3 influence their study on English, especially writing. The term “bilinguals” also means “multilinguals” in this study. Bilinguals in this paper are classified into two; first, passive bilinguals who are only exposed to another local language, besides speaking Bahasa Indonesia at home, and second, active bilinguals who are exposed to and also speak other language(s and Bahasa Indonesia at home. The findings show that the monolingual and the active bilingual are better than the passive one; the active bilingual is better than the monolingual. However, if the passive and the active bilingual are combined, the monolingual is better than the bilinguals.

  5. Co-lateralized bilingual mechanisms for reading in single and dual language contexts: evidence from visual half-field processing of action words in proficient bilinguals

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marlena eKrefta

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available When reading, proficient bilinguals seem to engage the same cognitive circuits regardless of the language in use. Yet, whether or not such ‘bilingual’ mechanisms would be lateralized in the same way in distinct – single or dual – language contexts is a question for debate. To fill this gap, we tested 18 highly proficient Polish (L1 – English (L2 childhood bilinguals whose task was to read aloud one of the two laterally presented action verbs, one stimulus per visual half field. While in the single-language blocks only L1 or L2 words were shown, in the subsequent mixed-language blocks words from both languages were concurrently displayed. All stimuli were presented for 217 ms followed by masks in which letters were replaced with hash marks. Since in non-simultaneous bilinguals the control of language, skilled actions (including reading, and representations of action concepts are typically left lateralized, the vast majority of our participants showed the expected, significant right visual field advantage for L1 and L2, both for accuracy and response times. The observed effects were nevertheless associated with substantial variability in the strength of the lateralization of the mechanisms involved. Moreover, although it could be predicted that participants’ performance should be better in a single-language context, accuracy was significantly higher and response times were significantly shorter in a dual-language context, irrespective of the language tested. Finally, for both accuracy and response times, there were significant positive correlations between the laterality indices (LIs of both languages independent of the context, with a significantly greater left-sided advantage for L1 vs. L2 in the mixed-language blocks, based on LIs calculated for response times. Thus, despite similar representations of the two languages in the bilingual brain, these results also point to the functional separation of L1 and L2 in the dual-language

  6. Bilingualism as a Model for Multitasking.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Poarch, Gregory J; Bialystok, Ellen

    2015-03-01

    Because both languages of bilinguals are constantly active, bilinguals need to manage attention to the target language and avoid interference from the non-target language. This process is likely carried out by recruiting the executive function (EF) system, a system that is also the basis for multitasking. In previous research, bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals on tasks requiring EF, suggesting that the practice using EF for language management benefits performance in other tasks as well. The present study examined 203 children, 8-11 years old, who were monolingual, partially bilingual, bilingual, or trilingual performing a flanker task. Two results support the interpretation that bilingualism is related to multitasking. First, bilingual children outperformed monolinguals on the conflict trials in the flanker task, confirming previous results for a bilingual advantage in EF. Second, the inclusion of partial bilinguals and trilinguals set limits on the role of experience: partial bilingual performed similarly to monolinguals and trilinguals performed similarly to bilinguals, suggesting that degrees of experience are not well-calibrated to improvements in EF. Our conclusion is that the involvement of EF in bilingual language processing makes bilingualism a form of linguistic multitasking.

  7. Contemporary Language Issues in Ukraine: Bilingualism or Russification

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Iryna Zbyr

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available The article aims to focus on the analysis of the contemporary language issues in Ukraine. A characteristic feature of contemporary language situation in Ukraine is a co-existence on its territory of two languages, Ukrainian and Russian, along with various forms of Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism. Narrowing down the spheres of use of the Ukrainian language and the strong interferential influence of Russian have led to the emergence of the hybrid of Ukrainian-Russian forms of the everyday language known as Surzhyk. The article discusses how language forms are connected with conceptualizations of national identity in contemporary Ukrainian language ideology. It especially focuses on Surzhyk a pejorative collective label for non-standard language varieties that dissolve the language boundary between Ukrainian and Russian standard languages. Although most attention in Ukrainian debates on language is directed towards the complex relations between two standard languages, Surzhyk is considered an important problem, not the least among those for whom it is a major threat to the survival of the Ukrainian language.

  8. Bilingual Children with Nonsyndromic Cleft Lip and/or Palate: Language and Memory Skills

    Science.gov (United States)

    Young, Selena Ee-Li; Purcell, Alison Anne; Ballard, Kirrie Jane; Liow, Susan Jane Rickard; Ramos, Sara Da Silva; Heard, Robert

    2012-01-01

    Purpose: Research shows that monolingual children with cleft lip and/or palate (CLP) have a higher incidence of cognitive-linguistic deficits, but it is not clear whether bilingual preschool children with CLP are especially vulnerable because they need to acquire 2 languages. We tested the hypothesis that bilingual children with CLP score lower…

  9. Language Planning for the 21st Century: Revisiting Bilingual Language Policy for Deaf Children

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Knoors, H.E.T.; Marschark, M.

    2012-01-01

    For over 25 years in some countries and more recently in others, bilingual education involving sign language and the written/spoken vernacular has been considered an essential educational intervention for deaf children. With the recent growth in universal newborn hearing screening and technological

  10. Narrative skills in two languages of Mandarin-English bilingual children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hao, Ying; Bedore, Lisa M; Sheng, Li; Peña, Elizabeth D

    2018-03-08

    Narrative skills between Mandarin and English in Mandarin-English (ME) bilingual children were compared, exploring cross-linguistic interactions of these skills, and influences of age and current language experience (input and output) on narrative performance. Macrostructure and microstructure in elicited narratives from 21 ME bilingual children were analysed. Language experience was collected by parent report and entered as a covariate. Repeated measures analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted to compare the two languages. Children demonstrated better narrative performance in English than Mandarin, with a larger cross-linguistic difference in microstructure than macrostructure. Significant cross-linguistic correlations were only found in children with high Mandarin vocabulary. Age, associated with length of English exposure, only significantly correlated with narrative performance in English. Output had stronger correlations with narrative skills than input. Macrostructure may be less variable across languages than microstructure. Children may need to reach a threshold of vocabulary for cross-linguistic interactions of narrative skills to occur. The effect of age in English may be related to increased cumulative English experience. Children may experience a plateau in Mandarin due to insufficient Mandarin exposure. Stronger correlations between output and narrative skills may be attributed to the expressive nature of both.

  11. Caregiver talk to young Spanish-English bilinguals: Comparing direct observation and parent-report measures of dual-language exposure

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marchman, Virginia A.; Martínez, Lucía Z.; Hurtado, Nereyda; Grüter, Theres; Fernald, Anne

    2016-01-01

    In research on language development by bilingual children, the early language environment is commonly characterized in terms of the relative amount of exposure a child gets to each language based on parent report. Little is known about how absolute measures of child-directed speech in two languages relate to language growth. In this study of 3-year-old Spanish-English bilinguals (n = 18), traditional parent-report estimates of exposure were compared to measures of the number of Spanish and English words children heard during naturalistic audio recordings. While the two estimates were moderately correlated, observed numbers of child-directed words were more consistently predictive of children's processing speed and standardized test performance, even when controlling for reported proportion of exposure. These findings highlight the importance of caregiver engagement in bilingual children's language outcomes in both of the languages they are learning. PMID:27197746

  12. Bilingual Latino Middle Schoolers on Languaging and Racialization in the US

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hesson, Sarah

    2016-01-01

    This dissertation explores bilingual Latino middle schoolers' articulated understandings of their language practices as well as the links between language practices and processes of racialization and discrimination in the US. The research was conducted in the context of an after-school program whose explicit aim was to not only document students'…

  13. The Effects of Bilingualism on Infant Language Development : The Acquisition of Sounds and Words

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Liu, Liquan

    2014-01-01

    This dissertation reports on the influence of bilingualism on infants’ sound and word acquisition in the first two years of life. It targets the question of whether mono- and bilingual infants follow the same developmental trajectory of language acquisition, it displays similarities and differences

  14. Belief Reasoning and Emotion Understanding in Balanced Bilingual and Language-Dominant Mexican American Young Children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Weimer, Amy A; Gasquoine, Philip G

    2016-01-01

    Belief reasoning and emotion understanding were measured among 102 Mexican American bilingual children ranging from 4 to 7 years old. All children were tested in English and Spanish after ensuring minimum comprehension in each language. Belief reasoning was assessed using 2 false and 1 true belief tasks. Emotion understanding was measured using subtests from the Test for Emotion Comprehension. The influence of family background variables of yearly income, parental education level, and number of siblings on combined Spanish and English vocabulary, belief reasoning, and emotion understanding was assessed by regression analyses. Age and emotion understanding predicted belief reasoning. Vocabulary and belief reasoning predicted emotion understanding. When the sample was divided into language-dominant and balanced bilingual groups on the basis of language proficiency difference scores, there were no significant differences on belief reasoning or emotion understanding. Language groups were demographically similar with regard to child age, parental educational level, and family income. Results suggest Mexican American language-dominant and balanced bilinguals develop belief reasoning and emotion understanding similarly.

  15. An Analysis of Communicative Language Functions in the Speech Patterns of Bilingual Korean and Mexican Immigrant Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sook Lee, Jin; Choi, Jane Y.; Marqués-Pascual, Laura

    2016-01-01

    For children from immigrant families, opportunities to develop additive bilingualism exist, yet bilingual attainment has varied widely. Given the significance of language development opportunities in home settings, this study examines the home language use of 20 second-generation children (ages 6-8) of Mexican and Korean descent in the United…

  16. Screening Bilingual Preschoolers for Language Difficulties: Utility of Teacher and Parent Reports

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pua, Emmanuel Peng Kiat; Lee, Mary Lay Choo; Rickard Liow, Susan J.

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: The utility of parent and teacher reports for screening 3 types of bilingual preschoolers (English-first language [L1]/Mandarin-second language[L2], Mandarin-L1/English-L2, or Malay-L1/English-L2) for language difficulty was investigated in Singapore with reference to measures of reliability, validity, sensitivity, and specificity in an…

  17. Working with the Bilingual Child Who Has a Language Delay. Meeting Learning Challenges

    Science.gov (United States)

    Greenspan, Stanley I.

    2005-01-01

    It is very important to determine if a bilingual child's language delay is simply in English or also in the child's native language. Understandably, many children have higher levels of language development in the language spoken at home. To discover if this is the case, observe the child talking with his parents. Sometimes, even without…

  18. Language Policy toward Equity: How Bilingual Teachers Use Policy Mandates to Their Own Ends

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zuniga, Christian E.; Henderson, Kathryn I.; Palmer, Deborah K.

    2018-01-01

    The article explores the intersection of equity goals and language ideologies within a dual language bilingual education (DLBE) language policy context. We present two DLBE teachers, Karina and Marisol, and explore their language ideologies and professional conviction towards equitable learning opportunities for their students. We investigate how…

  19. Neural Differences in Bilingual Children's Arithmetic Processing Depending on Language of Instruction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Mondt, K.; Struys, E.; Noort, M.W.M.L. van den; Balériaux, D.; Metens, T.; Paquier, P.; Craen, P. van de; Bosch, M.P.C.; Denolin, V.

    2011-01-01

    Many children in bilingual regions follow lessons in a language at school (school-language) that they hardly ever speak at home or in other informal settings. What are the neural effects of this phenomenon? This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigates the effects of using

  20. Bilingualism at the core of the brain. Structural differences between bilinguals and monolinguals revealed by subcortical shape analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Burgaleta, Miguel; Sanjuán, Ana; Ventura-Campos, Noelia; Sebastian-Galles, Núria; Ávila, César

    2016-01-15

    Naturally acquiring a language shapes the human brain through a long-lasting learning and practice process. This is supported by previous studies showing that managing more than one language from early childhood has an impact on brain structure and function. However, to what extent bilingual individuals present neuroanatomical peculiarities at the subcortical level with respect to monolinguals is yet not well understood, despite the key role of subcortical gray matter for a number of language functions, including monitoring of speech production and language control - two processes especially solicited by bilinguals. Here we addressed this issue by performing a subcortical surface-based analysis in a sample of monolinguals and simultaneous bilinguals (N=88) that only differed in their language experience from birth. This analysis allowed us to study with great anatomical precision the potential differences in morphology of key subcortical structures, namely, the caudate, accumbens, putamen, globus pallidus and thalamus. Vertexwise analyses revealed significantly expanded subcortical structures for bilinguals compared to monolinguals, localized in bilateral putamen and thalamus, as well as in the left globus pallidus and right caudate nucleus. A topographical interpretation of our results suggests that a more complex phonological system in bilinguals may lead to a greater development of a subcortical brain network involved in monitoring articulatory processes. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. English-Chinese Cross-Language IR Using Bilingual Dictionaries

    Science.gov (United States)

    2006-01-01

    specialized dictionaries together contain about two million entries [6]. 4 Monolingual Experiment The Chinese documents and the Chinese translations of... monolingual performance. The main performance-limiting factor is the limited coverage of the dictionary used in query translation. Some of the key con...English-Chinese Cross-Language IR using Bilingual Dictionaries Aitao Chen , Hailing Jiang , and Fredric Gey School of Information Management

  2. Profiles and paths : Effects of language impairment and bilingualism on children's linguistic and cognitive development

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Boerma, T.D.

    2017-01-01

    Research on children with language impairment (LI) and bilingual children is important for both clinical and theoretical reasons (Paradis, 2010). For example, identifying similarities and differences between the two child populations can support the clinical challenge of diagnosing LI in bilingual

  3. The role of native-language phonology in the auditory word identification and visual word recognition of Russian-English bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shafiro, Valeriy; Kharkhurin, Anatoliy V

    2009-03-01

    Does native language phonology influence visual word processing in a second language? This question was investigated in two experiments with two groups of Russian-English bilinguals, differing in their English experience, and a monolingual English control group. Experiment 1 tested visual word recognition following semantic categorization of words containing four phonological vowel contrasts (/i/-/u/,/I/-/A/,/i/-/I/,/epsilon/-/ae/). Experiment 2 assessed auditory identification accuracy of words containing these four contrasts. Both bilingual groups demonstrated reduced accuracy in auditory identification of two English vowel contrasts absent in their native phonology (/i/-/I/,epsilon/-/ae/). For late- bilinguals, auditory identification difficulty was accompanied by poor visual word recognition for one difficult contrast (/i/-/I/). Bilinguals' visual word recognition moderately correlated with their auditory identification of difficult contrasts. These results indicate that native language phonology can play a role in visual processing of second language words. However, this effect may be considerably constrained by orthographic systems of specific languages.

  4. Language Growth in English Monolingual and Spanish-English Bilingual Children from 2.5 to 5 Years.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hoff, Erika; Ribot, Krystal M

    2017-11-01

    To describe the trajectories of English and Spanish language growth in typically developing children from bilingual homes and compare those with the trajectories of English growth in children from monolingual homes, to assess effects of dual language exposure on language growth in typically developing children. Expressive vocabularies were assessed at 6-month intervals from age 30 to 60 months, in English for monolinguals and English and Spanish for bilinguals. Use of English and Spanish in the home was assessed via parental report. Multilevel modeling, including parent education as a covariate, revealed that children from bilingual homes lagged 6 months to 1 year behind monolingual children in English vocabulary growth. The size of the lag was related to the relative amount of English use in the home, but the relation was not linear. Increments in English use conferred the greatest benefit most among homes with already high levels of English use. These homes also were likely to have 1 parent who was a native English speaker. Bilingual children showed stronger growth in English than in Spanish. Bilingual children can lag 6 months to 1 year behind monolingual children in normal English language development. Such lags may not necessarily signify clinically relevant delay if parents report that children also have skills in the home language. Shorter lags are associated with 2 correlated factors: more English exposure and more exposure from native English speakers. Early exposure to Spanish in the home does not guarantee acquisition of Spanish. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  5. Selective deficit of second language: a case study of a brain-damaged Arabic-Hebrew bilingual patient

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ibrahim Raphiq

    2009-03-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background An understanding of how two languages are represented in the human brain is best obtained from studies of bilingual patients who have sustained brain damage. The primary goal of the present study was to determine whether one or both languages of an Arabic-Hebrew bilingual individual are disrupted following brain damage. I present a case study of a bilingual patient, proficient in Arabic and Hebrew, who had sustained brain damage as a result of an intracranial hemorrhage related to herpes encephalitis. Methods The patient's performance on several linguistic tasks carried out in the first language (Arabic and in the second language (Hebrew was assessed, and his performance in the two languages was compared. Results The patient displayed somewhat different symptomatologies in the two languages. The results revealed dissociation between the two languages in terms of both the types and the magnitude of errors, pointing to aphasic symptoms in both languages, with Hebrew being the more impaired. Further analysis disclosed that this dissociation was apparently caused not by damage to his semantic system, but rather by damage at the lexical level. Conclusion The results suggest that the principles governing the organization of lexical representations in the brain are not similar for the two languages.

  6. Effects of Early Bilingual Experience with a Tone and a Non-Tone Language on Speech-Music Integration.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Salomi S Asaridou

    Full Text Available We investigated music and language processing in a group of early bilinguals who spoke a tone language and a non-tone language (Cantonese and Dutch. We assessed online speech-music processing interactions, that is, interactions that occur when speech and music are processed simultaneously in songs, with a speeded classification task. In this task, participants judged sung pseudowords either musically (based on the direction of the musical interval or phonologically (based on the identity of the sung vowel. We also assessed longer-term effects of linguistic experience on musical ability, that is, the influence of extensive prior experience with language when processing music. These effects were assessed with a task in which participants had to learn to identify musical intervals and with four pitch-perception tasks. Our hypothesis was that due to their experience in two different languages using lexical versus intonational tone, the early Cantonese-Dutch bilinguals would outperform the Dutch control participants. In online processing, the Cantonese-Dutch bilinguals processed speech and music more holistically than controls. This effect seems to be driven by experience with a tone language, in which integration of segmental and pitch information is fundamental. Regarding longer-term effects of linguistic experience, we found no evidence for a bilingual advantage in either the music-interval learning task or the pitch-perception tasks. Together, these results suggest that being a Cantonese-Dutch bilingual does not have any measurable longer-term effects on pitch and music processing, but does have consequences for how speech and music are processed jointly.

  7. Assessing bilingual Chinese-English young children in Malaysia using language sample measures.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ooi, Carmen C-W; Wong, Anita M-Y

    2012-12-01

    One reason why specific language impairment (SLI) is grossly under-identified in Malaysia is the absence of locally- developed norm-referenced language assessment tools for its multilingual and multicultural population. Spontaneous language samples provide quantitative information for language assessment, and useful descriptive information on child language development in complex language and cultural environments. This research consisted of two studies and investigated the use of measures obtained from English conversational samples among bilingual Chinese-English Malaysian preschoolers. The research found that the language sample measures were sensitive to developmental changes in this population and could identify SLI. The first study examined the relationship between age and mean length of utterance (MLU(w)), lexical diversity (D), and the index of productive syntax (IPSyn) among 52 typically-developing (TD) children aged between 3;4-6;9. Analyses showed a significant linear relationship between age and D (r = .450), the IPsyn (r = .441), and MLU(w) (r = .318). The second study compared the same measures obtained from 10 children with SLI, aged between 3;8-5;11, and their age-matched controls. The children with SLI had significantly shorter MLU(w) and lower IPSyn scores than the TD children. These findings suggest that utterance length and syntax production can be potential clinical markers of SLI in Chinese-English Malaysian children.

  8. Narratives in Two Languages: Storytelling of Bilingual Cantonese-English Preschoolers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rezzonico, Stefano; Goldberg, Ahuva; Mak, Katy Ka-Yan; Yap, Stephanie; Milburn, Trelani; Belletti, Adriana; Girolametto, Luigi

    2016-06-01

    The aim of this study was to compare narratives generated by 4-year-old and 5-year-old children who were bilingual in English and Cantonese. The sample included 47 children (23 who were 4 years old and 24 who were 5 years old) living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, who spoke both Cantonese and English. The participants spoke and heard predominantly Cantonese in the home. Participants generated a story in English and Cantonese by using a wordless picture book; language order was counterbalanced. Data were transcribed and coded for story grammar, morphosyntactic quality, mean length of utterance in words, and the number of different words. Repeated measures analysis of variance revealed higher story grammar scores in English than in Cantonese, but no other significant main effects of language were observed. Analyses also revealed that older children had higher story grammar, mean length of utterance in words, and morphosyntactic quality scores than younger children in both languages. Hierarchical regressions indicated that Cantonese story grammar predicted English story grammar and Cantonese microstructure predicted English microstructure. However, no correlation was observed between Cantonese and English morphosyntactic quality. The results of this study have implications for speech-language pathologists who collect narratives in Cantonese and English from bilingual preschoolers. The results suggest that there is a possible transfer in narrative abilities between the two languages.

  9. Language Learners' Use of a Bilingual Dictionary: A Comparative ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The basic task of a bilingual dictionary is to provide L2 equivalents of Ll lexical items. .... They argue further that although teachers use dictionaries as valuable ..... languages has its own verb form (present tense) conjugated from the base form. ... be expected to remember the pattern or consult a grammar book whenever.

  10. THE BENEFICIAL EFFECT OF BILINGUALISM IN VISUAL MEDIA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aliva Rosdiana

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available Bilingualism is a phenomenon that affects people throughout the world. People use bilingualism in particular situations in society such as in education, job, mass media, etc. People who speak bilingualism means that they get second language learning. Radio, televison, and YouTube are important vehicles of mass communication. Mass communication differs from the studies of other forms of communication, such as interpersonal communication, in that it focuses on a single source transmitting information to a large group of receivers. The study of bilingualism in visual media is chiefly concerned with how the content of visual media persuades or otherwise affects either behavior, attitude, opinion, or emotion of the person or people receiving the information. The beneficial effect is the development of bilingualism. Watching video affects children‘s acquisition of their native language and hasten language shift to the majority language. By watching the video, it also enrich our knowledge to particular vocabularies based on particular topics. The Internet makes it possible to have conversations across countries and continents. Individuals have multiple identities and belong to other speakers of their heritage language. So, the linguistic competence will develop as a by-product of the interest. In addition, it brings people closer.

  11. Acquisition of compound words in Chinese-English bilingual children: Decomposition and cross-language activation

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Cheng, C.; Wang, M.; Perfetti, C.A.

    2011-01-01

    This study investigated compound processing and cross-language activation in a group of Chinese–English bilingual children, and they were divided into four groups based on the language proficiency levels in their two languages. A lexical decision task was designed using compound words in both

  12. Quantitative and qualitative differences in the lexical knowledge of monolingual and bilingual children on the LITMUS-CLT task.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Altman, Carmit; Goldstein, Tamara; Armon-Lotem, Sharon

    2017-01-01

    While bilingual children follow the same milestones of language acquisition as monolingual children do in learning the syntactic patterns of their second language (L2), their vocabulary size in L2 often lags behind compared to monolinguals. The present study explores the comprehension and production of nouns and verbs in Hebrew, by two groups of 5- to 6-year olds with typical language development: monolingual Hebrew speakers (N = 26), and Russian-Hebrew bilinguals (N = 27). Analyses not only show quantitative gaps between comprehension and production and between nouns and verbs, with a bilingual effect in both, but also a qualitative difference between monolinguals and bilinguals in their production errors: monolinguals' errors reveal knowledge of the language rules despite temporary access difficulties, while bilinguals' errors reflect gaps in their knowledge of Hebrew (L2). The nature of Hebrew as a Semitic language allows one to explore this qualitative difference in the semantic and morphological level.

  13. Do eye movements reveal differences between monolingual and bilingual children's first-language and second-language reading? A focus on word frequency effects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Whitford, Veronica; Joanisse, Marc F

    2018-09-01

    An extensive body of research has examined reading acquisition and performance in monolingual children. Surprisingly, however, much less is known about reading in bilingual children, who outnumber monolingual children globally. Here, we address this important imbalance in the literature by employing eye movement recordings to examine both global (i.e., text-level) and local (i.e., word-level) aspects of monolingual and bilingual children's reading performance across their first-language (L1) and second-language (L2). We also had a specific focus on lexical accessibility, indexed by word frequency effects. We had three main findings. First, bilingual children displayed reduced global and local L1 reading performance relative to monolingual children, including larger L1 word frequency effects. Second, bilingual children displayed reduced global and local L2 versus L1 reading performance, including larger L2 word frequency effects. Third, both groups of children displayed reduced global and local reading performance relative to adult comparison groups (across their known languages), including larger word frequency effects. Notably, our first finding was not captured by traditional offline measures of reading, such as standardized tests, suggesting that these measures may lack the sensitivity to detect such nuanced between-group differences in reading performance. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that bilingual children's simultaneous exposure to two reading systems leads to eye movement reading behavior that differs from that of monolingual children and has important consequences for how lexical information is accessed and integrated in both languages. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  14. Designing Bilingual Scenarios to Promote English Language Learning at a Public School in Monteria

    Science.gov (United States)

    Romero, Yanilis; Manjarres, Milton Pájaro

    2016-01-01

    This research study examines the assumptions of creating bilingual scenarios to promote English language learning for 384 students of ninth, tenth and eleventh grade of a public school in Monteria Colombia. An action research methodology was carried out in this study. The findings of this research suggested that the creation of bilingual scenarios…

  15. Bilinguals' Plausibility Judgments for Phrases with a Literal vs. Non-literal Meaning: The Influence of Language Brokering Experience

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Belem G. López

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available Previous work has shown that prior experience in language brokering (informal translation may facilitate the processing of meaning within and across language boundaries. The present investigation examined the influence of brokering on bilinguals' processing of two word collocations with either a literal or a figurative meaning in each language. Proficient Spanish-English bilinguals classified as brokers or non-brokers were asked to judge if adjective+noun phrases presented in each language made sense or not. Phrases with a literal meaning (e.g., stinging insect were interspersed with phrases with a figurative meaning (e.g., stinging insult and non-sensical phrases (e.g., stinging picnic. It was hypothesized that plausibility judgments would be facilitated for literal relative to figurative meanings in each language but that experience in language brokering would be associated with a more equivalent pattern of responding across languages. These predictions were confirmed. The findings add to the body of empirical work on individual differences in language processing in bilinguals associated with prior language brokering experience.

  16. The Gradience of Multilingualism in Typical and Impaired Language Development: Positioning Bilectalism within Comparative Bilingualism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grohmann, Kleanthes K; Kambanaros, Maria

    2016-01-01

    A multitude of factors characterizes bi- and multilingual compared to monolingual language acquisition. Two of the most prominent viewpoints have recently been put in perspective and enriched by a third (Tsimpli, 2014): age of onset of children's exposure to their native languages, the role of the input they receive, and the timing in monolingual first language development of the phenomena examined in bi- and multilingual children's performance. This article picks up a fourth potential factor (Grohmann, 2014b): language proximity, that is, the closeness between the two or more grammars a multilingual child acquires. It is a first attempt to flesh out the proposed gradient scale of multilingualism within the approach dubbed "comparative bilingualism." The empirical part of this project comes from three types of research: (i) the acquisition and subsequent development of pronominal object clitic placement in two closely related varieties of Greek by bilectal, binational, bilingual, and multilingual children; (ii) the performance on executive control tasks by monolingual, bilectal, and bi- or multilingual children; and (iii) the role of comparative bilingualism in children with a developmental language impairment for both the diagnosis and subsequent treatment as well as the possible avoidance or weakening of how language impairment presents.

  17. Discursive Mechanisms and Human Agency in Language Policy Formation: Negotiating Bilingualism and Parallel Language Use at a Swedish University

    Science.gov (United States)

    Källkvist, Marie; Hult, Francis M.

    2016-01-01

    In the wake of the enactment of Sweden's Language Act in 2009 and in the face of the growing presence of English, Swedish universities have been called upon by the Swedish Higher Education Authority to craft their own language policy documents. This study focuses on the discursive negotiation of institutional bilingualism by a language policy…

  18. Language Planning for the 21st Century: Revisiting Bilingual Language Policy for Deaf Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Knoors, Harry; Marschark, Marc

    2012-01-01

    For over 25 years in some countries and more recently in others, bilingual education involving sign language and the written/spoken vernacular has been considered an essential educational intervention for deaf children. With the recent growth in universal newborn hearing screening and technological advances such as digital hearing aids and…

  19. Home language skills of the third-generation Turkish-Dutch bilingual children in the Netherlands

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bezcioglu, Irem

    2016-01-01

    With the aim of investigating the role of first language skills in second language acquisition and school achievement in the immigration context, this study presents the findings of the home language skills of the third-generation Turkish-Dutch bilingual children (n=24) living in the Netherlands by

  20. Translanguaging in a Latin@ Bilingual Community: Negotiations and Mediations in a Dual-Language Classroom

    Science.gov (United States)

    Garza, Armando; Langman, Juliet

    2014-01-01

    Considering a Latin@ fifth-grade dual-language classroom (Spanish/English) as a community of practice, this paper explores how a bilingual teacher and her bilingual students, as members of such community, utilize translanguaging (García, 2009) as a learning and teaching tool in social studies and science classes. In this particular classroom, the…

  1. The effects of stating problems in bilingual students' first and second languages on solving mathematical word problems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bernardo, Allan B I; Calleja, Marissa O

    2005-03-01

    Researchers have suggested that among bilinguals, solving word problems in mathematics is influenced by linguistic factors (K. Durkin & B. Shire, 1991; L. Verschaffel, B. Greer, & E. De Corte, 2000). Others have suggested that students exhibit a strong tendency to exclude real-world constraints in solving mathematics word problems (L. Verschaffel, E. De Corte, & S. Lasure, 1994). In the present study, the authors explored the effects of stating word problems in either Filipino or English on how Filipino-English bilingual students solved word problems in which the solution required the application of real-world knowledge. The authors asked bilingual students to solve word problems in either their first or second language. For some of the word problems, real-life constraints prevented straightforward application of mathematical procedures. The authors analyzed the students' solutions to determine whether the language of the word problems affected the tendency to apply real-life constraints in the solution. Results showed that the bilingual students (a) rarely considered real-life constraints in their solutions, (b) were more successful in understanding and solving word problems that were stated in their first language, and (c) were more likely to experience failure in finding a solution to problems stated in their second language. The results are discussed in terms of the relationship between linguistic and mathematical problem-solving processes among bilinguals.

  2. Bilingualism and identity: a case study on the relationship between language and feelings

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jessica Pérez-Luzardo Díaz

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available The present study analyses the current connection between language, culture and emotions in bilingual bicultural subjects. A pilot study is set to demonstrate the validity of the hypothesis that the subjects express different feelings in their own language compared to other languages. The results suggest that the mental images for the same signifier are different according to the language in which it is evoked.

  3. The Impact of Early Social Interactions on Later Language Development in Spanish-English Bilingual Infants

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ramírez-Esparza, Nairán; García-Sierra, Adrián; Kuhl, Patricia K.

    2017-01-01

    This study tested the impact of child-directed language input on language development in Spanish-English bilingual infants (N = 25, 11- and 14-month-olds from the Seattle metropolitan area), across languages and independently for each language, controlling for socioeconomic status. Language input was characterized by social interaction variables,…

  4. The Impact of Bimodal Bilingual Parental Input on the Communication and Language Development of a Young Deaf Child

    Science.gov (United States)

    Levesque, Elizabeth; Brown, P. Margaret; Wigglesworth, Gillian

    2014-01-01

    This study explores the impact of bimodal bilingual parental input on the communication and language development of a young deaf child. The participants in this case study were a severe-to-profoundly deaf boy and his hearing parents, who were enrolled in a bilingual (English and Australian Sign Language) homebased early intervention programme. The…

  5. Bilingual Education and Language Use among the Shipibo of the Peruvian Amazon.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tacelosky, Kathleen

    2001-01-01

    Investigates how language choice for education contributes to changes in the way a society views and uses language in the context of the Peruvian Amazon. Oral surveys were administered to Shipibo people in 13 communities along the Ucayali River of eastern Peru where a transition type bilingual education program was introduced several decades ago.…

  6. First-language skills of bilingual Turkish immigrant children growing up in a Dutch submersion context

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Akoglu, Gözde; Yagmur, Kutlay

    2016-01-01

    The interdependence between the first and second language of bilingual immigrant children has not received sufficient attention in research. Most studies concentrate on mainstream language skills of immigrant pupils. In some studies, the gaps in the language development of immigrant children are

  7. A Study of Taiwan Early Childhood Teacher Preparation Curriculum for Language Development, Language Teaching and Bilingualism within the Context of Higher Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chou, Lan-Ying

    2009-01-01

    This study addresses one central issue: How do Taiwan's teacher education programs promote future teachers' knowledge that fosters bilingualism in children? Three bodies of knowledge were included in this study. The first reviews the theory of second-language acquisition and bilingualism. The second involves the literature of early childhood…

  8. Un Bosquejo del Proyecto Bilingue (Outline of a Bilingual Project).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Compton City Schools, CA.

    Bilingual education in English and Spanish is intended to give native speakers of both languages insights into two cultures, a broader background, and greater life opportunities. Spanish-speaking students in bilingual programs can retain their language ties and the ability to communicate with their families and older relatives. The directors of…

  9. Age of acquisition and allophony in Spanish-English bilinguals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barlow, Jessica A.

    2014-01-01

    This study examines age of acquisition (AoA) in Spanish-English bilinguals’ phonetic and phonological knowledge of /l/ in English and Spanish. In English, the lateral approximant /l/ varies in darkness by context [based on the second formant (F2) and the difference between F2 and the first formant (F1)], but the Spanish /l/ does not. Further, English /l/ is overall darker than Spanish /l/. Thirty-eight college-aged adults participated: 11 Early Spanish-English bilinguals who learned English before the age of 5 years, 14 Late Spanish-English bilinguals who learned English after the age of 6 years, and 13 English monolinguals. Participants’ /l/ productions were acoustically analyzed by language and context. The results revealed a Spanish-to-English phonetic influence on /l/ productions for both Early and Late bilinguals, as well as an English-to-Spanish phonological influence on the patterning of /l/ for the Late Bilinguals. These findings are discussed in terms of the Speech Learning Model and the effect of AoA on the interaction between a bilingual speaker’s two languages. PMID:24795664

  10. How do German bilingual schoolchildren process German prepositions? - A study on language-motor interactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ahlberg, Daniela Katharina; Bischoff, Heike; Strozyk, Jessica Vanessa; Bryant, Doreen; Kaup, Barbara

    2018-01-01

    While much support is found for embodied language processing in a first language (L1), evidence for embodiment in second language (L2) processing is rather sparse. In a recent study, we found support for L2 embodiment, but also an influence of L1 on L2 processing in adult learners. In the present study, we compared bilingual schoolchildren who speak German as one of their languages with monolingual German schoolchildren. We presented the German prepositions auf (on), über (above), and unter (under) in a Stroop-like task. Upward or downward responses were made depending on the font colour, resulting in compatible and incompatible trials. We found compatibility effects for all children, but in contrast to the adult sample, there were no processing differences between the children depending on the nature of their other language, suggesting that the processing of German prepositions of bilingual children is embodied in a similar way as in monolingual German children.

  11. Transforming Language Ideologies through Action Research: A Case Study of Bilingual Science Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Eunah

    2012-01-01

    This qualitative case study explored a third grade bilingual teacher's transformative language ideologies through participating in a collaborative action research project. By merging language ideologies theory, Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), and action research, I was able to identify the analytic focus of this study. I analyzed…

  12. Effects of Early and Late Bilingualism on Resting-State Functional Connectivity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berken, Jonathan A; Chai, Xiaoqian; Chen, Jen-Kai; Gracco, Vincent L; Klein, Denise

    2016-01-27

    Of current interest is how variations in early language experience shape patterns of functional connectivity in the human brain. In the present study, we compared simultaneous (two languages from birth) and sequential (second language learned after age 5 years) bilinguals using a seed-based resting-state MRI approach. We focused on the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) as our ROI, as recent studies have demonstrated both neurofunctional and neurostructural changes related to age of second language acquisition in bilinguals in this cortical area. Stronger functional connectivity was observed for simultaneous bilinguals between the left and right IFG, as well as between the inferior frontal gyrus and brain areas involved in language control, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, inferior parietal lobule, and cerebellum. Functional connectivity between the left IFG and the right IFG and right inferior parietal lobule was also significantly correlated with age of acquisition for sequential bilinguals; the earlier the second language was acquired, the stronger was the functional connectivity. In addition, greater functional connectivity between homologous regions of the inferior frontal gyrus was associated with reduced neural activation in the left IFG during speech production. The increased connectivity at rest and reduced neural activation during task performance suggests enhanced neural efficiency in this important brain area involved in both speech production and domain-general cognitive processing. Together, our findings highlight how the brain's intrinsic functional patterns are influenced by the developmental timeline in which second language acquisition occurs. Of current interest is how early life experience leaves its footprint on brain structure and function. In this regard, bilingualism provides an optimal way to determine the effects of the timing of language learning because a second language can be learned from birth or later in life. We used resting

  13. Bilingual recognition memory: stronger performance but weaker levels-of-processing effects in the less fluent language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Francis, Wendy S; Gutiérrez, Marisela

    2012-04-01

    The effects of bilingual proficiency on recognition memory were examined in an experiment with Spanish-English bilinguals. Participants learned lists of words in English and Spanish under shallow- and deep-encoding conditions. Overall, hit rates were higher, discrimination greater, and response times shorter in the nondominant language, consistent with effects previously observed for lower frequency words. Levels-of-processing effects in hit rates, discrimination, and response time were stronger in the dominant language. Specifically, with shallow encoding, the advantage for the nondominant language was larger than with deep encoding. The results support the idea that memory performance in the nondominant language is impacted by both the greater demand for cognitive resources and the lower familiarity of the words.

  14. Second Language Socialization in a Bilingual Chat Room: Global and Local Considerations

    OpenAIRE

    Wan Shun Eva Lam

    2004-01-01

    This paper considers how global practices of English on the Internet intersect with local practices of English in the territorial or national sphere in constructing the language experiences of immigrant learners. Using a multi-contextual approach to language socialization, this paper examines the social and discursive practices in a Chinese/English bilingual chat room and how this Internet chat room provides an additional context of language socialization for two teenage Chinese immigrants in...

  15. The effects of bilingual language proficiency on recall accuracy and semantic clustering in free recall output: evidence for shared semantic associations across languages.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Francis, Wendy S; Taylor, Randolph S; Gutiérrez, Marisela; Liaño, Mary K; Manzanera, Diana G; Penalver, Renee M

    2018-05-19

    Two experiments investigated how well bilinguals utilise long-standing semantic associations to encode and retrieve semantic clusters in verbal episodic memory. In Experiment 1, Spanish-English bilinguals (N = 128) studied and recalled word and picture sets. Word recall was equivalent in L1 and L2, picture recall was better in L1 than in L2, and the picture superiority effect was stronger in L1 than in L2. Semantic clustering in word and picture recall was equivalent in L1 and L2. In Experiment 2, Spanish-English bilinguals (N = 128) and English-speaking monolinguals (N = 128) studied and recalled word sequences that contained semantically related pairs. Data were analyzed using a multinomial processing tree approach, the pair-clustering model. Cluster formation was more likely for semantically organised than for randomly ordered word sequences. Probabilities of cluster formation, cluster retrieval, and retrieval of unclustered items did not differ across languages or language groups. Language proficiency has little if any impact on the utilisation of long-standing semantic associations, which are language-general.

  16. Study of Bilingual-Bicultural Projects Involving Native American, Indo-European, Asian and Pacific Language Groups.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Battiste, Marie A.; And Others

    This is the final report of one of three studies in an overall project entitled "Evaluation of Bilingual Education Programs." This study was sponsored in response to a need for more information regarding bilingual-bicultural education for other than Spanish language groups. The study's objectives were to: (1) identify the major issues…

  17. The Minimal and Short-Lived Effects of Minority Language Exposure on the Executive Functions of Frisian-Dutch Bilingual Children

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bosma, E.; Hoekstra, E.; Versloot, A.; Blom, E.

    Various studies have shown that bilingual children need a certain degree of proficiency in both languages before their bilingual experiences enhance their executive functioning (EF). In the current study, we investigated if degree of bilingualism in Frisian-Dutch children influenced EF and if this

  18. The challenge of balancing content and language: Perceptions of Dutch bilingual education history teachers.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Oattes, Huub; de Graaff, H.C.J.; Oostdam, Ron; Wilschut, Arie

    The role of subject teachers in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has received little attention, since most research focuses on language learning results of students. This exploratory study aims to gain insight into the perceptions of Dutch bilingual education history teachers by

  19. Is there a relationship between language switching and executive functions in bilingualism? Introducing a within-group analysis approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anna eSoveri

    2011-08-01

    Full Text Available Several studies have suggested a bilingual advantage in executive functions, presumably due to bilinguals’ massive practice with language switching that requires executive resources, but the results are still somewhat controversial. Previous studies are also plagued by the inherent limitations of a natural groups design where the participant groups are bound to differ in many ways in addition to the variable used to classify them. In an attempt to introduce a complementary analysis approach, we employed multiple regression to study whether the performance of 30-75-year-old Finnish-Swedish bilinguals (n= 38 on tasks measuring different executive functions (inhibition, updating, and set shifting could be predicted by the frequency of language switches in everyday life (as measured by a language switching questionnaire, L2 age of acquisition, or by the self-estimated degree of use of both languages in everyday life. Most consistent effects were found for the set shifting task where a higher rate of everyday language switches was related to a smaller mixing cost in errors. Mixing cost is thought to reflect top-down management of competing task sets, thus resembling the bilingual situation where decisions of which language to use has to be made in each conversation. These findings provide additional support to the idea that some executive functions in bilinguals are affected by a lifelong experience in language switching and, perhaps even more importantly, suggest a complementary approach to the study of this issue.

  20. Balanced bilinguals favor lexical processing in their opaque language and conversion system in their shallow language

    OpenAIRE

    Buetler, Karin A.; Rodríguez, Diego de León; Laganaro, Marina; Müri, René; Nyffeler, Thomas; Spierer, Lucas; Annoni, Jean-Marie

    2016-01-01

    Referred to as orthographic depth, the degree of consistency of grapheme/phoneme correspondences varies across languages from high in shallow orthographies to low in deep orthographies. The present study investigates the impact of orthographic depth on reading route by analyzing evoked potentials to words in a deep (French) and shallow (German) language presented to highly proficient bilinguals. ERP analyses to German and French words revealed significant topographic modulations 240–280 ms po...

  1. Diagnostic accuracy of repetition tasks for the identification of specific language impairment (SLI) in bilingual children: evidence from Russian and Hebrew.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Armon-Lotem, Sharon; Meir, Natalia

    2016-11-01

    Previous research demonstrates that repetition tasks are valuable tools for diagnosing specific language impairment (SLI) in monolingual children in English and a variety of other languages, with non-word repetition (NWR) and sentence repetition (SRep) yielding high levels of sensitivity and specificity. Yet, only a few studies have addressed the diagnostic accuracy of repetition tasks in bilingual children, and most available research focuses on English-Spanish sequential bilinguals. To evaluate the efficacy of three repetition tasks (forward digit span (FWD), NWR and SRep) in order to distinguish mono- and bilingual children with and without SLI in Russian and Hebrew. A total of 230 mono- and bilingual children aged 5;5-6;8 participated in the study: 144 bilingual Russian-Hebrew-speaking children (27 with SLI); and 52 monolingual Hebrew-speaking children (14 with SLI) and 34 monolingual Russian-speaking children (14 with SLI). Parallel repetition tasks were designed in both Russian and Hebrew. Bilingual children were tested in both languages. The findings confirmed that NWR and SRep are valuable tools in distinguishing monolingual children with and without SLI in Russian and Hebrew, while the results for FWD were mixed. Yet, testing of bilingual children with the same tools using monolingual cut-off points resulted in inadequate diagnostic accuracy. We demonstrate, however, that the use of bilingual cut-off points yielded acceptable levels of diagnostic accuracy. The combination of SRep tasks in L1/Russian and L2/Hebrew yielded the highest overall accuracy (i.e., 94%), but even SRep alone in L2/Hebrew showed excellent levels of sensitivity (i.e., 100%) and specificity (i.e., 89%), reaching 91% of total diagnostic accuracy. The results are very promising for identifying SLI in bilingual children and for showing that testing in the majority language with bilingual cut-off points can provide an accurate classification. © 2016 Royal College of Speech and Language

  2. Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism: Digging Deeper for the Contributions of Language Dominance, Linguistic Knowledge, Socio-Economic Status and Cognitive Abilities

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mueller Gathercole, Virginia C.; Thomas, Enlli Mon; Jones, Leah; Guasch, Nestor Vinas; Young, Nia; Hughes, Emma K.

    2010-01-01

    This study explores the extent to which a bilingual advantage can be observed for executive function tasks in children of varying levels of language dominance, and examines the contributions of general cognitive knowledge, linguistic abilities, language use and socio-economic level to performance. Welsh-English bilingual and English monolingual…

  3. Weaving Together Science and English: An Interconnected Model of Language Development for Emergent Bilinguals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ciechanowski, Kathryn M.

    2014-01-01

    This research explores third-grade science and language instruction for emergent bilinguals designed through a framework of planning, lessons, and assessment in an interconnected model including content, linguistic features, and functions. Participants were a team of language specialist, classroom teacher, and researcher who designed…

  4. First-Language Skills of Bilingual Turkish Immigrant Children Growing up in a Dutch Submersion Context

    Science.gov (United States)

    Akoglu, Gözde; Yagmur, Kutlay

    2016-01-01

    The interdependence between the first and second language of bilingual immigrant children has not received sufficient attention in research. Most studies concentrate on mainstream language skills of immigrant pupils. In some studies, the gaps in the language development of immigrant children are documented by comparing mainstream pupils with…

  5. Coordinated Translanguaging Pedagogy as Distributed Cognition: A Case Study of Two Dual Language Bilingual Education Preschool Coteachers' Languaging Practices during Shared Book Readings

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pontier, Ryan; Gort, Mileidis

    2016-01-01

    This study examined how a pair of Spanish/English dual language bilingual education (DLBE) preschool teachers enacted their bilingualism while working cohesively and simultaneously toward common instructional goals. We drew on classroom video data, field notes, and other relevant artifacts collected weekly during shared readings of English- and…

  6. Understanding Disorder Within Variation: Production of English Grammatical Forms by English Language Learners.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bedore, Lisa M; Peña, Elizabeth D; Anaya, Jissel B; Nieto, Ricardo; Lugo-Neris, Mirza J; Baron, Alisa

    2018-04-05

    This study examines English performance on a set of 11 grammatical forms in Spanish-English bilingual, school-age children in order to understand how item difficulty of grammatical constructions helps correctly classify language impairment (LI) from expected variability in second language acquisition when taking into account linguistic experience and exposure. Three hundred seventy-eight children's scores on the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment-Middle Extension (Peña, Bedore, Gutiérrez-Clellen, Iglesias, & Goldstein, 2008) morphosyntax cloze task were analyzed by bilingual experience groups (high Spanish experience, balanced English-Spanish experience, high English experience, ability (typically developing [TD] vs. LI), and grammatical form. Classification accuracy was calculated for the forms that best differentiated TD and LI groups. Children with LI scored lower than TD children across all bilingual experience groups. There were differences by grammatical form across bilingual experience and ability groups. Children from high English experience and balanced English-Spanish experience groups could be accurately classified on the basis of all the English grammatical forms tested except for prepositions. For bilinguals with high Spanish experience, it was possible to rule out LI on the basis of grammatical production but not rule in LI. It is possible to accurately identify LI in English language learners once they use English 40% of the time or more. However, for children with high Spanish experience, more information about development and patterns of impairment is needed to positively identify LI.

  7. Vowel reduction in word-final position by early and late Spanish-English bilinguals.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Emily Byers

    Full Text Available 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

  8. Early preschool processing abilities predict subsequent reading outcomes in bilingual Spanish-Catalan children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aguilar-Mediavilla, Eva; Buil-Legaz, Lucía; Pérez-Castelló, Josep A; Rigo-Carratalà, Eduard; Adrover-Roig, Daniel

    2014-01-01

    Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have severe language difficulties without showing hearing impairments, cognitive deficits, neurological damage or socio-emotional deprivation. However, previous studies have shown that children with SLI show some cognitive and literacy problems. Our study analyses the relationship between preschool cognitive and linguistic abilities and the later development of reading abilities in Spanish-Catalan bilingual children with SLI. The sample consisted of 17 bilingual Spanish-Catalan children with SLI and 17 age-matched controls. We tested eight distinct processes related to phonological, attention, and language processing at the age of 6 years and reading at 8 years of age. Results show that bilingual Spanish-Catalan children with SLI show significantly lower scores, as compared to typically developing peers, in phonological awareness, phonological memory, and rapid automatized naming (RAN), together with a lower outcome in tasks measuring sentence repetition and verbal fluency. Regarding attentional processes, bilingual Spanish-Catalan children with SLI obtained lower scores in auditory attention, but not in visual attention. At the age of 8 years Spanish-Catalan children with SLI had lower scores than their age-matched controls in total reading score, letter identification (decoding), and in semantic task (comprehension). Regression analyses identified both phonological awareness and verbal fluency at the age of 6 years to be the best predictors of subsequent reading performance at the age of 8 years. Our data suggest that language acquisition problems and difficulties in reading acquisition in bilingual children with SLI might be related to the close interdependence between a limitation in cognitive processing and a deficit at the linguistic level. After reading this article, readers will be able to: identify their understanding of the relation between language difficulties and reading outcomes; explain how processing

  9. Second Language Socialization in a Bilingual Chat Room: Global and Local Considerations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wan Shun Eva Lam

    2004-09-01

    Full Text Available This paper considers how global practices of English on the Internet intersect with local practices of English in the territorial or national sphere in constructing the language experiences of immigrant learners. Using a multi-contextual approach to language socialization, this paper examines the social and discursive practices in a Chinese/English bilingual chat room and how this Internet chat room provides an additional context of language socialization for two teenage Chinese immigrants in the US. Analysis of discourse, interview, and observational data reveals that a mixed-code variety of English is adopted and developed among the focal youth and their peers around the globe to construct their relationships as bilingual speakers of English and Cantonese. This language variety served to create a collective ethnic identity for these young people and allowed the girls to assume a new identity in speaking English that doesn't follow the social categories of English-speaking Americans versus Cantonese-speaking Chinese in their local American context. This paper makes the case for studying how people navigate across contexts of socialization in the locality of the nation-state and the virtual environments of the Internet to articulate new ways of using English.

  10. Acquisition of stress and pitch accent in English-Spanish bilingual children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Sahyang; Andruski, Jean; Nathan, Geoffrey S.; Casielles, Eugenia; Work, Richard

    2005-09-01

    Although understanding of prosodic development is considered crucial for understanding of language acquisition in general, few studies have focused on how children develop native-like prosody in their speech production. This study will examine the acquisition of lexical stress and postlexical pitch accent in two English-Spanish bilingual children. Prosodic characteristics of English and Spanish are different in terms of frequent stress patterns (trochaic versus penultimate), phonetic realization of stress (reduced unstressed vowel versus full unstressed vowel), and frequent pitch accent types (H* versus L*+H), among others. Thus, English-Spanish bilingual children's prosodic development may provide evidence of their awareness of language differences relatively early during language development, and illustrate the influence of markedness or input frequency in prosodic acquisition. For this study, recordings from the children's one-word stage are used. Durations of stressed and unstressed syllables and F0 peak alignment are measured, and pitch accent types in different accentual positions (nuclear versus prenuclear) are transcribed using American English ToBI and Spanish ToBI. Prosodic development is compared across ages within each language and across languages at each age. Furthermore, the bilingual children's productions are compared with monolingual English and Spanish parents' productions.

  11. Navigating Hybridized Language Learning Spaces through Translanguaging Pedagogy: Dual Language Preschool Teachers' Languaging Practices in Support of Emergent Bilingual Children's Performance of Academic Discourse

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gort, Mileidis; Sembiante, Sabrina Francesca

    2015-01-01

    In recent years, there has been a growing interest among policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in early bilingual development and the unique role of the educational setting's language policy in this development. In this article, we describe how one dual language preschool teacher, in partnership with two co-teachers, navigated the tensions…

  12. Hierarchical levels of representation in language prediction: The influence of first language acquisition in highly proficient bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Molinaro, Nicola; Giannelli, Francesco; Caffarra, Sendy; Martin, Clara

    2017-07-01

    Language comprehension is largely supported by predictive mechanisms that account for the ease and speed with which communication unfolds. Both native and proficient non-native speakers can efficiently handle contextual cues to generate reliable linguistic expectations. However, the link between the variability of the linguistic background of the speaker and the hierarchical format of the representations predicted is still not clear. We here investigate whether native language exposure to typologically highly diverse languages (Spanish and Basque) affects the way early balanced bilingual speakers carry out language predictions. During Spanish sentence comprehension, participants developed predictions of words the form of which (noun ending) could be either diagnostic of grammatical gender values (transparent) or totally ambiguous (opaque). We measured electrophysiological prediction effects time-locked both to the target word and to its determiner, with the former being expected or unexpected. Event-related (N200-N400) and oscillatory activity in the low beta-band (15-17Hz) frequency channel showed that both Spanish and Basque natives optimally carry out lexical predictions independently of word transparency. Crucially, in contrast to Spanish natives, Basque natives displayed visual word form predictions for transparent words, in consistency with the relevance that noun endings (post-nominal suffixes) play in their native language. We conclude that early language exposure largely shapes prediction mechanisms, so that bilinguals reading in their second language rely on the distributional regularities that are highly relevant in their first language. More importantly, we show that individual linguistic experience hierarchically modulates the format of the predicted representation. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  13. Parental Involvement in Language and Literacy Acquisition: A Bilingual Journaling Approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Caesar, Lena G.; Nelson, Nickola Wolf

    2014-01-01

    This pilot study examined the feasibility of a home-school partnership for improving emergent literacy skills in Spanish-speaking pre-school children of migrant farmworkers. Parents were requested to send labeled drawings of family activities to their children's classroom for supplementing bilingual language and literacy instruction. Participants…

  14. Marking of verb tense in the English of preschool English-Mandarin bilingual children: evidence from language development profiles within subgroups on the Singapore English Action Picture Test.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brebner, Chris; McCormack, Paul; Liow, Susan Rickard

    2016-01-01

    The phonological and morphosyntactic structures of English and Mandarin contrast maximally and an increasing number of bilinguals speak these two languages. Speech and language therapists need to understand bilingual development for children speaking these languages in order reliably to assess and provide intervention for this population. To examine the marking of verb tense in the English of two groups of bilingual pre-schoolers learning these languages in a multilingual setting where the main educational language is English. The main research question addressed was: are there differences in the rate and pattern of acquisition of verb-tense marking for English-language 1 children compared with Mandarin-language 1 children? Spoken language samples in English from 481 English-Mandarin bilingual children were elicited using a 10-item action picture test and analysed for each child's use of verb tense markers: present progressive '-ing', regular past tense '-ed', third-person singular '-s', and irregular past tense and irregular past-participle forms. For 4-6 year olds the use of inflectional markers by the different language dominance groups was compared statistically using non-parametric tests. This study provides further evidence that bilingual language development is not the same as monolingual language development. The results show that there are very different rates and patterns of verb-tense marking in English for English-language 1 and Mandarin-language 1 children. Furthermore, they show that bilingual language development in English in Singapore is not the same as monolingual language development in English, and that there are differences in development depending on language dominance. Valid and reliable assessment of bilingual children's language skills needs to consider the characteristics of all languages spoken, obtaining accurate information on language use over time and accurately establishing language dominance is essential in order to make a

  15. "Why in This Bilingual Classroom … Hablamos Más Español?" Language Choice by Bilingual Science Students

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stevenson, Alma D.

    2015-01-01

    This qualitative sociolinguistic research study examines Latino/a students' use of language in a science classroom and laboratory. This study was conducted in a school in the southwestern United States that serves an economically depressed, predominantly Latino population. The object of study was a 5th-grade bilingual (Spanish/English) class. The…

  16. Electrophysiological assessment of the time course of bilingual visual word recognition: Early access to language membership.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yiu, Loretta K; Pitts, Michael A; Canseco-Gonzalez, Enriqueta

    2015-08-01

    Previous research examining the time course of lexical access during word recognition suggests that phonological processing precedes access to semantic information, which in turn precedes access to syntactic information. Bilingual word recognition likely requires an additional level: knowledge of which language a specific word belongs to. Using the recording of event-related potentials, we investigated the time course of access to language membership information relative to semantic (Experiment 1) and syntactic (Experiment 2) encoding during visual word recognition. In Experiment 1, Spanish-English bilinguals viewed a series of printed words while making dual-choice go/nogo and left/right hand decisions based on semantic (whether the word referred to an animal or an object) and language membership information (whether the word was in English or in Spanish). Experiment 2 used a similar paradigm but with syntactic information (whether the word was a noun or a verb) as one of the response contingencies. The onset and peak latency of the N200, a component related to response inhibition, indicated that language information is accessed earlier than semantic information. Similarly, language information was also accessed earlier than syntactic information (but only based on peak latency). We discuss these findings with respect to models of bilingual word recognition and language comprehension in general. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. Early processing of orthographic language membership information in bilingual visual word recognition: Evidence from ERPs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hoversten, Liv J; Brothers, Trevor; Swaab, Tamara Y; Traxler, Matthew J

    2017-08-01

    For successful language comprehension, bilinguals often must exert top-down control to access and select lexical representations within a single language. These control processes may critically depend on identification of the language to which a word belongs, but it is currently unclear when different sources of such language membership information become available during word recognition. In the present study, we used event-related potentials to investigate the time course of influence of orthographic language membership cues. Using an oddball detection paradigm, we observed early neural effects of orthographic bias (Spanish vs. English orthography) that preceded effects of lexicality (word vs. pseudoword). This early orthographic pop-out effect was observed for both words and pseudowords, suggesting that this cue is available prior to full lexical access. We discuss the role of orthographic bias for models of bilingual word recognition and its potential role in the suppression of nontarget lexical information. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  18. How do German bilingual schoolchildren process German prepositions? – A study on language-motor interactions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bischoff, Heike; Strozyk, Jessica Vanessa; Bryant, Doreen; Kaup, Barbara

    2018-01-01

    While much support is found for embodied language processing in a first language (L1), evidence for embodiment in second language (L2) processing is rather sparse. In a recent study, we found support for L2 embodiment, but also an influence of L1 on L2 processing in adult learners. In the present study, we compared bilingual schoolchildren who speak German as one of their languages with monolingual German schoolchildren. We presented the German prepositions auf (on), über (above), and unter (under) in a Stroop-like task. Upward or downward responses were made depending on the font colour, resulting in compatible and incompatible trials. We found compatibility effects for all children, but in contrast to the adult sample, there were no processing differences between the children depending on the nature of their other language, suggesting that the processing of German prepositions of bilingual children is embodied in a similar way as in monolingual German children. PMID:29538404

  19. Normal and abnormal aging in bilinguals

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alfredo Ardila

    Full Text Available Abstract Bilinguals use two different language systems to mediate not only social communication, but also cognitive processes. Potential differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in task-solving strategies and patterns of cognitive decline during normal and abnormal aging have been suggested. Main contribution: A research review of the area suggests that normal aging is associated with increased interference between the two languages and tendency to retreat to a single language. General cognitive functioning has been found to be higher in demented bilingual patients if communication is carried out in L1 rather than in L2. Recent research has reported that bilingualism can have a protective effect during aging, attenuating the normal cognitive decline associated with aging, and delaying the onset of dementia. Conclusions: Regardless of the significant heterogeneity of bilingualism and the diversity of patterns in language use during life-span, current research suggests that bilingualism is associated with preserved cognitive test performance during aging, and potentially can have some protective effect in dementia.

  20. Task Irrelevant External Cues Can Influence Language Selection in Voluntary Object Naming: Evidence from Hindi-English Bilinguals.

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    Divya Bhatia

    Full Text Available We examined if external cues such as other agents' actions can influence the choice of language during voluntary and cued object naming in bilinguals in three experiments. Hindi-English bilinguals first saw a cartoon waving at a color patch. They were then asked to either name a picture in the language of their choice (voluntary block or to name in the instructed language (cued block. The colors waved at by the cartoon were also the colors used as language cues (Hindi or English. We compared the influence of the cartoon's choice of color on naming when speakers had to indicate their choice explicitly before naming (Experiment 1 as opposed to when they named directly on seeing the pictures (Experiment 2 and 3. Results showed that participants chose the language indicated by the cartoon greater number of times (Experiment 1 and 3. Speakers also switched significantly to the language primed by the cartoon greater number of times (Experiment 1 and 2. These results suggest that choices leading to voluntary action, as in the case of object naming can be influenced significantly by external non-linguistic cues. Importantly, these symbolic influences can work even when other agents are merely indicating their choices and are not interlocutors in bilingual communication.

  1. A pilot study of language facilitation for bilingual, language-handicapped children: theoretical and intervention implications.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Perozzi, J A

    1985-11-01

    Three Spanish-speaking (SS) and 3 English-Speaking (ES) preschool children served as subjects. One SS subject was diagnosed as having mild language delay, 1 as being language disordered, and 1 as having normal language. One ES subject was diagnosed as having mild language delay and 2 as having normal language. A within-subject design wherein Condition A consisted of teaching receptive vocabulary in L1 (native language) followed by L2 (second language) and Condition B consisted of teaching receptive vocabulary in L2 followed by L1 was utilized. The sequence of conditions was ABBA for each subject. Analysis of each subject's trials to criterion for L2 in each condition indicated a strong tendency for recently learned receptive vocabulary in L1 to facilitate the learning of receptive vocabulary in L2. The results are interpreted as support for the practice of initial language intervention in L1 when bilingualism is a goal and for transference/facilitation theories of L2 learning.

  2. Linguistic transfer in bilingual children with specific language impairment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Verhoeven, Ludo; Steenge, Judit; van Balkom, Hans

    2012-01-01

    In the literature so far the limited research on specific language impairment (SLI) in bilingual children has concentrated on linguistic skills in the first language (L1) and/or the second language (L2) without paying attention to the relations between the two types of skills and to the issue of linguistic transfer. To examine the first and second language proficiency of 75 Turkish-Dutch bilingual children with SLI in the age range between 7 and 11 years living in the Netherlands. A multidimensional perspective on language proficiency was taken in order to assess children's Turkish and Dutch proficiency levels, whereas equivalent tests were used in order to determine language dominance. A second aim was to find out to what extent the children's proficiency in L2 can be predicted from their L1 proficiency, while taking into account their general cognitive abilities. The children's performance on a battery of equivalent language ability tests in Turkish and Dutch was compared at three age levels. By means of analyses of variance, it was explored to what extent the factors of language and grade level as well as their interactions were significant. Bivariate correlations and partial correlations with age level partialled out were computed to examine the relationships between L1 and L2 proficiency levels. Moreover, regression analysis was conducted to find out to what extent the variance in general L2 proficiency levels could be explained by children's L1 proficiency, short-term memory and non-verbal intelligence. Repeated measures analyses showed that the children had generally higher scores on L1 as compared with L2 and that with progression of age the children's scores in L1 and L2 improved. Medium to high correlations were found between phonological memory, phonological awareness, grammatical skills and story comprehension in the two languages. Regression analysis revealed that children's L2 proficiency levels could be explained by their proficiency levels in L1

  3. Conceptual representation of verbs in bilinguals: semantic field effects and a second-language performance paradox.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Segalowitz, Norman; de Almeida, Roberto G

    2002-01-01

    It is well known that bilinguals perform better in their first language (L1) than in their second lanaguage (L2) in a wide range of linguistic tasks. In recent studies, however, the authors have found that bilingual participants can demonstrate faster response times to L1 stimuli than to L2 stimuli in one classification task and the reverse in a different classification task. In the current study, they investigated the reasons for this "L2-better-than-L1" effect. English-French bilinguals performed one word relatedness and two categorization tasks with verbs of motion (e.g., run) and psychological verbs (e.g., admire) in both languages. In the word relatedness task, participants judged how closely related pairs of verbs from both categories were. In a speeded semantic categorization task, participants classified the verbs according to their semantic category (psychological or motion). In an arbitrary classification task, participants had to learn how verbs had been assigned to two arbitrary categories. Participants performed better in L1 in the semantic classification task but paradoxically better in L2 in the arbitrary classification task. To account for these effects, the authors used the ratings from the word relatedness task to plot three-dimensional "semantic fields" for the verbs. Cross-language field differences were found to be significantly related to the paradoxical performance and to fluency levels. The results have implications for understanding of how bilinguals represent verbs in the mental lexicon. Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).

  4. Minimalism and Bilingualism: How and Why Bilingualism Could Benefit Children with SLI

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roeper, Thomas

    2012-01-01

    We begin with the hypothesis that all people are "bilingual" because every language contains ingredients from several grammars, just as English exhibits both an Anglo-Saxon and a Latinate vocabulary system. We argue that the dominant grammar is defined by productivity and recursion in particular. Although current evidence is sparse, in principle,…

  5. Becoming Bilingual: A View Towards Communicative Competence

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lilla Musyahda

    2003-01-01

    Full Text Available The phenomenon of foreign language mastery shall always be the main issue in the pedagogy since it has numerous advantages in human life, especially in terms of economic value. The definition of bilingualism is connected with the speaking of two languages or expression in two languages and it can be used to describe societies or individuals (Lyon, 1995. The way that a bilingual adapts to a certain condition leads to a certain phenomenon, which is quite interesting to analyze. The texture of the bilingual's creativity is essentially the result of the process of translation and transcreation, and insightful approaches to stylistics-its theory and methodology must be take into consideration. When people speak more than one languages, they may have different levels of proficiency in each of the languages, and use them for very different social purposes and in different situations. The languages that a bilingual speaks affect each other in various ways, so much that there is a regular study of what happens when one language comes into contact with another. In educational setting, it is important to know how a bilingual's first language may affect the function of other languages. The paper will discuss the phenomenon of bilingual and the implication towards communicative competence which would consists, minimally, of four areas of knowledge and skills; grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence.

  6. Becoming Bilingual: A View Towards Communicative Competence

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lilla Musyanda

    2002-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract: The phenomenon of foreign language mastery shall always be the main issue in the pedagogy since it has numerous advantages in human life, especially in terms of economic value. The definition of bilingualism is connected with the speaking of two languages or expression in two languages and it can be used to describe societies or individuals (Lyon, 1995. The way that a bilingual adapts to a certain condition leads to a certain phenomenon, which is quite interesting to analyze. The texture of the bilingual's creativity is essentially the result of the process of translation and transcreation, and insightful approaches to stylistics-its theory and methodology must be take into consideration. When people speak more than one languages, they may have different levels of proficiency in each of the languages, and use them for very different social purposes and in different situations. The languages that a bilingual speaks affect each other in various ways, so much that there is a regular study of what happens when one language comes into contact with another. In educational setting, it is important to know how a bilingual's first language may affect the function of other languages. The paper will discuss the phenomenon of bilingual and the implication towards communicative competence which would consists, minimally, of four areas of knowledge and skills; grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence.

  7. Surmounting the Tower of Babel: Monolingual and bilingual 2-year-olds' understanding of the nature of foreign language words.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Byers-Heinlein, Krista; Chen, Ke Heng; Xu, Fei

    2014-03-01

    Languages function as independent and distinct conventional systems, and so each language uses different words to label the same objects. This study investigated whether 2-year-old children recognize that speakers of their native language and speakers of a foreign language do not share the same knowledge. Two groups of children unfamiliar with Mandarin were tested: monolingual English-learning children (n=24) and bilingual children learning English and another language (n=24). An English speaker taught children the novel label fep. On English mutual exclusivity trials, the speaker asked for the referent of a novel label (wug) in the presence of the fep and a novel object. Both monolingual and bilingual children disambiguated the reference of the novel word using a mutual exclusivity strategy, choosing the novel object rather than the fep. On similar trials with a Mandarin speaker, children were asked to find the referent of a novel Mandarin label kuò. Monolinguals again chose the novel object rather than the object with the English label fep, even though the Mandarin speaker had no access to conventional English words. Bilinguals did not respond systematically to the Mandarin speaker, suggesting that they had enhanced understanding of the Mandarin speaker's ignorance of English words. The results indicate that monolingual children initially expect words to be conventionally shared across all speakers-native and foreign. Early bilingual experience facilitates children's discovery of the nature of foreign language words. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  8. Government Policy and the Planning and Production of Bilingual Dictionaries: the Dutch Approach as a Case in Point.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Martin, W.J.R.

    2007-01-01

    In 1993 the Ministers of Education in the Netherlands and Flanders decided to install a binational committee of experts in order to co-ordinate, streamline, improve and stimulate the production of bilingual dictionaries and lexical databases with Dutch as a source or target language. This committee,

  9. Vowel reduction in word-final position by early and late Spanish-English bilinguals

    Science.gov (United States)

    2017-01-01

    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

  10. RELATION OF DEAF PERSONS TOWARDS BILINGUALISM AS COMMUNICATION MODE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Naim Salkić

    2013-02-01

    Full Text Available Bilingualism of a deaf child implies concurrent cognition and usage of sign language, as community language and oral-voice language as language of greater community in which deaf persons live. Today, most authors consider that deaf persons should know both of these languages and that deaf persons need to be educated in both languages, because of their general communication and complete psycho-social development. Through research on sample of 80 deaf examinees, we affirmed the kind of relation that deaf persons have towards bilingualism, bilingual way of education and communication. The research results have shown that bilingualism and bilingual way of education and communication is acceptable to deaf persons and that there is no statistically significant difference between the sub-samples of examinees.

  11. Response to dynamic language tasks among typically developing Latino preschool children with bilingual experience.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Patterson, Janet L; Rodríguez, Barbara L; Dale, Philip S

    2013-02-01

    The purpose of this study was to determine whether typically developing preschool children with bilingual experience show evidence of learning within brief dynamic assessment language tasks administered in a graduated prompting framework. Dynamic assessment has shown promise for accurate identification of language impairment in bilingual children, and a graduated prompting approach may be well-suited to screening for language impairment. Three dynamic language tasks with graduated prompting were presented to 32 typically developing 4-year-olds in the language to which the child had the most exposure (16 Spanish, 16 English). The tasks were a novel word learning task, a semantic task, and a phonological awareness task. Children's performance was significantly higher on the last 2 items compared with the first 2 items for the semantic and the novel word learning tasks among children who required a prompt on the 1st item. There was no significant difference between the 1st and last items on the phonological awareness task. Within-task improvements in children's performance for some tasks administered within a brief, graduated prompting framework were observed. Thus, children's responses to graduated prompting may be an indicator of modifiability, depending on the task type and level of difficulty.

  12. An analytic solution of a model of language competition with bilingualism and interlinguistic similarity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Otero-Espinar, M. V.; Seoane, L. F.; Nieto, J. J.; Mira, J.

    2013-12-01

    An in-depth analytic study of a model of language dynamics is presented: a model which tackles the problem of the coexistence of two languages within a closed community of speakers taking into account bilingualism and incorporating a parameter to measure the distance between languages. After previous numerical simulations, the model yielded that coexistence might lead to survival of both languages within monolingual speakers along with a bilingual community or to extinction of the weakest tongue depending on different parameters. In this paper, such study is closed with thorough analytical calculations to settle the results in a robust way and previous results are refined with some modifications. From the present analysis it is possible to almost completely assay the number and nature of the equilibrium points of the model, which depend on its parameters, as well as to build a phase space based on them. Also, we obtain conclusions on the way the languages evolve with time. Our rigorous considerations also suggest ways to further improve the model and facilitate the comparison of its consequences with those from other approaches or with real data.

  13. The Loch Ness Monster approach to bilingual language lateralization: a response to Berquier and Ashton.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Paradis, M

    1992-10-01

    To continue to search for a difference in language lateralization between bilinguals and unilinguals is at best a futile task in the face of all the clinical evidence to the contrary and inconsistent experimental findings. No amount of refining of dichotic, tachistoscopic, or concurrent task procedures, or statistical sophistication, is likely to tap the differential reliance on pragmatic cues that might very well exist in some nonbalanced bilinguals.

  14. How does the bilingual experience sculpt the brain?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Costa, Albert; Sebastián-Gallés, Núria

    2014-05-01

    The ability to speak two languages often marvels monolinguals, although bilinguals report no difficulties in achieving this feat. Here, we examine how learning and using two languages affect language acquisition and processing as well as various aspects of cognition. We do so by addressing three main questions. First, how do infants who are exposed to two languages acquire them without apparent difficulty? Second, how does language processing differ between monolingual and bilingual adults? Last, what are the collateral effects of bilingualism on the executive control system across the lifespan? Research in all three areas has not only provided some fascinating insights into bilingualism but also revealed new issues related to brain plasticity and language learning.

  15. Cognitive Advantages of Bilingual Children in Different Sociolinguistic Contexts

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blom, Elma; Boerma, Tessel; Bosma, Evelyn; Cornips, Leonie; Everaert, Emma

    2017-01-01

    Many studies have shown that bilingual children outperform monolinguals on tasks testing executive functioning, but other studies have not revealed any effect of bilingualism. In this study we compared three groups of bilingual children in the Netherlands, aged 6–7 years, with a monolingual control group. We were specifically interested in testing whether the bilingual cognitive advantage is modulated by the sociolinguistic context of language use. All three bilingual groups were exposed to a minority language besides the nation’s dominant language (Dutch). Two bilingual groups were exposed to a regional language (Frisian, Limburgish), and a third bilingual group was exposed to a migrant language (Polish). All children participated in two working memory tasks (verbal, visuospatial) and two attention tasks (selective attention, interference suppression). Bilingual children outperformed monolinguals on selective attention. The cognitive effect of bilingualism was most clearly present in the Frisian-Dutch group and in a subgroup of migrant children who were relatively proficient in Polish. The effect was less robust in the Limburgish-Dutch sample. Investigation of the response patterns of the flanker test, testing interference suppression, suggested that bilingual children more often show an effect of response competition than the monolingual children, demonstrating that bilingual children attend to different aspects of the task than monolingual children. No bilingualism effects emerged for verbal and visuospatial working memory. PMID:28484403

  16. Cognitive Advantages of Bilingual Children in Different Sociolinguistic Contexts.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blom, Elma; Boerma, Tessel; Bosma, Evelyn; Cornips, Leonie; Everaert, Emma

    2017-01-01

    Many studies have shown that bilingual children outperform monolinguals on tasks testing executive functioning, but other studies have not revealed any effect of bilingualism. In this study we compared three groups of bilingual children in the Netherlands, aged 6-7 years, with a monolingual control group. We were specifically interested in testing whether the bilingual cognitive advantage is modulated by the sociolinguistic context of language use. All three bilingual groups were exposed to a minority language besides the nation's dominant language (Dutch). Two bilingual groups were exposed to a regional language (Frisian, Limburgish), and a third bilingual group was exposed to a migrant language (Polish). All children participated in two working memory tasks (verbal, visuospatial) and two attention tasks (selective attention, interference suppression). Bilingual children outperformed monolinguals on selective attention. The cognitive effect of bilingualism was most clearly present in the Frisian-Dutch group and in a subgroup of migrant children who were relatively proficient in Polish. The effect was less robust in the Limburgish-Dutch sample. Investigation of the response patterns of the flanker test, testing interference suppression, suggested that bilingual children more often show an effect of response competition than the monolingual children, demonstrating that bilingual children attend to different aspects of the task than monolingual children. No bilingualism effects emerged for verbal and visuospatial working memory.

  17. Novel word retention in bilingual and monolingual speakers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kan, Pui Fong; Sadagopan, Neeraja

    2014-01-01

    The goal of this research was to examine word retention in bilinguals and monolinguals. Long-term word retention is an essential part of vocabulary learning. Previous studies have documented that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in terms of retrieving newly-exposed words. Yet, little is known about whether or to what extent bilinguals are different from monolinguals in word retention. Participants were 30 English-speaking monolingual adults and 30 bilingual adults who speak Spanish as a home language and learned English as a second language during childhood. In a previous study (Kan et al., 2014), the participants were exposed to the target novel words in English, Spanish, and Cantonese. In this current study, word retention was measured a week after the fast mapping task. No exposures were given during the one-week interval. Results showed that bilinguals and monolinguals retain a similar number of words. However, participants produced more words in English than in either Spanish or Cantonese. Correlation analyses revealed that language knowledge plays a role in the relationships between fast mapping and word retention. Specifically, within- and across-language relationships between bilinguals' fast mapping and word retention were found in Spanish and English, by contrast, within-language relationships between monolinguals' fast mapping and word retention were found in English and across-language relationships between their fast mapping and word retention performance in English and Cantonese. Similarly, bilinguals differed from monolinguals in the relationships among the word retention scores in three languages. Significant correlations were found among bilinguals' retention scores. However, no such correlations were found among monolinguals' retention scores. The overall findings suggest that bilinguals' language experience and language knowledge most likely contribute to how they learn and retain new words.

  18. Neuroanatomical profiles of bilingual children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Archila-Suerte, Pilar; Woods, Elizabeth A; Chiarello, Christine; Hernandez, Arturo E

    2018-02-26

    The goal of the present study was to examine differences in cortical thickness, cortical surface area, and subcortical volume between bilingual children who are highly proficient in two languages (i.e., English and Spanish) and bilingual children who are mainly proficient in one of the languages (i.e., Spanish). All children (N = 49) learned Spanish as a native language (L1) at home and English as a second language (L2) at school. Proficiency of both languages was assessed using the standardized Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery. Five-minute high-resolution anatomical scans were acquired with a 3-Tesla scanner. The degree of discrepancy between L1 and L2 proficiency was used to classify the children into two groups: children with balanced proficiency and children with unbalanced proficiency. The groups were comparable on language history, parental education, and other variables except English proficiency. Values of cortical thickness and surface area of the transverse STG, IFG-pars opercularis, and MFG, as well as subcortical volume of the caudate and putamen, were extracted from FreeSurfer. Results showed that children with balanced bilingualism had thinner cortices of the left STG, left IFG, left MFG and a larger bilateral putamen, whereas unbalanced bilinguals showed thicker cortices of the same regions and a smaller putamen. Additionally, unbalanced bilinguals with stronger foreign accents in the L2 showed reduced surface areas of the MFG and STS bilaterally. The results suggest that balanced/unbalanced bilingualism is reflected in different neuroanatomical characteristics that arise from biological and/or environmental factors. Published 2018. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

  19. Can Faces Prime a Language?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Woumans, Evy; Martin, Clara D; Vanden Bulcke, Charlotte; Van Assche, Eva; Costa, Albert; Hartsuiker, Robert J; Duyck, Wouter

    2015-09-01

    Bilinguals have two languages that are activated in parallel. During speech production, one of these languages must be selected on the basis of some cue. The present study investigated whether the face of an interlocutor can serve as such a cue. Spanish-Catalan and Dutch-French bilinguals were first familiarized with certain faces, each of which was associated with only one language, during simulated Skype conversations. Afterward, these participants performed a language production task in which they generated words associated with the words produced by familiar and unfamiliar faces displayed on-screen. When responding to familiar faces, participants produced words faster if the faces were speaking the same language as in the previous Skype simulation than if the same faces were speaking a different language. Furthermore, this language priming effect disappeared when it became clear that the interlocutors were actually bilingual. These findings suggest that faces can prime a language, but their cuing effect disappears when it turns out that they are unreliable as language cues. © The Author(s) 2015.

  20. Hispanic immigrants and bilingual education after proposition 227 : a case study of attitudes about language and culture in American Society

    OpenAIRE

    小林, ひろみ

    2009-01-01

    Public criticism of bilingual education or bilingualism in the United States has been growing since the early 1990s. As part of the argument against bilingual education, Hispanic immigrants have been portrayed as a monolithic group clinging to their own language and culture and reluctant to assimilate into American society. Proposition 227, which officially ended bilingual education programs in California public schools, was passed on June 2, 1998. Race and ethnicity were reflected in the ...

  1. Bilingualism and Musicianship Enhance Cognitive Control

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Scott R. Schroeder

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Learning how to speak a second language (i.e., becoming a bilingual and learning how to play a musical instrument (i.e., becoming a musician are both thought to increase executive control through experience-dependent plasticity. However, evidence supporting this effect is mixed for bilingualism and limited for musicianship. In addition, the combined effects of bilingualism and musicianship on executive control are unknown. To determine whether bilingualism, musicianship, and combined bilingualism and musicianship improve executive control, we tested 219 young adults belonging to one of four groups (bilinguals, musicians, bilingual musicians, and controls on a nonlinguistic, nonmusical, visual-spatial Simon task that measured the ability to ignore an irrelevant and misinformative cue. Results revealed that bilinguals, musicians, and bilingual musicians showed an enhanced ability to ignore a distracting cue relative to controls, with similar levels of superior performance among bilinguals, musicians, and bilingual musicians. These results indicate that bilingualism and musicianship improve executive control and have implications for educational and rehabilitation programs that use music and foreign language instruction to boost cognitive performance.

  2. Bilingualism and Musicianship Enhance Cognitive Control.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schroeder, Scott R; Marian, Viorica; Shook, Anthony; Bartolotti, James

    2016-01-01

    Learning how to speak a second language (i.e., becoming a bilingual) and learning how to play a musical instrument (i.e., becoming a musician) are both thought to increase executive control through experience-dependent plasticity. However, evidence supporting this effect is mixed for bilingualism and limited for musicianship. In addition, the combined effects of bilingualism and musicianship on executive control are unknown. To determine whether bilingualism, musicianship, and combined bilingualism and musicianship improve executive control, we tested 219 young adults belonging to one of four groups (bilinguals, musicians, bilingual musicians, and controls) on a nonlinguistic, nonmusical, visual-spatial Simon task that measured the ability to ignore an irrelevant and misinformative cue. Results revealed that bilinguals, musicians, and bilingual musicians showed an enhanced ability to ignore a distracting cue relative to controls, with similar levels of superior performance among bilinguals, musicians, and bilingual musicians. These results indicate that bilingualism and musicianship improve executive control and have implications for educational and rehabilitation programs that use music and foreign language instruction to boost cognitive performance.

  3. Teachers' Use of Linguistic Scaffolding to Support the Academic Language Development of First-Grade Emergent Bilingual Students

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lucero, Audrey

    2014-01-01

    Research suggests that teachers need to scaffold emergent bilingual students as they develop the complex language associated with school success. This may especially be true in dual language settings, where children are learning two languages simultaneously. In this study, therefore, I investigate the linguistic scaffolding practices of…

  4. Can bilingual two-year-olds code-switch?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lanza, E

    1992-10-01

    Sociolinguists have investigated language mixing as code-switching in the speech of bilingual children three years old and older. Language mixing by bilingual two-year-olds, however, has generally been interpreted in the child language literature as a sign of the child's lack of language differentiation. The present study applies perspectives from sociolinguistics to investigate the language mixing of a bilingual two-year-old acquiring Norwegian and English simultaneously in Norway. Monthly recordings of the child's spontaneous speech in interactions with her parents were made from the age of 2;0 to 2;7. An investigation into the formal aspects of the child's mixing and the context of the mixing reveals that she does differentiate her language use in contextually sensitive ways, hence that she can code-switch. This investigation stresses the need to examine more carefully the roles of dominance and context in the language mixing of young bilingual children.

  5. Language, Culture, and Power: Intercultural Bilingual Education among the Urarina of Peruvian Amazonia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dean, Bartholomew

    1999-01-01

    The Peruvian national indigenous federation established a bilingual, intercultural teachers' training program to counter stereotypes of indigenous people portrayed in the authoritarian, monolingual Spanish national curriculum, and to enhance language preservation, ethnic mobilization, and cultural survival. A complementary transitional bilingual…

  6. Selective attention to the mouth is associated with expressive language skills in monolingual and bilingual infants.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tsang, Tawny; Atagi, Natsuki; Johnson, Scott P

    2018-05-01

    Infants increasingly attend to the mouths of others during the latter half of the first postnatal year, and individual differences in selective attention to talking mouths during infancy predict verbal skills during toddlerhood. There is some evidence suggesting that trajectories in mouth-looking vary by early language environment, in particular monolingual or bilingual language exposure, which may have differential consequences in developing sensitivity to the communicative and social affordances of the face. Here, we evaluated whether 6- to 12-month-olds' mouth-looking is related to skills associated with concurrent social communicative development-including early language functioning and emotion discriminability. We found that attention to the mouth of a talking face increased with age but that mouth-looking was more strongly associated with concurrent expressive language skills than chronological age for both monolingual and bilingual infants. Mouth-looking was not related to emotion discrimination. These data suggest that selective attention to a talking mouth may be one important mechanism by which infants learn language regardless of home language environment. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. Assessing the Effectiveness of Monolingual, Bilingual, and "Bilingualised" Dictionaries in the Comprehension and Production of New Words.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Laufer, Batia; Hadar, Linor

    1997-01-01

    Examines the differences in effectiveness of three types of dictionaries--monolingual, bilingual, and "bilingualised" in the comprehension and production of new words by learners of English as a foreign language. The study tested participants on the comprehension of target words and on their ability to use these words in their own sentences. (16…

  8. The Bilingual Brain: Human Evolution and Second Language Acquisition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    L. Kirk Hagen

    2008-01-01

    Full Text Available For the past half-century, psycholinguistic research has concerned itself with two mysteries of human cognition: (1 that children universally acquire a highly abstract, computationally complex set of linguistic rules rapidly and effortlessly, and (2 that second language acquisition (SLA among adults is, conversely, slow, laborious, highly variable, and virtually never results in native fluency. We now have a decent, if approximate, understanding of the biological foundations of first language acquisition, thanks in large part to Lenneberg's (1964, 1984 seminal work on the critical period hypothesis. More recently, the elements of a promising theory of language and evolution have emerged as well (see e.g. Bickerton, 1981, 1990; Leiberman, 1984, 1987. I argue here that the empirical foundations of an evolutionary theory of language are now solid enough to support an account of bilingualism and adult SLA as well. Specifically, I will show that evidence from the environment of evolutionary adaptation of paleolithic humans suggests that for our nomadic ancestors, the ability to master a language early in life was an eminently useful adaptation. However, the ability to acquire another language in adulthood was not, and consequently was not selected for propagation.

  9. Cognitive advantages and disadvantages in early and late bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pelham, Sabra D; Abrams, Lise

    2014-03-01

    Previous research has documented advantages and disadvantages of early bilinguals, defined as learning a 2nd language by school age and using both languages since that time. Relative to monolinguals, early bilinguals manifest deficits in lexical access but benefits in executive function. We investigated whether becoming bilingual after childhood (late bilinguals) can produce the cognitive advantages and disadvantages typical of early bilinguals. Participants were 30 monolingual English speakers, 30 late English-Spanish bilinguals, and 30 early Spanish-English bilinguals who completed a picture naming task (lexical access) and an attentional network task (executive function). Late and early bilinguals manifested equivalent cognitive effects in both tasks, demonstrating lexical access deficits and executive function benefits. These findings provide support for the hypothesis that cognitive effects associated with bilingualism arise as the result of proficient, habitual use of 2 languages and not of developmental changes associated with becoming bilingual during childhood.

  10. Enhanced music sensitivity in 9-month-old bilingual infants.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Liquan; Kager, René

    2017-02-01

    This study explores the influence of bilingualism on the cognitive processing of language and music. Specifically, we investigate how infants learning a non-tone language perceive linguistic and musical pitch and how bilingualism affects cross-domain pitch perception. Dutch monolingual and bilingual infants of 8-9 months participated in the study. All infants had Dutch as one of the first languages. The other first languages, varying among bilingual families, were not tone or pitch accent languages. In two experiments, infants were tested on the discrimination of a lexical (N = 42) or a violin (N = 48) pitch contrast via a visual habituation paradigm. The two contrasts shared identical pitch contours but differed in timbre. Non-tone language learning infants did not discriminate the lexical contrast regardless of their ambient language environment. When perceiving the violin contrast, bilingual but not monolingual infants demonstrated robust discrimination. We attribute bilingual infants' heightened sensitivity in the musical domain to the enhanced acoustic sensitivity stemming from a bilingual environment. The distinct perceptual patterns between language and music and the influence of acoustic salience on perception suggest processing diversion and association in the first year of life. Results indicate that the perception of music may entail both shared neural network with language processing, and unique neural network that is distinct from other cognitive functions.

  11. Does Bilingualism Delay the Development of Dementia?

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    Amy L Atkinson

    2016-08-01

    Full Text Available It has been suggested that bilingualism (where individuals speak two languages may delay the development of dementia. However, much of the research is inconclusive. Some researchers have reported that bilingualism delays the onset and diagnosis of dementia, whilst other studies have found weak or even detrimental effects. This paper reviews a series of nine empirical studies, published up until March 2016, which investigated whether bilingualism significantly delays the onset of dementia. The article also explores whether the inconsistent findings can be attributed to differences in study designs or the definitions of bilingualism used between studies. Based on current evidence, it appears that lifelong bilingualism, where individuals frequently use both languages, may be protective against dementia. However, becoming bilingual in adulthood or using the second language infrequently is unlikely to substantially delay onset of the disease.

  12. Beliefs about Bilingualism, Bilingual Education, and Dual Language Development of Early Childhood Preservice Teachers Raised in a Prop 227 Environment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Garrity, Sarah; Aquino-Sterling, Cristian R.; Van Liew, Charles; Day, Ashley

    2018-01-01

    Despite the well-documented benefits of bilingualism, current educational practices in the United States reflect the deeply held belief that because the United States is an English speaking country, English should be the language of instruction. This belief was codified into law in California via the 1998 passage of Proposition 227, which banned…

  13. Cross-Linguistic Influence in the Bilingual Mental Lexicon: Evidence of Cognate Effects in the Phonetic Production and Processing of a Vowel Contrast.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Amengual, Mark

    2016-01-01

    The present study examines cognate effects in the phonetic production and processing of the Catalan back mid-vowel contrast (/o/-/ɔ/) by 24 early and highly proficient Spanish-Catalan bilinguals in Majorca (Spain). Participants completed a picture-naming task and a forced-choice lexical decision task in which they were presented with either words (e.g., /bɔsk/ "forest") or non-words based on real words, but with the alternate mid-vowel pair in stressed position ((*)/bosk/). The same cognate and non-cognate lexical items were included in the production and lexical decision experiments. The results indicate that even though these early bilinguals maintained the back mid-vowel contrast in their productions, they had great difficulties identifying non-words and real words based on the identity of the Catalan mid-vowel. The analyses revealed language dominance and cognate effects: Spanish-dominants exhibited higher error rates than Catalan-dominants, and production and lexical decision accuracy were also affected by cognate status. The present study contributes to the discussion of the organization of early bilinguals' dominant and non-dominant sound systems, and proposes that exemplar theoretic approaches can be extended to include bilingual lexical connections that account for the interactions between the phonetic and lexical levels of early bilingual individuals.

  14. Maternal Depressive Symptomatology, Social Support, and Language Development of Bilingual Preschoolers From Low-Income Households.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cycyk, Lauren M; Bitetti, Dana; Hammer, Carol Scheffner

    2015-08-01

    This study examined the impact of maternal depressive symptomatology and social support on the English and Spanish language growth of young bilingual children from low-income backgrounds. It was hypothesized that maternal depression would slow children's development in both languages but that social support would buffer the negative effect. Longitudinal data were collected from 83 mothers of Puerto Rican descent and their children who were attending Head Start preschool for 2 years. The effects of maternal depressive symptomatology and social support from family and friends on receptive vocabulary and oral comprehension development in both languages were examined. Growth curve modeling revealed that maternal depressive symptomatology negatively affected Spanish receptive vocabulary development only. Maternal depression did not affect children's English receptive vocabulary or their oral comprehension in either language. Social support was not related to maternal depressive symptomatology or child language. These findings suggest that maternal depression is 1 risk factor that contributes to less robust primary language development of bilingual children from low-income households. Speech-language pathologists must (a) increase their awareness of maternal depression in order to provide families with appropriate mental health referrals and (b) consider their roles as supportive adults for children whose mothers may be depressed.

  15. The Effect of Script Similarity on Executive Control in Bilinguals

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    Emily L Coderre

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available The need for executive control (EC during bilingual language processing is thought to enhance these abilities, conferring a ‘bilingual advantage’ on EC tasks. Recently, the reliability and robustness of the bilingual advantage has been questioned, with many variables reportedly affecting the size and presence of the bilingual advantage. This study investigates one further variable that may affect bilingual EC abilities: the similarity of a bilingual’s two languages. We hypothesize that bilinguals whose two languages have a larger degree of orthographic overlap will require greater EC to manage their languages compared to bilinguals who use two languages with less overlap. We tested three groups of bilinguals with language pairs ranging from high- to low-similarity (German-English (GE, Polish-English (PE, and Arabic-English (AE, respectively and a group of English monolinguals on a Stroop and Simon task. Two components of the bilingual advantage were investigated: an interference advantage, such that bilinguals have smaller interference effects than monolinguals; and a global RT advantage, such that bilinguals are faster overall than monolinguals. Between bilingual groups, these effects were expected to be modulated by script similarity. AE bilinguals showed the smallest Stroop interference effects, but the longest overall RTs in both tasks. These seemingly contradictory results are explained by the presence of cross-linguistic interference in the Stroop task. We conclude that similar-script bilinguals demonstrated more effective domain-general EC than different-script bilinguals, since high orthographic overlap creates more cross-linguistic activation and increases the daily demands on cognitive control. The role of individual variation is also discussed. These results suggest that script similarity is an important variable to consider in investigations of bilingual executive control abilities.

  16. Bilingualism in children with developmental disorders: A narrative review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kay-Raining Bird, Elizabeth; Genesee, Fred; Verhoeven, Ludo

    Children with developmental disabilities (DD) often need and sometimes opt to become bilingual. The context for bilingual acquisition varies considerably and can impact outcomes. In this first article of the special issue, we review research on the timing and amount of bilingual exposure and outcomes of either direct language intervention or educational placements in three groups of children with DD: Specific Language Impairment (SLI), Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), and Down syndrome (DS). Children with SLI have been studied more than the other two groups. Findings showed that, on the one hand, the communication skills of simultaneous bilinguals and matched monolinguals with DD were similar for all groups when the stronger language or both languages of the bilingual children were considered. On the other hand, similar to typically developing children, sequential bilinguals and matched monolinguals with SLI (other groups not studied) differed on some but not all second language (L2) measures; even after an extended period of exposure, differences in L2 outcomes were not completely resolved. There is emerging evidence that the typological similarity of the languages being learned influences L2 development in sequential bilinguals, at least in children with SLI. Increasing the frequency of exposure seems to be more related to development of the weaker language in bilinguals with DD than their stronger language. Language intervention studies show the efficacy of interventions but provide little evidence for transfer across languages. In addition, only one (unpublished) study has compared the language and academic outcomes of children with DD in different language education programs. Research on bilingual children with DD in different educational settings/programs is limited, probably as a result of restricted inclusion of these children in some educational settings. We argue for the implementation of full inclusion policies that provide increased access to dual

  17. Specificity of the bilingual advantage for memory: Examining cued recall, generalization, and working memory in monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual toddlers

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    Natalie Hiromi Brito

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available The specificity of the bilingual advantage in memory was examined by testing groups of monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual 24-month-olds on tasks tapping cued recall, memory generalization and working memory. For the cued recall and memory generalization conditions, there was a 24-hour delay between time of encoding and time of retrieval. In addition to the memory tasks, parent-toddler dyads completed a picture-book reading task, in order to observe emotional responsiveness, and a parental report of productive vocabulary. Results indicated no difference between language groups on cued recall, working memory, emotional responsiveness, or productive vocabulary, but a significant difference was found in the memory generalization condition with only the bilingual group outperforming the baseline control group. These results replicate and extend results from past studies (Brito and Barr, 2012; 2014; Brito et al., in press and suggest a bilingual advantage specific to memory generalization.

  18. Specificity of the bilingual advantage for memory: examining cued recall, generalization, and working memory in monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual toddlers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brito, Natalie H; Grenell, Amanda; Barr, Rachel

    2014-01-01

    The specificity of the bilingual advantage in memory was examined by testing groups of monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual 24-month-olds on tasks tapping cued recall, memory generalization and working memory. For the cued recall and memory generalization conditions, there was a 24-h delay between time of encoding and time of retrieval. In addition to the memory tasks, parent-toddler dyads completed a picture-book reading task, in order to observe emotional responsiveness, and a parental report of productive vocabulary. Results indicated no difference between language groups on cued recall, working memory, emotional responsiveness, or productive vocabulary, but a significant difference was found in the memory generalization condition with only the bilingual group outperforming the baseline control group. These results replicate and extend results from past studies (Brito and Barr, 2012, 2014; Brito et al., 2014) and suggest a bilingual advantage specific to memory generalization.

  19. Bilingual and Monolingual Children Prefer Native-Accented Speakers

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    Andre L. eSouza

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available Adults and young children prefer to affiliate with some individuals rather than others. Studies have shown that monolingual children show in-group biases for individuals who speak their native language without a foreign accent (Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, 2007. Some studies have suggested that bilingual children are less influenced than monolinguals by language variety when attributing personality traits to different speakers (Anisfeld & Lambert, 1964, which could indicate that bilinguals have fewer in-group biases and perhaps greater social flexibility. However, no previous studies have compared monolingual and bilingual children’s reactions to speakers with unfamiliar foreign accents. In the present study, we investigated the social preferences of 5-year-old English and French monolinguals and English-French bilinguals. Contrary to our predictions, both monolingual and bilingual preschoolers preferred to be friends with native-accented speakers over speakers who spoke their dominant language with an unfamiliar foreign accent. This result suggests that both monolingual and bilingual children have strong preferences for in-group members who use a familiar language variety, and that bilingualism does not lead to generalized social flexibility.

  20. Bilingual and monolingual children prefer native-accented speakers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Souza, André L; Byers-Heinlein, Krista; Poulin-Dubois, Diane

    2013-01-01

    Adults and young children prefer to affiliate with some individuals rather than others. Studies have shown that monolingual children show in-group biases for individuals who speak their native language without a foreign accent (Kinzler et al., 2007). Some studies have suggested that bilingual children are less influenced than monolinguals by language variety when attributing personality traits to different speakers (Anisfeld and Lambert, 1964), which could indicate that bilinguals have fewer in-group biases and perhaps greater social flexibility. However, no previous studies have compared monolingual and bilingual children's reactions to speakers with unfamiliar foreign accents. In the present study, we investigated the social preferences of 5-year-old English and French monolinguals and English-French bilinguals. Contrary to our predictions, both monolingual and bilingual preschoolers preferred to be friends with native-accented speakers over speakers who spoke their dominant language with an unfamiliar foreign accent. This result suggests that both monolingual and bilingual children have strong preferences for in-group members who use a familiar language variety, and that bilingualism does not lead to generalized social flexibility.

  1. Effects of Marathi-Hindi Bilingualism on Neuropsychological Performance

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kamat, Rujvi; Ghate, Manisha; Gollan, Tamar H.; Meyer, Rachel; Vaida, Florin; Heaton, Robert K.; Letendre, Scott; Franklin, Donald; Alexander, Terry; Grant, Igor; Mehendale, Sanjay; Marcotte, Thomas D.

    2013-01-01

    The present study aimed to examine if bilingualism affects executive functions and verbal fluency in Marathi and Hindi, two major languages in India, with a considerable cognate (e.g., activity is actividad in Spanish) overlap. A total of 174 native Marathi speakers from Pune, India, with varying levels of Hindi proficiency were administered tests of executive functioning and verbal performance in Marathi. A bilingualism index was generated using self-reported Hindi and Marathi proficiency. After controlling for demographic variables, the association between bilingualism and cognitive performance was examined. Degree of bilingualism predicted better performance on the switching (Color Trails-2) and inhibition (Stroop Color-Word) components of executive functioning; but not for the abstraction component (Halstead Category Test). In the verbal domain, bilingualism was more closely associated with noun generation (where the languages share many cognates) than verb generation (which are more disparate across these languages), as predicted. However, contrary to our hypothesis that the bilingualism “disadvantage” would be attenuated on noun generation, bilingualism was associated with an advantage on these measures. These findings suggest distinct patterns of bilingualism effects on cognition for this previously unexamined language pair, and that the rate of cognates may modulate the association between bilingualism and verbal performance on neuropsychological tests. PMID:22206622

  2. Effects of Marathi-Hindi bilingualism on neuropsychological performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kamat, Rujvi; Ghate, Manisha; Gollan, Tamar H; Meyer, Rachel; Vaida, Florin; Heaton, Robert K; Letendre, Scott; Franklin, Donald; Alexander, Terry; Grant, Igor; Mehendale, Sanjay; Marcotte, Thomas D

    2012-03-01

    The present study aimed to examine if bilingualism affects executive functions and verbal fluency in Marathi and Hindi, two major languages in India, with a considerable cognate (e.g., activity is actividad in Spanish) overlap. A total of 174 native Marathi speakers from Pune, India, with varying levels of Hindi proficiency were administered tests of executive functioning and verbal performance in Marathi. A bilingualism index was generated using self-reported Hindi and Marathi proficiency. After controlling for demographic variables, the association between bilingualism and cognitive performance was examined. Degree of bilingualism predicted better performance on the switching (Color Trails-2) and inhibition (Stroop Color-Word) components of executive functioning; but not for the abstraction component (Halstead Category Test). In the verbal domain, bilingualism was more closely associated with noun generation (where the languages share many cognates) than verb generation (which are more disparate across these languages), as predicted. However, contrary to our hypothesis that the bilingualism "disadvantage" would be attenuated on noun generation, bilingualism was associated with an advantage on these measures. These findings suggest distinct patterns of bilingualism effects on cognition for this previously unexamined language pair, and that the rate of cognates may modulate the association between bilingualism and verbal performance on neuropsychological tests.

  3. Language Use in a Multilingual Class: a Study of the Relation Between Bilingual Students' Languages and Their Meaning-Making in Science

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ünsal, Zeynep; Jakobson, Britt; Molander, Bengt-Olov; Wickman, Per-Olof

    2017-04-01

    In this study, we examine how bilingual students in elementary school use their languages and what this means for their meaning-making in science. The class was multilingual with students bilingual in different minority languages and the teacher monolingual in Swedish. The analysis is based on a pragmatic approach and the theory of translanguaging. The science content was electricity, and the teaching involved class instruction and hands-on activities in small groups. The findings of the study are divided into two categories, students' conversations with the teacher and student's conversations with each other. Since the class was multilingual, the class instruction was carried out in Swedish. Generally, when the conversations were characterised by an initiation, response and evaluation pattern, the students made meaning of the activities without any language limitations. However, when the students, during whole class instruction, were engaged in conversations where they had to argue, discuss and explain their ideas, their language repertoire in Swedish limited their possibilities to express themselves. During hands-on activities, students with the same minority language worked together and used both of their languages as resources. In some situations, the activities proceeded without any visible language limitations. In other situations, students' language repertoire limited their possibilities to make meaning of the activities despite being able to use both their languages. What the results mean for designing and conducting science lessons in a multilingual class is discussed.

  4. The bilingual brain: Flexibility and control in the human cortex

    Science.gov (United States)

    Buchweitz, Augusto; Prat, Chantel

    2013-12-01

    The goal of the present review is to discuss recent cognitive neuroscientific findings concerning bilingualism. Three interrelated questions about the bilingual brain are addressed: How are multiple languages represented in the brain? how are languages controlled in the brain? and what are the real-world implications of experience with multiple languages? The review is based on neuroimaging research findings about the nature of bilingual processing, namely, how the brain adapts to accommodate multiple languages in the bilingual brain and to control which language should be used, and when. We also address how this adaptation results in differences observed in the general cognition of bilingual individuals. General implications for models of human learning, plasticity, and cognitive control are discussed.

  5. Social Competence and Language Skills in Mandarin-English Bilingual Preschoolers: The Moderation Effect of Emotion Regulation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ren, Yonggang; Wyver, Shirley; Xu Rattanasone, Nan; Demuth, Katherine

    2016-01-01

    Research Findings: The main aim of this study was to examine whether language skills and emotion regulation are associated with social competence and whether the relationship between English skills and social competence is moderated by emotion regulation in Mandarin-English bilingual preschoolers. The language skills of 96 children ages…

  6. Evaluating Attributions of Delay and Confusion in Young Bilinguals: Special Insights from Infants Acquiring a Signed and a Spoken Language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Petitto, Laura Ann; Holowka, Siobhan

    2002-01-01

    Examines whether early simultaneous bilingual language exposure causes children to be language delayed or confused. Cites research suggesting normal and parallel linguistic development occurs in each language in young children and young children's dual language developments are similar to monolingual language acquisition. Research on simultaneous…

  7. The gradience of multilingualism in typical and impaired language development: Positioning bilectalism within comparative bilingualism

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    Kleanthes K. Grohmann

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available A multitude of factors characterizes bi- and multilingual compared to monolingual language acquisition. Two of the most prominent viewpoints have recently been put in perspective and enriched by a third (Tsimpli 2014: age of onset of children’s exposure to their native languages, the role of the input they receive, and the timing in monolingual first language development of the phenomena examined in bi- and multilingual children’s performance. This article picks up a fourth potential factor (Grohmann 2014b: language proximity, that is, the closeness between the two or more grammars a multilingual child acquires. It is a first attempt to flesh out the proposed gradient scale of multilingualism within the approach dubbed ‘comparative bilingualism’. The empirical part of this project comes from three types of research: (i the acquisition and subsequent development of pronominal object clitic placement in two closely related varieties of Greek by bilectal, binational, bilingual, and multilingual children; (ii the performance on executive control tasks by monolingual, bilectal, and bi- or multilingual children; and (iii the role of comparative bilingualism in children with a developmental language impairment for both the diagnosis and subsequent treatment as well as the possible avoidance or weakening of how language impairment presents.

  8. Cognitive Control in Bilingual Children Disentangling the Effects of Second-Language Proficiency and Onset Age of Acquisition

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Struys, E.; Mohades, G.; Bosch, M.P.C.; Noort, M.W.M.L. van den

    2015-01-01

    Studies comparing the cognitive control of bilingual and monolingual speakers are inconclusive about the nature and underlying mechanisms of differences in language-related processing. In the present study, in order to disentangle the impact of second-language onset age of acquisition and

  9. The Use of Web Questionnaires in Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism Research

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wilson, Rosemary; Dewaele, Jean-Marc

    2010-01-01

    The present article focuses on data collection through web questionnaires, as opposed to the traditional pen-and-paper method for research in second language acquisition and bilingualism. It is argued that web questionnaires, which have been used quite widely in psychology, have the advantage of reaching out to a larger and more diverse pool of…

  10. Using Bilingual Dictionaries.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thompson, Geoff

    1987-01-01

    Monolingual dictionaries have serious disadvantages in many language teaching situations; bilingual dictionaries are potentially more efficient and more motivating sources of information for language learners. (Author/CB)

  11. Language minority children’s perspectives on being bilingual - On "bilanguagers" and their sensitivity towards complexity

    OpenAIRE

    Fulland, Helene

    2016-01-01

    This thesis addresses how language minority children in the Norwegian context perceive being bilingual based on semi-structured interviews with 56 Turkish-speaking and Urdu-speaking preadolescents. The study illustrates the variability in how children perceive themselves as language users within the family and among friends. The study also reveals children’s nuanced perceptions of the importance of being well skilled in their languages. Finally, the study illuminates children’s sensitivity to...

  12. Narrative Abilities of Monolingual and Bilingual Children with and without Language Impairment: Implications for Clinical Practice

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boerma, Tessel; Leseman, Paul; Timmermeister, Mona; Wijnen, Frank; Blom, Elma

    2016-01-01

    Background: Understanding and expressing a narrative's macro-structure is relatively independent of experience in a specific language. A narrative task is therefore assumed to be a less biased method of language assessment for bilingual children than many other norm-referenced tests and may thus be particularly valuable to identify language…

  13. How Does L1 and L2 Exposure Impact L1 Performance in Bilingual Children? Evidence from Polish-English Migrants to the United Kingdom

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    Ewa Haman

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available Most studies on bilingual language development focus on children’s second language (L2. Here, we investigated first language (L1 development of Polish-English early migrant bilinguals in four domains: vocabulary, grammar, phonological processing, and discourse. We first compared Polish language skills between bilinguals and their Polish non-migrant monolingual peers, and then investigated the influence of the cumulative exposure to L1 and L2 on bilinguals’ performance. We then examined whether high exposure to L1 could possibly minimize the gap between monolinguals and bilinguals. We analyzed data from 233 typically developing children (88 bilingual and 145 monolingual aged 4;0 to 7;5 (years;months on six language measures in Polish: receptive vocabulary, productive vocabulary, receptive grammar, productive grammar (sentence repetition, phonological processing (non-word repetition, and discourse abilities (narration. Information about language exposure was obtained via parental questionnaires. For each language task, we analyzed the data from the subsample of bilinguals who had completed all the tasks in question and from monolinguals matched one-on-one to the bilingual group on age, SES (measured by years of mother’s education, gender, non-verbal IQ, and short-term memory. The bilingual children scored lower than monolinguals in all language domains, except discourse. The group differences were more pronounced on the productive tasks (vocabulary, grammar, and phonological processing and moderate on the receptive tasks (vocabulary and grammar. L1 exposure correlated positively with the vocabulary size and phonological processing. Grammar scores were not related to the levels of L1 exposure, but were predicted by general cognitive abilities. L2 exposure negatively influenced productive grammar in L1, suggesting possible L2 transfer effects on L1 grammatical performance. Children’s narrative skills benefitted from exposure to two languages

  14. Bilingual Identity Negotiation in Practice: Teacher Pedagogy and Classroom Interaction in a Bilingual Programme

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fielding, Ruth

    2016-01-01

    This paper discusses how teachers in a bilingual education programme see their pedagogies and interactions influencing student connection to the languages of the bilingual programme. The teacher perception of the classroom is explored because the classroom is one of the principal settings in which the students negotiate their bilingual identities.…

  15. Marking of Verb Tense in the English of Preschool English-Mandarin Bilingual Children: Evidence from Language Development Profiles within Subgroups on the Singapore English Action Picture Test

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brebner, Chris; McCormack, Paul; Rickard Liow, Susan

    2016-01-01

    Background: The phonological and morphosyntactic structures of English and Mandarin contrast maximally and an increasing number of bilinguals speak these two languages. Speech and language therapists need to understand bilingual development for children speaking these languages in order reliably to assess and provide intervention for this…

  16. The importance of interlinguistic similarity and stable bilingualism when two languages compete

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mira, J; Seoane, L F; Nieto, J J

    2011-01-01

    One approach for analyzing the dynamics of two languages in competition is to fit historical data for the number of speakers of each with a mathematical model in which the parameters are interpreted as the similarity between those languages and their relative status. Within this approach, on the basis of a detailed analysis and extensive calculations, we show the outcomes that can emerge for given values of these parameters. In contrast to previous results, it is possible that in the long term both languages may coexist and survive. This happens only where there is a stable bilingual group, and this is possible only if the competing languages are sufficiently similar, in which case its occurrence is favoured by both similarity and status symmetry.

  17. The importance of interlinguistic similarity and stable bilingualism when two languages compete

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Mira, J; Seoane, L F [Departamento de Fisica Aplicada, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela (Spain); Nieto, J J, E-mail: jorge.mira@usc.es [Departamento de Analise Matematica and Instituto de Matematicas, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela (Spain)

    2011-03-15

    One approach for analyzing the dynamics of two languages in competition is to fit historical data for the number of speakers of each with a mathematical model in which the parameters are interpreted as the similarity between those languages and their relative status. Within this approach, on the basis of a detailed analysis and extensive calculations, we show the outcomes that can emerge for given values of these parameters. In contrast to previous results, it is possible that in the long term both languages may coexist and survive. This happens only where there is a stable bilingual group, and this is possible only if the competing languages are sufficiently similar, in which case its occurrence is favoured by both similarity and status symmetry.

  18. The importance of interlinguistic similarity and stable bilingualism when two languages compete

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mira, J.; Seoane, L. F.; Nieto, J. J.

    2011-03-01

    One approach for analyzing the dynamics of two languages in competition is to fit historical data for the number of speakers of each with a mathematical model in which the parameters are interpreted as the similarity between those languages and their relative status. Within this approach, on the basis of a detailed analysis and extensive calculations, we show the outcomes that can emerge for given values of these parameters. In contrast to previous results, it is possible that in the long term both languages may coexist and survive. This happens only where there is a stable bilingual group, and this is possible only if the competing languages are sufficiently similar, in which case its occurrence is favoured by both similarity and status symmetry.

  19. Enhanced music sensitivity in 9-month-old bilingual infants

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Liu, L.; Kager, R.W.J.

    This study explores the influence of bilingualism on the cognitive processing of language and music. Specifically, we investigate how infants learning a non-tone language perceive linguistic and musical pitch and how bilingualism affects cross-domain pitch perception. Dutch monolingual and bilingual

  20. Cognitive neuropsychological and regional cerebral blood flow study of a Japanese-English bilingual girl with specific language impairment (SLI).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Uno, Akira; Wydell, Taeko N; Kato, Motoichiro; Itoh, Kanae; Yoshino, Fumihiro

    2009-02-01

    We report here on an investigation into the possible factors which might have contributed to language impairment (LI) in EM, a 14-year-old Japanese-English bilingual girl. EM was born in the UK to Japanese parents with no other siblings, and used English to communicate with all other people except for her parents. A delay in her English language development was identified at primary school in the UK, which was attributed to her bilingualism. The deficiency in her English language skills persisted into her adolescence despite more than adequate educational opportunities (including additional language support). At the start of her secondary education, language ability/literacy attainment tests were conducted in both English and Japanese, and the results suggested specific language impairment (SLI) in both languages. Further, her brain Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) revealed significantly lower Regional Cerebral Blood Flow(rCBF) in the left temporo-parietal area, which is also similar to the area of dysfunction often found among Japanese individuals with SLI.

  1. Validation of Linguistic and Communicative Oral Language Tests for Spanish-English Bilingual Programs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Politzer, Robert L.; And Others

    1983-01-01

    The development, administration, and scoring of a communicative test and its validation with tests of linguistic and sociolinguistic competence in English and Spanish are reported. Correlation with measures of home language use and school achievement are also presented, and issues of test validation for bilingual programs are discussed. (MSE)

  2. Immersive bilingualism reshapes the core of the brain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pliatsikas, Christos; DeLuca, Vincent; Moschopoulou, Elisavet; Saddy, James Douglas

    2017-05-01

    Bilingualism has been shown to affect the structure of the brain, including cortical regions related to language. Less is known about subcortical structures, such as the basal ganglia, which underlie speech monitoring and language selection, processes that are crucial for bilinguals, as well as other linguistic functions, such as grammatical and phonological acquisition and processing. Simultaneous bilinguals have demonstrated significant reshaping of the basal ganglia and the thalamus compared to monolinguals. However, it is not clear whether these effects are due to learning of the second language (L2) at a very young age or simply due to continuous usage of two languages. Here, we show that bilingualism-induced subcortical effects are directly related to the amount of continuous L2 usage, or L2 immersion. We found significant subcortical reshaping in non-simultaneous (or sequential) bilinguals with extensive immersion in a bilingual environment, closely mirroring the recent findings in simultaneous bilinguals. Importantly, some of these effects were positively correlated to the amount of L2 immersion. Conversely, sequential bilinguals with comparable proficiency and age of acquisition (AoA) but limited immersion did not show similar effects. Our results provide structural evidence to suggestions that L2 acquisition continuously occurs in an immersive environment, and is expressed as dynamic reshaping of the core of the brain. These findings propose that second language learning in the brain is a dynamic procedure which depends on active and continuous L2 usage.

  3. Bilingual Rapping in Yucatán, Mexico: Strategic Choices for Maya Language Legitimation and Revitalisation

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    Cru, Josep

    2017-01-01

    This paper explores the sociolinguistic practices of a group of young bilingual rappers in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. Against the background of ongoing language shift to Spanish in the region, the language choices of a group of Maya youths involved in Hip Hop culture and their agency as policy-makers at the grassroots level is analysed.…

  4. On national flags and language tags: Effects of flag-language congruency in bilingual word recognition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grainger, Jonathan; Declerck, Mathieu; Marzouki, Yousri

    2017-07-01

    French-English bilinguals performed a generalized lexical decision experiment with mixed lists of French and English words and pseudo-words. In Experiment 1, each word/pseudo-word was superimposed on the picture of the French or UK flag, and flag-word congruency was manipulated. The flag was not informative with respect to either the lexical decision response or the language of the word. Nevertheless, lexical decisions to word stimuli were faster following the congruent flag compared with the incongruent flag, but only for French (L1) words. Experiment 2 replicated this flag-language congruency effect in a priming paradigm, where the word and pseudo-word targets followed the brief presentation of the flag prime, and this time effects were seen in both languages. We take these findings as evidence for a mechanism that automatically processes linguistic and non-linguistic information concerning the presence or not of a given language. Language membership information can then modulate lexical processing, in line with the architecture of the BIA model, but not the BIA+ model. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  5. English Phonological Awareness in Bilinguals: A Cross-Linguistic Study of Tamil, Malay and Chinese English-Language Learners

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dixon, L. Quentin; Chuang, Hui-Kai; Quiroz, Blanca

    2012-01-01

    To test the lexical restructuring hypothesis among bilingual English-language learners, English phonological awareness (PA), English vocabulary and ethnic language vocabulary (Mandarin Chinese, Malay or Tamil) were assessed among 284 kindergarteners (168 Chinese, 71 Malays and 45 Tamils) in Singapore. A multi-level regression analysis showed that…

  6. Bilingual Enhancements Have No Socioeconomic Boundaries

    Science.gov (United States)

    Krizman, Jennifer; Skoe, Erika; Kraus, Nina

    2016-01-01

    To understand how socioeconomic status (SES) and bilingualism simultaneously operate on cognitive and sensory function, we examined executive control, language skills, and neural processing of sound in adolescents who differed in language experience (i.e. English monolingual or Spanish-English bilingual) and level of maternal education (a proxy…

  7. Executive function and bilingualism in young and older adults

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shanna eKousaie

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available Research suggests that being bilingual results in advantages on executive control processes and disadvantages on language tasks relative to monolinguals. Furthermore, the executive function advantage is thought to be larger in older than younger adults, suggesting that bilingualism may buffer against age-related changes in executive function. However, there are potential confounds in some of the previous research, as well as inconsistencies in the literature. The goal of the current investigation was to examine the presence of a bilingual advantage in executive control and a bilingual disadvantage on language tasks in the same sample of young and older monolingual anglophones, monolingual francophones, and French/English bilinguals. Participants completed a series of executive function tasks, including a Stroop task, a Simon task, a sustained attention to response task (SART, the Wisconsin Card Sort Test (WCST, and the digit span subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, and language tasks, including the Boston Naming Test (BNT, and category and letter fluency. The results do not demonstrate an unequivocal advantage for bilinguals on executive function tasks and raise questions about the reliability, robustness and/or specificity of previous findings. The results also did not demonstrate a disadvantage for bilinguals on language tasks. Rather, they suggest that there may be an influence of the language environment. It is concluded that additional research is required to fully characterize any language group differences in both executive function and language tasks.

  8. Bilingual children's social preferences hinge on accent.

    Science.gov (United States)

    DeJesus, Jasmine M; Hwang, Hyesung G; Dautel, Jocelyn B; Kinzler, Katherine D

    2017-12-01

    Past research finds that monolingual and bilingual children prefer native speakers to individuals who speak in unfamiliar foreign languages or accents. Do children in bilingual contexts socially distinguish among familiar languages and accents and, if so, how do their social preferences based on language and accent compare? The current experiments tested whether 5- to 7-year-olds in two bilingual contexts in the United States demonstrate social preferences among the languages and accents that are present in their social environments. We compared children's preferences based on language (i.e., English vs. their other native language) and their preferences based on accent (i.e., English with a native accent vs. English with a non-native [yet familiar] accent). In Experiment 1, children attending a French immersion school demonstrated no preference between English and French speakers but preferred American-accented English to French-accented English. In Experiment 2, bilingual Korean American children demonstrated no preference between English and Korean speakers but preferred American-accented English to Korean-accented English. Across studies, bilingual children's preferences based on accent (i.e., American-accented English over French- or Korean-accented English) were not related to their own language dominance. These results suggest that children from diverse linguistic backgrounds demonstrate social preferences for native-accented speakers. Implications for understanding the potential relation between social reasoning and language acquisition are discussed. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  9. Cognitive Advantages and Disadvantages in Early and Late Bilinguals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pelham, Sabra D.; Abrams, Lise

    2014-01-01

    Previous research has documented advantages and disadvantages of early bilinguals, defined as learning a 2nd language by school age and using both languages since that time. Relative to monolinguals, early bilinguals manifest deficits in lexical access but benefits in executive function. We investigated whether becoming bilingual "after"…

  10. Children's Beliefs about Bilingualism and Language Use as Expressed in Child-Adult Conversations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Almér, Elin

    2017-01-01

    The aim of this article is to describe young children's beliefs about language and bilingualism as they are expressed in verbal utterances. The data is from Swedish-medium preschool units in three different sites in Finland. It was generated through ethnographic observations and recordings of the author's interactions with the children. The…

  11. Ultimate Attainment in Late Second Language Acquisition: Phonetic and Grammatical Challenges in Advanced Dutch-English Bilingualism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schmid, Monika S.; Gilbers, Steven; Nota, Amber

    2014-01-01

    The present article provides an exploration of ultimate attainment in second language (L2) and its limitations. It is argued that the question of maturational constraints can best be investigated when the reference population is bilingual and exposed on a regular basis to varieties of their first language (L1) that show cross-linguistic influence.…

  12. Overcoming language barriers in community-based research with refugee and migrant populations: options for using bilingual workers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Susan K; Sulaiman-Hill, Cheryl R; Thompson, Sandra C

    2014-04-12

    Although the challenges of working with culturally and linguistically diverse groups can lead to the exclusion of some communities from research studies, cost effective strategies to encourage access and promote cross-cultural linkages between researchers and ethnic minority participants are essential to ensure their views are heard and their health needs identified. Using bilingual research assistants is one means to achieve this. In a study exploring alcohol and other drug service use by migrant women in Western Australia, bilingual workers were used to assist with participant recruitment and administration of a survey to 268 women who spoke more than 40 different languages. Professional interpreters, bilingual students, bilingual overseas-trained health professionals and community sector bilingual workers were used throughout the research project. For the initial qualitative phase, professional interpreters were used to conduct interviews and focus group sessions, however scheduling conflicts, inflexibility, their inability to help with recruitment and the expense prompted exploration of alternative options for interview interpreting in the quantitative component of the study. Bilingual mature-age students on work placement and overseas-trained health professionals provided good entry into their different community networks and successfully recruited and interviewed participants, often in languages with limited interpreter access. Although both groups required training and supervision, overseas-trained health professionals often had existing research skills, as well as understanding of key issues such as confidentiality and referral processes. Strategies to minimise social desirability bias and the need to set boundaries were discussed during regular debriefing sessions. Having a number of workers recruiting participants also helped minimise the potential for selection bias. The practical and educational experience gained by the bilingual workers was regarded as

  13. Overcoming language barriers in community-based research with refugee and migrant populations: options for using bilingual workers

    Science.gov (United States)

    2014-01-01

    Background Although the challenges of working with culturally and linguistically diverse groups can lead to the exclusion of some communities from research studies, cost effective strategies to encourage access and promote cross-cultural linkages between researchers and ethnic minority participants are essential to ensure their views are heard and their health needs identified. Using bilingual research assistants is one means to achieve this. In a study exploring alcohol and other drug service use by migrant women in Western Australia, bilingual workers were used to assist with participant recruitment and administration of a survey to 268 women who spoke more than 40 different languages. Discussion Professional interpreters, bilingual students, bilingual overseas-trained health professionals and community sector bilingual workers were used throughout the research project. For the initial qualitative phase, professional interpreters were used to conduct interviews and focus group sessions, however scheduling conflicts, inflexibility, their inability to help with recruitment and the expense prompted exploration of alternative options for interview interpreting in the quantitative component of the study. Bilingual mature-age students on work placement and overseas-trained health professionals provided good entry into their different community networks and successfully recruited and interviewed participants, often in languages with limited interpreter access. Although both groups required training and supervision, overseas-trained health professionals often had existing research skills, as well as understanding of key issues such as confidentiality and referral processes. Strategies to minimise social desirability bias and the need to set boundaries were discussed during regular debriefing sessions. Having a number of workers recruiting participants also helped minimise the potential for selection bias. The practical and educational experience gained by the bilingual

  14. Working memory in multilingual children: is there a bilingual effect?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Engel de Abreu, Pascale M J

    2011-07-01

    This research investigates whether early childhood bilingualism affects working memory performance in 6- to 8-year-olds, followed over a longitudinal period of 3 years. The study tests the hypothesis that bilinguals might exhibit more efficient working memory abilities than monolinguals, potentially via the opportunity a bilingual environment provides to train cognitive control by combating interference and intrusions from the non-target language. A total of 44 bilingual and monolingual children, matched on age, sex, and socioeconomic status, completed assessments of working memory (simple span and complex span tasks), fluid intelligence, and language (vocabulary and syntax). The data showed that the monolinguals performed significantly better on the language measures across the years, whereas no language group effect emerged on the working memory and fluid intelligence tasks after verbal abilities were considered. The study suggests that the need to manage several language systems in the bilingual mind has an impact on children's language skills while having little effects on the development of working memory.

  15. Bilingual experience and executive functioning in young children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carlson, Stephanie M; Meltzoff, Andrew N

    2008-03-01

    Advanced inhibitory control skills have been found in bilingual speakers as compared to monolingual controls (Bialystok, 1999). We examined whether this effect is generalized to an unstudied language group (Spanish-English bilingual) and multiple measures of executive function by administering a battery of tasks to 50 kindergarten children drawn from three language groups: native bilinguals, monolinguals (English), and English speakers enrolled in second-language immersion kindergarten. Despite having significantly lower verbal scores and parent education/income level, Spanish-English bilingual children's raw scores did not differ from their peers. After statistically controlling for these factors and age, native bilingual children performed significantly better on the executive function battery than both other groups. Importantly, the relative advantage was significant for tasks that appear to call for managing conflicting attentional demands (Conflict tasks); there was no advantage on impulse-control (Delay tasks). These results advance our understanding of both the generalizability and specificity of the compensatory effects of bilingual experience for children's cognitive development.

  16. Self-Ratings of Spoken Language Dominance: A Multilingual Naming Test (MINT) and Preliminary Norms for Young and Aging Spanish-English Bilinguals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gollan, Tamar H.; Weissberger, Gali H.; Runnqvist, Elin; Montoya, Rosa I.; Cera, Cynthia M.

    2012-01-01

    This study investigated correspondence between different measures of bilingual language proficiency contrasting self-report, proficiency interview, and picture naming skills. Fifty-two young (Experiment 1) and 20 aging (Experiment 2) Spanish-English bilinguals provided self-ratings of proficiency level, were interviewed for spoken proficiency, and…

  17. Bilingualism protects anterior temporal lobe integrity in aging.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Abutalebi, Jubin; Canini, Matteo; Della Rosa, Pasquale A; Sheung, Lo Ping; Green, David W; Weekes, Brendan S

    2014-09-01

    Cerebral gray-matter volume (GMV) decreases in normal aging but the extent of the decrease may be experience-dependent. Bilingualism may be one protective factor and in this article we examine its potential protective effect on GMV in a region that shows strong age-related decreases-the left anterior temporal pole. This region is held to function as a conceptual hub and might be expected to be a target of plastic changes in bilingual speakers because of the requirement for these speakers to store and differentiate lexical concepts in 2 languages to guide speech production and comprehension processes. In a whole brain comparison of bilingual speakers (n = 23) and monolingual speakers (n = 23), regressing out confounding factors, we find more extensive age-related decreases in GMV in the monolingual brain and significantly increased GMV in left temporal pole for bilingual speakers. Consistent with a specific neuroprotective effect of bilingualism, region of interest analyses showed a significant positive correlation between naming performance in the second language and GMV in this region. The effect appears to be bilateral though because there was a nonsignificantly different effect of naming performance on GMV in the right temporal pole. Our data emphasize the vulnerability of the temporal pole to normal aging and the value of bilingualism as both a general and specific protective factor to GMV decreases in healthy aging. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. Balanced bilinguals favor lexical processing in their opaque language and conversion system in their shallow language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Buetler, Karin A; de León Rodríguez, Diego; Laganaro, Marina; Müri, René; Nyffeler, Thomas; Spierer, Lucas; Annoni, Jean-Marie

    2015-11-01

    Referred to as orthographic depth, the degree of consistency of grapheme/phoneme correspondences varies across languages from high in shallow orthographies to low in deep orthographies. The present study investigates the impact of orthographic depth on reading route by analyzing evoked potentials to words in a deep (French) and shallow (German) language presented to highly proficient bilinguals. ERP analyses to German and French words revealed significant topographic modulations 240-280 ms post-stimulus onset, indicative of distinct brain networks engaged in reading over this time window. Source estimations revealed that these effects stemmed from modulations of left insular, inferior frontal and dorsolateral regions (German>French) previously associated to phonological processing. Our results show that reading in a shallow language was associated to a stronger engagement of phonological pathways than reading in a deep language. Thus, the lexical pathways favored in word reading are reinforced by phonological networks more strongly in the shallow than deep orthography. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  19. A CLOSE LOOK AT BILINGUALISM RESEARCH IN ASIA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Evynurul Laily Zen

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available Asia is a ‘homeland’ for bilingualism research in regards to its diversity. It is considered as a vivid research site where there is significant growth of academic areas of exploration. Yet, there are very few scientific attempts to map bilingualism research in an Asian context so far. Thus, I bring the idea of mapping previous works through this literature study by specifically scrutinizing (a bilingualism research in Southeast Asia, (b bilingualism research in other parts of Asia, and (c lessons to learn as a stepping stone to define the future of Indonesian bilingualism. The general data mapping I have explored includes Southeast Asian countries (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam and other parts of Asia (China, India, Israel, and Kazakhstan. The findings from the 33 previous works can be considered as empirical evidence that I will use to portray the research trends in Asia’s bilingualism. The trends show that 19 (55% works have approached bilingual data from sociolinguistics perspective, whereas the other 14 (45% have framed their analysis under psycholinguistic approach. Based on the methodological concerns from these works, I propose two major areas of exploration: Family Language Policy (FLP and trilingual acquisition. FLP in Indonesian is a promising ground, as it brings together issues in language maintenance and shift that instigate a wider aspect of investigation; these aspects include bilingual language dominance, cross language influence, and so forth. Trilingual acquisition, the situation most Indonesian children are growing with, has a potentially significant impact on education, especially where a language curriculum is carefully planned and implemented. In conclusion, this mapping will hopefully shed a light on how bilingualism has academically been very appealing and will continue to fascinate more researchers.

  20. The Role of Inuit Languages in Nunavut Schooling: Nunavut Teachers Talk about Bilingual Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aylward, M. Lynn

    2010-01-01

    This article provides a discourse analysis of interview transcripts generated from 10 experienced Nunavut teachers (five Inuit and five non-Inuit) regarding the role of Inuit languages in Nunavut schooling. Discussion and analysis focus on the motif of bilingual education. Teachers' talk identified discourse models of "academic truths" and…

  1. Bilingual teaching in nursing education in China: evolution, status, and future directions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    He, Wei; Xu, Yu; Zhu, Jianhua

    2011-09-01

    Based on Chinese published literature and personal observations, this article reviews the history of bilingual teaching in nursing education in China, describes its current status and challenges, and predicts its future directions. Bilingual teaching in nursing education enjoys increasing popularity in China. The major factors that affect bilingual teaching are bilingual educators, students' English-language levels, bilingual teaching materials, and teaching models. Based on surveys of nursing schools, the English-language proficiency of the nursing educators varies greatly. The main issues with the teaching methods lie in over-translation, cramming, and limited interaction between the students and the teachers. Despite relatively inadequate English-language proficiency among Chinese nursing students, their interest can be strengthened greatly if international exchanges are available and promoted. Bilingual textbooks are more suitable in China's national context because of pricing and relevance. Although immersive bilingual teaching is the ideal, it is more feasible to begin with infiltrative bilingual teaching and move progressively towards increased English-language penetration. Future directions for improving bilingual teaching include training teaching faculty members, strengthening international exchanges, providing better bilingual study atmospheres, and gradually implementing bilingual textbooks. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

  2. Assessing Bilingual Knowledge Organization in Secondary Science Classrooms =

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wu, Jason S.

    Improving outcomes for English language learners (ELLs) in secondary science remains an area of high need. The purpose of this study is to investigate bilingual knowledge organization in secondary science classrooms. This study involved thirty-nine bilingual students in three biology classes at a public high school in The Bronx, New York City. Methods included an in-class survey on language use, a science content and English proficiency exam, and bilingual free-recalls. Fourteen students participated in bilingual free-recalls which involved a semi-structured process of oral recall of information learned in science class. Free-recall was conducted in both English and Spanish and analyzed using flow-map methods. Novel methods were developed to quantify and visualize the elaboration and mobilization of ideas shared across languages. It was found that bilingual narratives displayed similar levels of organizational complexity across languages, though English recalls tended to be longer. English proficiency was correlated with narrative complexity in English. There was a high degree of elaboration on concepts shared across languages. Finally, higher Spanish proficiency correlated well with greater overlapping elaboration across languages. These findings are discussed in light of current cognitive theory before presenting the study's limitations and future directions of research.

  3. French Bilingual Classes in Vietnam: Issues and Debates about an Innovative Language Curriculum

    Science.gov (United States)

    Normand-Marconnet, Nadine

    2013-01-01

    Despite a long historical French presence in Vietnam, only 0.5% of Vietnamese people speak French today. As in other countries of South East Asia, language instruction in Vietnam has mainly focused on English for several decades. This paper provides an overview of a project called "French bilingual classes". The main aim of the study is…

  4. Bilingualism changes children's beliefs about what is innate.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Byers-Heinlein, Krista; Garcia, Bianca

    2015-03-01

    Young children engage in essentialist reasoning about natural kinds, believing that many traits are innately determined. This study investigated whether personal experience with second language acquisition could alter children's essentialist biases. In a switched-at-birth paradigm, 5- and 6-year-old monolingual and simultaneous bilingual children expected that a baby's native language, an animal's vocalizations, and an animal's physical traits would match those of a birth rather than of an adoptive parent. We predicted that sequential bilingual children, who had been exposed to a new language after age 3, would show greater understanding that languages are learned. Surprisingly, sequential bilinguals showed reduced essentialist beliefs about all traits: they were significantly more likely than other children to believe that human language, animal vocalizations, and animal physical traits would be learned through experience rather than innately endowed. These findings suggest that bilingualism in the preschool years can profoundly change children's essentialist biases. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  5. Novel word retention in bilingual and monolingual speakers

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    Pui Fong eKan

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available The goal of this research was to examine word retention in bilinguals and monolinguals. Long-term word retention is an essential part of vocabulary learning. Previous studies have documented that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in terms of retrieving newly-exposed words. Yet, little is known about whether or to what extent bilinguals are different from monolinguals in word retention. Participants were 30 English-speaking monolingual adults and 30 bilingual adults who speak Spanish as a home language and learned English as a second language during childhood. In a previous study (Kan, Sadagopan, Janich, & Andrade, 2014, the participants were exposed to the target novel words in English, Spanish, and Cantonese. In this current study, word retention was measured a week after the fast mapping task. No exposures were given during the one-week interval. Results showed that bilinguals and monolinguals retain a similar number of words. However, participants produced more words in English than in either Spanish or Cantonese. Correlation analyses revealed that language knowledge plays a role in the relationships between fast mapping and word retention. Specifically, within- and across-language relationships between bilinguals’ fast mapping and word retention were found in Spanish and English, by contrast, within-language relationships between monolinguals’ fast mapping and word retention were found in English and across-language relationships between their fast mapping and word retention performance in English and Cantonese. Similarly, bilinguals differed from monolinguals in the relationships among the word retention scores in three languages. Significant correlations were found among bilinguals’ retention scores. However, no such correlations were found among monolinguals’ retention scores. The overall findings suggest that bilinguals’ language experience and language knowledge most likely contribute to how they learn and retain new words.

  6. Information Architecture for Bilingual Web Sites.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cunliffe, Daniel; Jones, Helen; Jarvis, Melanie; Egan, Kevin; Huws, Rhian; Munro, Sian

    2002-01-01

    Discusses creating an information architecture for a bilingual Web site and reports work in progress on the development of a content-based bilingual Web site to facilitate shared resources between speech and language therapists. Considers a structural analysis of existing bilingual Web designs and explains a card-sorting activity conducted with…

  7. BILINGUALISM AMONG THE ADOLESCENTS IN BADUNG REGENCY, BALI

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    I Nyoman Muliana

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents a discussion of bilingualism among the adolescents in Badung Regency, the Province of Bali. It aims to explore the bilingualism situation and the existence of Balinese Language among them. The discussion is based on participant observation to the adolescents and it is based on Sociolinguistic Theory. The result of the discussion shows that the adolescents in Badung Regency are bilinguals of Balinese and Indonesian languages. They use Balinese language in all their communicative activities, except some females occasionally showed the use of Indonesian language. Their conversations both in Balinese and Indonesian languages are also followed by code mixing of the words and phrase of Indonesian, Balinese, and English languages.  The result of the discussion also indicates that Balinese language still used and maintained by the adolescents in Badung Regency.

  8. Home Language Will Not Take Care of Itself: Vocabulary Knowledge in Trilingual Children in the United Kingdom.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mieszkowska, Karolina; Łuniewska, Magdalena; Kołak, Joanna; Kacprzak, Agnieszka; Wodniecka, Zofia; Haman, Ewa

    2017-01-01

    Language input is crucial for language acquisition and especially for children's vocabulary size. Bilingual children receive reduced input in each of their languages, compared to monolinguals, and are reported to have smaller vocabularies, at least in one of their languages. Vocabulary acquisition in trilingual children has been largely understudied; only a few case studies have been published so far. Moreover, trilingual language acquisition in children has been rarely contrasted with language outcomes of bilingual and monolingual peers. We present a comparison of trilingual, bilingual, and monolingual children (total of 56 participants, aged 4;5-6;7, matched one-to-one for age, gender, and non-verbal IQ) in regard to their receptive and expressive vocabulary (measured by standardized tests), and relative frequency of input in each language (measured by parental report). The monolingual children were speakers of Polish or English, while the bilinguals and trilinguals were migrant children living in the United Kingdom, speaking English as a majority language and Polish as a home language. The trilinguals had another (third) language at home. For the majority language, English, no differences were found across the three groups, either in the receptive or productive vocabulary. The groups differed, however, in their performance in Polish, the home language. The trilinguals had lower receptive vocabulary than the monolinguals, and lower productive vocabulary compared to the monolinguals. The trilinguals showed similar lexical knowledge to the bilinguals. The bilinguals demonstrated lower scores than the monolinguals, but only in productive vocabulary. The data on reported language input show that input in English in bilingual and trilingual groups is similar, but the bilinguals outscore the trilinguals in relative frequency of Polish input. Overall, the results suggest that in the majority language, multilingual children may develop lexical skills similar to those of

  9. Home Language Will Not Take Care of Itself: Vocabulary Knowledge in Trilingual Children in the United Kingdom

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Karolina Mieszkowska

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available Language input is crucial for language acquisition and especially for children’s vocabulary size. Bilingual children receive reduced input in each of their languages, compared to monolinguals, and are reported to have smaller vocabularies, at least in one of their languages. Vocabulary acquisition in trilingual children has been largely understudied; only a few case studies have been published so far. Moreover, trilingual language acquisition in children has been rarely contrasted with language outcomes of bilingual and monolingual peers. We present a comparison of trilingual, bilingual, and monolingual children (total of 56 participants, aged 4;5–6;7, matched one-to-one for age, gender, and non-verbal IQ in regard to their receptive and expressive vocabulary (measured by standardized tests, and relative frequency of input in each language (measured by parental report. The monolingual children were speakers of Polish or English, while the bilinguals and trilinguals were migrant children living in the United Kingdom, speaking English as a majority language and Polish as a home language. The trilinguals had another (third language at home. For the majority language, English, no differences were found across the three groups, either in the receptive or productive vocabulary. The groups differed, however, in their performance in Polish, the home language. The trilinguals had lower receptive vocabulary than the monolinguals, and lower productive vocabulary compared to the monolinguals. The trilinguals showed similar lexical knowledge to the bilinguals. The bilinguals demonstrated lower scores than the monolinguals, but only in productive vocabulary. The data on reported language input show that input in English in bilingual and trilingual groups is similar, but the bilinguals outscore the trilinguals in relative frequency of Polish input. Overall, the results suggest that in the majority language, multilingual children may develop lexical skills

  10. Linguistic Predictors of Cultural Identification in Bilinguals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schroeder, Scott R.; Lam, Tuan Q.; Marian, Viorica

    2017-01-01

    Most of the world's population has knowledge of at least two languages. Many of these bilinguals are also exposed to and identify with at least two cultures. Because language knowledge enables participation in cultural practices and expression of cultural beliefs, bilingual experience and cultural identity are interconnected. However, the specific…

  11. Educating Bilingual/ESL Teachers in a Language/Culture Exchange Field School: A Collaborative Model in Teacher Education.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guadarrama, Irma N.

    This paper describes a program that brings bilingual and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teachers from the United States to a Mexican ESL school to teach in the Tetiz (Yucatan, Mexico) field school and in exchange, learn Mayan language and culture. The theoretical base for the project is drawn from the work of major theorists in second language…

  12. Predictors of English Health Literacy among U.S. Hispanic Immigrants: The importance of language, bilingualism and sociolinguistic environment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hund, Lauren; Soto Mas, Francisco

    2016-01-01

    In the United States, data confirm that Spanish-speaking immigrants are particularly affected by the negative health outcomes associated with low health literacy. Although the literature points to variables such as age, educational background and language, only a few studies have investigated the factors that may influence health literacy in this group. Similarly, the role that bilingualism and/or multilingualism play in health literacy assessment continues to be an issue in need of further research. The purpose of this study was to examine the predictors of English health literacy among adult Hispanic immigrants whose self-reported primary language is Spanish, but who live and function in a bilingual community. It also explored issues related to the language of the instrument. An analysis of data collected through a randomized controlled study was conducted. Results identified English proficiency as the strongest predictor of health literacy (p sociolinguistic environment affect health literacy in language minority adults; proposes language approaches that may be more appropriate for measuring health literacy in these populations; and recommends further place-based research to determine whether the connection between language proficiency and health is generalizable to border communities. PMID:27127416

  13. Predictors of English Health Literacy among U.S. Hispanic Immigrants: The importance of language, bilingualism and sociolinguistic environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jacobson, Holly E; Hund, Lauren; Soto Mas, Francisco

    In the United States, data confirm that Spanish-speaking immigrants are particularly affected by the negative health outcomes associated with low health literacy. Although the literature points to variables such as age, educational background and language, only a few studies have investigated the factors that may influence health literacy in this group. Similarly, the role that bilingualism and/or multilingualism play in health literacy assessment continues to be an issue in need of further research. The purpose of this study was to examine the predictors of English health literacy among adult Hispanic immigrants whose self-reported primary language is Spanish, but who live and function in a bilingual community. It also explored issues related to the language of the instrument. An analysis of data collected through a randomized controlled study was conducted. Results identified English proficiency as the strongest predictor of health literacy (p sociolinguistic environment affect health literacy in language minority adults; proposes language approaches that may be more appropriate for measuring health literacy in these populations; and recommends further place-based research to determine whether the connection between language proficiency and health is generalizable to border communities.

  14. Bilingual education in Slovakia: A Case Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Silvia Pokrivčáková

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available Bilingual education is one of the areas in contemporary education that brings out some important controversies (philosophical, conceptual, sociological, political, economical, etc. and thus calls for extensive and intensive debate. Bilingual education in Europe (and here the European Union countries are meant has gained a very different status, due to the general European policy of developing language diversity and promoting “European plurilingualism and multilingualism”. In Slovakia, one of the younger members of the EU, bilingual education became an extraordinarily popular instrument for the fulfilment of this task.  Since the specifically defined topic of bilingual education and its current status in Slovakia has not been studied and systematically reviewed yet, the research presented in this paper was designed as a single-phenomenon revelatory case study investigating seven research areas: reflection of bilingual education in school legislation and state pedagogical documents, purposes of bilingual education in Slovakia, its organization (levels and types of schools, foreign languages incorporated, teachers, structure of bilingual schools curricula, types of bilingual education applied at Slovak bilingual schools, and how bilingual education is both reflected in and saturated by the latest research findings. The conclusions presented in the paper were collected from multiple sources: state curriculum, statistical data published by the Slovak Ministry of Education or its partner institutions, international treaties on establishing and supporting bilingual sections of schools, bilingual schools curricula, interviews with school directors, teachers, and learners, direct observations at bilingual schools, research studies and research reports, etc. In the conclusion, bilingual education in Slovakia is identified as a unique, dynamically developing system which is both significantly shaped by the foreign language education policy promoted by

  15. Differential bilingual laterality: mythical monster found in Wales.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Evans, Judith; Workman, Lance; Mayer, Peter; Crowley, Kevin

    2002-11-01

    Paradis (1992) likens studies of bilingual laterality to reported sightings of the Loch Ness Monster, in that although some studies claim differential laterality much conflicting research evidence does not-and like the mythical Scottish monster, what reason have we to suspect that any such phenomenon might exist? This study reexamines differential bilingual laterality using four groups of English-Welsh bilinguals which differ in their age of acquisition and in their environment of acquisition. Using a split visual field paradigm we present evidence which, supports the notion of greater right hemisphere processing in a later learned language. Our findings also suggest the pattern of lateralization in bilinguals is strongly affected by the specific language environment during development such that the shift toward greater right hemisphere involvement for the later learned language will be more pronounced in individuals which are brought up in areas where that language is not regularly heard.

  16. Elite Bilingualism? Language Use among Multilingual Teenagers of Swedish Background in European Schools and International Schools in Europe

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rydenvald, Marie

    2015-01-01

    This article explores the language use and language attitudes as reported by a number of multilingual teenagers with a Swedish background in European Schools and international schools in Europe. Special attention is given to the concepts of Third Culture Kids and elite bilingualism in relation to teenagers' multilingualism. This study is based on…

  17. Variation among heritage speakers: Sequential vs. simultaneous bilinguals

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Teresa Lee

    2013-08-01

    Full Text Available This study examines the differences in the grammatical knowledge of two types of heritage speakers of Korean. Early simultaneous bilinguals are exposed to both English and the heritage language from birth, whereas early sequential bilinguals are exposed to the heritage language first and then to English upon schooling. A listening comprehension task involving relative clauses was conducted with 51 beginning-level Korean heritage speakers. The results showed that the early sequential bilinguals exhibited much more accurate knowledge than the early simultaneous bilinguals, who lacked rudimentary knowledge of Korean relative clauses. Drawing on the findings of adult and child Korean L1 data on the acquisition of relative clauses, the performance of each group is discussed with respect to attrition and incomplete acquisition of the heritage language.

  18. Privileging Bilingualism: Using Biliterate Writing Outcomes to Understand Emerging Bilingual Learners' Literacy Achievement

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hopewell, Susan; Butvilofsky, Sandra

    2016-01-01

    Language planning and policy with regard to bilingual education are greatly influenced by the ideologies outlined by Richard Ruiz. In this article, we demonstrate that Ruiz's language-as-resource orientation requires that we use two-language assessments to study how program models are both developing and conserving the languages that students…

  19. Parent Report of Early Lexical Production in Bilingual Children: A Cross-Linguistic CDI Comparison

    Science.gov (United States)

    O'Toole, Ciara; Gatt, Daniela; Hickey, Tina M.; Miekisz, Aneta; Haman, Ewa; Armon-Lotem, Sharon; Rinker, Tanja; Ohana, Odelya; dos Santos, Christophe; Kern, Sophie

    2017-01-01

    This paper compared the vocabulary size of a group of 250 bilinguals aged 24-36 months acquiring six different language pairs using an analogous tool, and attempted to identify factors that influence vocabulary sizes and ultimately place children at risk for language delay. Each research group used adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative…

  20. Influence of Bilingualism on Memory Generalization during Infancy

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brito, Natalie; Barr, Rachel

    2012-01-01

    Very few studies have examined the cognitive advantages of bilingualism during the first two years of development, and a majority of the studies examining bilingualism throughout the lifespan have focused on the relationship between multiple languages and cognitive control. Early experience with multiple language systems may influence…

  1. The Development of Bilingual Narrative Retelling Among Spanish-English Dual Language Learners Over Two Years.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lucero, Audrey

    2018-05-25

    This exploratory study investigates the development of oral narrative retell proficiency among Spanish-English emergent bilingual children longitudinally from kindergarten to second grade in Spanish and English as they learned literacy in the 2 languages concurrently. Oral narrative retell assessments were conducted with children who spoke Spanish at home and were enrolled in a dual language immersion program (N = 12) in the spring of kindergarten and second grade. Retells were transcribed and coded for vocabulary and grammar at the microlevel (Miller, 2012) and story structure at the macrolevel (Heilmann, Miller, Nockerts, & Dunaway, 2010). In microstructure paired-sample t tests, children showed significant improvements in vocabulary in both languages (Spanish total number of words η2 = .43, Spanish number of different words η2 = .44, English total number of words η2 = .61, English number of different words η2 = .62) but not grammar by second grade. At the macrostructure level, children showed significantly higher performance in English only (English narrative scoring scheme η2 = .47). The finding that children significantly improved in vocabulary in both languages but in overall story structure only in English suggests that discourse skills were being facilitated in English whereas Spanish discourse development may have stagnated even within a dual language immersion program. Results contribute to what is currently known about bilingual oral narrative development among young Spanish speakers enrolled in such programs and can inform assessment and instructional decisions.

  2. Science as a second language: Analysis of Emergent Bilinguals performance and the impact of English language proficiency and first language characteristics on the Colorado measures of academic success for science

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bruno, Joanna K.

    In an age when communication is highly important and states across the nation, including Colorado, have adopted Common Core State Standards, the need for academic language is even more important than ever. The language of science has been compared to a second language in that it uses specific discourse patterns, semantic rules, and a very specific vocabulary. There is a need for educators to better understand how language impacts academic achievement, specifically concerning Emergent Bilinguals (EBs). Research has identified the need to study the role language plays in content assessments and the impact they have on EBs performance (Abedi, 2008b; Abedi, Hofestter & Lord, 2004; Abedi & Lord, 2001). Since language is the means through which content knowledge is assessed, it is important to analyze this aspect of learning. A review of literature identified the need to create more reliable and valid content assessments for EBs (Abedi, 2008b) and to further study the impact of English proficiency on EBs performance on standardized assessments (Solorzano, 2008; Wolf, & Leon, 2009). This study contributes to the literature by analyzing EBs performance on a state-level science content assessment, taking into consideration English language proficiency, receptive versus productive elements of language, and students' home language. This study further contributes by discussing the relationship between language proficiency, and the different strands of science (physical, life, and earth) on the state science assessment. Finally, this study demonstrates that home language, English language proficiency, and receptive and productive elements of language are predictive of EBs' achievement on the CMAS for science, overall and by strand. It is the blending of the social (listening and speaking) with the academic (reading and writing) that is also important and possibly more important.

  3. Turning Local Bilingualism into a Touristic Experience

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schedel, Larissa Semiramis

    2018-01-01

    Local languages/varieties play a key role in the construction of an authentic and local tourism experience. This is also the case in the bilingual town of Murten, which uses its situation at the language border between the French- and the German-speaking part of Switzerland and the local bilingualism to attract and entertain tourists in different…

  4. Stuttering Characteristics of German-English Bilingual Speakers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schafer, Martina; Robb, Michael P.

    2012-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to examine stuttering behavior in German-English bilingual people who stutter (PWS), with particular reference to the frequency of stuttering on content and function words. Fifteen bilingual PWS were sampled who spoke German as the first language (L1) and English as a second language (L2). Conversational speech was…

  5. Does Bilingualism Influence Cognitive Aging?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bak, Thomas H; Nissan, Jack J; Allerhand, Michael M; Deary, Ian J

    2014-01-01

    Recent evidence suggests a positive impact of bilingualism on cognition, including later onset of dementia. However, monolinguals and bilinguals might have different baseline cognitive ability. We present the first study examining the effect of bilingualism on later-life cognition controlling for childhood intelligence. We studied 853 participants, first tested in 1947 (age = 11 years), and retested in 2008–2010. Bilinguals performed significantly better than predicted from their baseline cognitive abilities, with strongest effects on general intelligence and reading. Our results suggest a positive effect of bilingualism on later-life cognition, including in those who acquired their second language in adulthood. PMID:24890334

  6. Bilinguals Have Different Hemispheric Lateralization in Visual Word Processing from Monolinguals

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sze-Man Lam

    2011-05-01

    Full Text Available Previous bilingual studies showed reduced hemispheric asymmetry in visual tasks such as face perception in bilinguals compared with monolinguals, suggesting experience in reading one or two languages could be a modulating factor. Here we examined whether difference in hemispheric asymmetry in visual tasks can also be observed in bilinguals who have different language backgrounds. We compared the behavior of three language groups in a tachistoscopic English word sequential matching task: English monolinguals (or alphabetic monolinguals, A-Ms, bilinguals with an alphabetic-L1 and English-L2 (alphabetic-alphabetic bilinguals, AA-Bs, and bilinguals with Chinese-L1 and English-L2 (logographic-alphabetic bilinguals, LA-Bs. The results showed that AA-Bs had a stronger right visual field/ left hemispheric (LH advantage than A-Ms and LA-Bs, suggesting that different language learning experiences can influence how visual words are processed in the brain. In addition, we showed that this effect could be accounted for by a computational model that implements a theory of hemispheric asymmetry in perception (i.e., the Double Filtering by Frequency theory; Ivry & Robertson, 1998; the modeling data suggested that this difference may be due to both the difference in participants' vocabulary size and the difference in word-to-sound mapping between alphabetic and logographic languages.

  7. THE REFLECTION OF BILINGUALISM IN THE SPEECH OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN SPEAKING NATIVE (ERZYA AND NON-NATIVE (RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mosina, N.M.

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available This article considers the specific features of Mordovian speech of 16 bilingual children, aged 3 to 7 years, speaking both the Erzya and Russian languages, living in Mordovia. Their language is studied on the example of short stories in pictures, and it attempts to identify the influence of the Russian language on the Erzya one and to detect the occurrences of interference at the lexical and grammatical levels.

  8. Speaking one’s second language under time pressure : An ERP study on verbal self-monitoring in German-Dutch bilinguals

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schiller, N.O.

    2009-01-01

    This study addresses how verbal self-monitoring and the Error-Related Negativity (ERN) are affected by time pressure when a task is performed in a second language as opposed to performance in the native language. German–Dutch bilinguals were required to perform a phoneme-monitoring task in Dutch

  9. Translanguaging, TexMex, and Bilingual Pedagogy: Emergent Bilinguals Learning through the Vernacular

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sayer, Peter

    2013-01-01

    This article presents an ethnographic study of how bilingual teachers and children use their home language, TexMex, to mediate academic content and standard languages. From the premise that TESOL educators can benefit from a fuller understanding of students' linguistic repertoires, the study describes language practices in a second-grade classroom…

  10. The Effects of Bilingualism on Toddlers' Executive Functioning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Poulin-Dubois, Diane; Blaye, Agnes; Coutya, Julie; Bialystok, Ellen

    2011-01-01

    Bilingual children have been shown to outperform monolingual children on tasks measuring executive functioning skills. This advantage is usually attributed to bilinguals' extensive practice in exercising selective attention and cognitive flexibility during language use because both languages are active when one of them is being used. We examined…

  11. Universal and Language-Specific Constraints on Phonemic Awareness: Evidence from Russian-Hebrew Bilingual Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Saiegh-Haddad, Elinor; Kogan, Nadya; Walters, Joel

    2010-01-01

    The study tested phonemic awareness in the two languages of Russian (L1)-Hebrew (L2) sequential bilingual children (N = 20) using phoneme deletion tasks where the phoneme to be deleted occurred word initial, word final, as a singleton, or part of a cluster, in long and short words and stressed and unstressed syllables. The experiments were…

  12. Positive Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism and Multilingualism on Cerebral Function: a Review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Quinteros Baumgart, Cibel; Billick, Stephen Bates

    2018-06-01

    A review of the current literature regarding bilingualism demonstrates that bilingualism is linked to higher levels of controlled attention and inhibition in executive control and can protect against the decline of executive control in aging by contributing to cognitive reserve. Bilinguals may also have smaller vocabulary size and slower lexical retrieval for each language. The joint activation theory is proposed to explain these results. Older trilingual adults experience more protection against cognitive decline and children and young adults showed similar cognitive advantages to bilinguals in inhibitory control. Second language learners do not yet show cognitive changes associated with multilingualism. The Specificity Principle states that the acquisition of multiple languages is moderated by multiple factors and varies between experiences. Bilingualism and multilingualism are both associated with immigration but different types of multilingualism can develop depending on the situation. Cultural cues and language similarity also play a role in language switching and multiple language acquisition.

  13. Neuropsychological profiles and verbal abilities in lifelong bilinguals with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kowoll, Magdalena Eva; Degen, Christina; Gladis, Saskia; Schröder, Johannes

    2015-01-01

    Bilingualism is associated with enhanced executive functioning and delayed onset of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here, we investigated neuropsychological differences between mono- and bilingual patients with MCI and AD as well as the respective effects of dementia on the dominant and non-dominant language of bilinguals. 69 patients with MCI (n = 22) or AD (n = 47) and 17 healthy controls were included. 41 subjects were classified as lifelong bilinguals (mean age: 73.6; SD = 11.5) and 45 as monolinguals (mean age: 78.1; SD = 10.9). Neuropsychological performance was assessed on the CERAD-NP, the clock-drawing test, and the logical memory subscale of the Wechsler Memory Scale. Neuropsychological profiles showed only minor nonsignificant differences between mono- and bilingual subjects when compared between diagnostic groups. Bilingual MCI patients scored significantly lower on the verbal fluency and picture naming task in their dominant language than bilingual controls. Bilingual AD patients showed a reduced performance in their nondominant language when compared to bilingual MCI patients and bilingual controls (main effect language dominance: verbal fluency task p Bilingual MCI and AD patients show a similar pattern of neuropsychological deficits as monolingual patients do. The dominant language appears to be compromised first in bilingual MCI patients, while severe deficits of the nondominant language develop later in the course with manifestation of AD. These findings are important for the diagnostic work up of bilingual patients and the development of improved care concepts for bilingual patients such as migrant populations.

  14. Bilingual skills of deaf/hard of hearing children from Spain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guiberson, Mark

    2014-03-01

    This study described the first language (L1) and second language (L2) skills of a group of Spanish deaf/hard of hearing (DHH) children who were bilingual. Participants included parents of 51 DHH children from Spain. Parents completed an electronic survey that included questions on background, details on child's hearing loss, and bilingual status and L2 exposure. Parents also completed the Student Oral Language Observation Matrix, a rating scale that describes language skills. DHH bilingual children demonstrated L1 skills that were stronger than their monolingual DHH peers. Bilingual children demonstrated a wide range of L2 proficiency, and most were exposed to an L2 through parents and/or schooling. The majority of parents reported that their children demonstrated L2 skills that were either better than or at the level they had expected. These results correspond with earlier studies that indicate the DHH children are capable of becoming bilingual. Implications for clinical practice are discussed.

  15. Predictors of English Health Literacy among U.S. Hispanic Immigrants: The importance of language, bilingualism and sociolinguistic environment

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Holly E. Jacobson

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available In the United States, data confirm that Spanish-speaking immigrants are particularly affected by the negative health outcomes associated with low health literacy. Although the literature points to variables such as age, educational background and language, only a few studies have investigated the factors that may influence health literacy in this group. Similarly, the role that bilingualism and/or multilingualism play in health literacy assessment continues to be an issue in need of further research. The purpose of this study was to examine the predictors of English health literacy among adult Hispanic immigrants whose self-reported primary language is Spanish, but who live and function in a bilingual community. It also explored issues related to the language of the instrument. An analysis of data collected through a randomized controlled study was conducted. Results identified English proficiency as the strongest predictor of health literacy (p < 0.001. The results further point to the importance of primary and secondary language in the assessment of heath literacy level. This study raises many questions in need of further investigation to clarify how language proficiency and sociolinguistic environment affect health literacy in language minority adults; proposes language approaches that may be more appropriate for measuring health literacy in these populations; and recommends further place-based research to determine whether the connection between language proficiency and health is generalizable to border communities.

  16. Bilingualism, dementia, cognitive and neural reserve.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Perani, Daniela; Abutalebi, Jubin

    2015-12-01

    We discuss the role of bilingualism as a source of cognitive reserve and we propose the putative neural mechanisms through which lifelong bilingualism leads to a neural reserve that delays the onset of dementia. Recent findings highlight that the use of more than one language affects the human brain in terms of anatomo-structural changes. It is noteworthy that recent evidence from different places and cultures throughout the world points to a significant delay of dementia onset in bilingual/multilingual individuals. This delay has been reported not only for Alzheimer's dementia and its prodromal mild cognitive impairment phase, but also for other dementias such as vascular and fronto-temporal dementia, and was found to be independent of literacy, education and immigrant status. Lifelong bilingualism represents a powerful cognitive reserve delaying the onset of dementia by approximately 4 years. As to the causal mechanism, because speaking more than one language heavily relies upon executive control and attention, brain systems handling these functions are more developed in bilinguals resulting in increases of gray and white matter densities that may help protect from dementia onset. These neurocognitive benefits are even more prominent when second language proficiency and exposure are kept high throughout life.

  17. Language awareness in the bilingual healthcare setting: a national survey.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roberts, Gwerfyl Wyn; Irvine, Fiona Elizabeth; Jones, Peter Reece; Spencer, Llinos Haf; Baker, Colin Ronald; Williams, Cen

    2007-09-01

    The significance of effective interpersonal communication in healthcare is well established, as is the importance of overcoming language barriers. This has a particular bearing for minority language speakers, where denying language choice can compromise the quality of healthcare provision. Nevertheless, there is limited empirical research exploring language awareness in healthcare and the factors that influence language choice for minority language speakers. This paper reports on the nurses, midwives and health visitors (NMHV) data set of the first phase of a large-scale national study, commissioned by the Welsh Assembly Government, to examine the nature and extent of Welsh language awareness amongst healthcare professionals in Wales, UK. The study involved a questionnaire survey of healthcare professionals working in the public, private and voluntary sectors of healthcare. A stratified random sample of 3358 healthcare professionals was surveyed, of which 1842 (55%) were nurses, midwives and health visitors. The researcher-designed self-administered questionnaire was distributed by post to participants between July and September 2003. A total of 1042 (57%) NMHV returned their questionnaires for analysis. A strong positive correlation is identified between the NMHV use of the Welsh language in practice and their Welsh language proficiency (planguage attitudes (planguage region (planguage attitude scores are more positive than expected, particularly amongst those with limited Welsh language proficiency and those working in regions with the lowest proportions of Welsh speakers. In view of the universal drive for culturally and linguistically appropriate healthcare practice, the findings have important implications for bilingual and multilingual healthcare settings worldwide. The evidence emerging from this survey confirms that cross-cultural communication is enhanced by NMHV language attitudes as well as their proficiency levels. Language awareness training is

  18. Cross-Language Translation Priming Asymmetry with Chinese-English Bilinguals: A Test of the Sense Model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Baoguo; Zhou, Huixia; Gao, Yiwen; Dunlap, Susan

    2014-01-01

    The present study aimed to test the Sense Model of cross-linguistic masked translation priming asymmetry, proposed by Finkbeiner et al. ("J Mem Lang" 51:1-22, 2004), by manipulating the number of senses that bilingual participants associated with words from both languages. Three lexical decision experiments were conducted with…

  19. Issues on raising a bilingual child in Costa Rica: a myth or a reality?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Allen Quesada Pacheco

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available This article deals with main issues concerning bilingualism and bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA. A review of the literature is presented on how children learn languages. In addition, this paper summarizes what bilingualism is and addresses how the One-parent One-language (OPOL and the Minority Language at Home (ML@H methods work. The paper includes sample testimonies of Itzel, a three-year-old child, raised with these methods. It also illustrates samples of her code-switching and code-mixing as part of her evolution in bilingual first language acquisition. Based on this evolution, there is some evidence that a child can become bilingual under foreign language conditions. Finally, the article reflects on the decisive role that dedication, consistency and effort have as crucial components to accomplish BFLA.

  20. Validating Models of Clinical Word Recognition Tests for Spanish/English Bilinguals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shi, Lu-Feng

    2014-01-01

    Purpose: Shi and Sánchez (2010) developed models to predict the optimal test language for evaluating Spanish/English (S/E) bilinguals' word recognition. The current study intended to validate their conclusions in a separate bilingual listener sample. Method: Seventy normal-hearing S/E bilinguals varying in language profile were included.…

  1. Verbal fluency in bilingual Spanish/English Alzheimer's disease patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Salvatierra, Judy; Rosselli, Monica; Acevedo, Amarilis; Duara, Ranjan

    2007-01-01

    Studies have demonstrated that in verbal fluency tests, monolinguals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) show greater difficulties retrieving words based on semantic rather than phonemic rules. The present study aimed to determine whether this difficulty was reproduced in both languages of Spanish/English bilinguals with mild to moderate AD whose primary language was Spanish. Performance on semantic and phonemic verbal fluency of 11 bilingual AD patients was compared to the performance of 11 cognitively normal, elderly bilingual individuals matched for gender, age, level of education, and degree of bilingualism. Cognitively normal subjects retrieved significantly more items under the semantic condition compared to the phonemic, whereas the performance of AD patients was similar under both conditions, suggesting greater decline in semantic verbal fluency tests. This pattern was produced in both languages, implying a related semantic decline in both languages. Results from this study should be considered preliminary because of the small sample size.

  2. Autism and Bilingualism: A Qualitative Interview Study of Parents' Perspectives and Experiences.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hampton, Sarah; Rabagliati, Hugh; Sorace, Antonella; Fletcher-Watson, Sue

    2017-02-01

    Research into how bilingual parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) make choices about their children's language environment is scarce. This study aimed to explore this issue, focusing on understanding how bilingual parents of children with ASD may make different language exposure choices compared with bilingual parents of children without ASD. Semistructured qualitative interviews were conducted with 17 bilingual parents with a child with ASD and 18 bilingual parents with a typically developing (TD) child. Thematic analysis revealed that, in contrast to parents of TD children, parents with a child with ASD expressed concerns that a bilingual environment would cause confusion for their child and exacerbate language delays. This was particularly common for parents of children with lower verbal ability. Parents also identified potential benefits of bilingualism, particularly in terms of maintaining a close and affectionate bond with their child. Parents of children with ASD have concerns about bilingualism not present for parents of TD children, and these concerns are greater for parents of children with lower verbal ability. Future research in this area should take into account factors such as parent-child bonds as well as communication and language development.

  3. The Role of Fathers in Language Maintenance and Language Attrition: The Case of Korean-English Late Bilinguals in New Zealand

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Sun Hee Ok; Starks, Donna

    2010-01-01

    The father's role in children's L1 maintenance and L2 learning is a relatively unexplored area. This study considers the L1 and L2 proficiency of 30 Korean-English late bilinguals who immigrated to New Zealand during their adolescence and how their L1 and L2 proficiency is influenced by the language use of family members. Data were collected…

  4. Multilingual Effects on EFL Learning: A Comparison of Foreign Language Anxiety Experienced by Monolingual and Bilingual Tertiary Students in the Lao PDR

    Science.gov (United States)

    Phongsa, Manivone; Mohamed Ismail, Shaik Abdul Malik; Low, Hui Min

    2018-01-01

    Foreign language anxiety is common among adult learners, especially those who lack exposure to the language that they are learning. In this study, we compared the foreign language anxiety experienced by monolingual and bilingual tertiary students in the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) who were learning English as a Foreign Language. The…

  5. Influence of current input-output and age of first exposure on phonological acquisition in early bilingual Spanish-English-speaking kindergarteners.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ruiz-Felter, Roxanna; Cooperson, Solaman J; Bedore, Lisa M; Peña, Elizabeth D

    2016-07-01

    Although some investigations of phonological development have found that segmental accuracy is comparable in monolingual children and their bilingual peers, there is evidence that language use affects segmental accuracy in both languages. To investigate the influence of age of first exposure to English and the amount of current input-output on phonological accuracy in English and Spanish in early bilingual Spanish-English kindergarteners. Also whether parent and teacher ratings of the children's intelligibility are correlated with phonological accuracy and the amount of experience with each language. Data for 91 kindergarteners (mean age = 5;6 years) were selected from a larger dataset focusing on Spanish-English bilingual language development. All children were from Central Texas, spoke a Mexican Spanish dialect and were learning American English. Children completed a single-word phonological assessment with separate forms for English and Spanish. The assessment was analyzed for segmental accuracy: percentage of consonants and vowels correct and percentage of early-, middle- and late-developing (EML) sounds correct were calculated. Children were more accurate on vowel production than consonant production and showed a decrease in accuracy from early to middle to late sounds. The amount of current input-output explained more of the variance in phonological accuracy than age of first English exposure. Although greater current input-output of a language was associated with greater accuracy in that language, English-dominant children were only significantly more accurate in English than Spanish on late sounds, whereas Spanish-dominant children were only significantly more accurate in Spanish than English on early sounds. Higher parent and teacher ratings of intelligibility in Spanish were correlated with greater consonant accuracy in Spanish, but the same did not hold for English. Higher intelligibility ratings in English were correlated with greater current English

  6. What Is Your "First" Language in Bilingual Canada? A Study of Language Background Profiling at Publicly Funded Elementary Schools across Three Provinces

    Science.gov (United States)

    Slavkov, Nikolay

    2018-01-01

    Canada is a country with a complex linguistic and cultural landscape characterized by two official languages (English and French), a steady influx of immigrants, and a number of aboriginal communities. Within this rich local context, and in a broader global environment where bilingualism and multilingualism are increasingly recognized as a norm…

  7. CODE SWITCHING AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF LINGUISTIC SYSTEM OF SIMULTANEOUS BILINGUAL CHILDREN

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Leni Amelia Suek

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available Code switching and code mixing are the phenomena commonly seen done by a bilingual. This behavior is influenced by several aspects such as the linguistic system, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and language competence of the bilingual. If children are able to distinguish two different languages since early age, they will be considered simultaneous bilinguals. They show that they develop multiple, rather than single, linguistic systems. However, it was understood that code switching and code mixing were due to the failure in using proper words, language features, and sociolinguistic competence. Yet, recent studies have shown that bilingual children are able to use both languages proficiently with no signs of confusion or failure in language use. This ability also does not hinder their cognitive development.

  8. Patterns of Stuttering in a Spanish/English Bilingual: A Case Report

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ardila, Alfredo; Ramos, Eliane; Barrocas, Robert

    2011-01-01

    Stuttering patterns may differ when comparing two languages. In bilinguals, specific patterns of stuttering in each one of the languages may potentially be found. This study reports on the case of a 27-year-old Spanish/English simultaneous bilingual whose dominant language is English. Speech and language testing was performed in both languages…

  9. Developmental change in tone perception in Mandarin monolingual, English monolingual, and Mandarin-English bilingual infants: Divergences between monolingual and bilingual learners.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Singh, Leher; Fu, Charlene S L; Seet, Xian Hui; Tong, Ashley P Y; Wang, Joelle L; Best, Catherine T

    2018-09-01

    Most languages use lexical tone to discriminate the meanings of words. There has been recent interest in tracking the development of tone categories during infancy. These studies have focused largely on monolingual infants learning either a tone language or a non-tone language. It remains to be seen how bilingual infants learning one tone language (e.g., Mandarin) and one non-tone language (e.g., English) discriminate tones. Here, we examined infants' discrimination of two Mandarin tones pairs: one salient and one subtle. Discrimination was investigated in three groups: Mandarin-English bilinguals, English monolinguals, and Mandarin monolinguals at 6 months and 9 months of age in a cross-sectional design. Results demonstrated relatively strong Mandarin tone discrimination in Mandarin monolinguals, with salient tone discrimination at 6 months and both salient and subtle tone discrimination at 9 months. English monolinguals discriminated neither contrast at 6 months but discriminated the salient contrast at 9 months. Surprisingly, there was no evidence for tone discrimination in Mandarin-English bilingual infants. In a second experiment, 12- and 13-month-old Mandarin-English bilingual and English monolingual infants were tested to determine whether bilinguals would demonstrate tone sensitivity at a later age. Results revealed a lack of tone sensitivity at 12 or 13 months in bilingual infants, yet English monolingual infants were sensitive to both salient and subtle Mandarin tone contrasts at 12 or 13 months. Our findings provide evidence for age-related convergence in Mandarin tone discrimination in English and Mandarin monolingual infants and for a distinct pattern of tone discrimination in bilingual infants. Theoretical implications for phonetic category acquisition are discussed. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  10. The modulatory role of second language proficiency on performance monitoring: evidence from a saccadic countermanding task in high and low proficient bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Singh, Niharika; Mishra, Ramesh K

    2014-01-01

    We compared Hindi-English bilinguals differing in their L2 proficiency on a saccadic countermanding task which taps inhibitory control as well as monitoring. We particularly explored whether response inhibition and performance monitoring within the oculomotor domain are affected by language proficiency in bilinguals. There were two different oculomotor redirect tasks: Visually Guided Redirect (VGR) task (Experiment1) and Memory Guided Redirect (MGR) task (Experiment 2). In the redirect task, typically a target is presented and the subject is required to make a saccade (no-step trials), unless a new target appears on a different location after some delay from the first target onset (step trials). On such trials participants are required to inhibit and cancel the saccade to the first target and programme a saccade to the new target. Using trial switch reaction time (TSRT), the time taken to inhibit the initiated saccade to the first target as a measure of response inhibition and post-step slowing as a measure of performance monitoring. The results showed the high proficient bilinguals displayed more post-step slowing on the no-step trials as compared to the low proficient bilinguals for both VGR and MGR versions of the task. Secondly, both the high and low proficient bilinguals exhibited comparable TSRT in both VGR and MGR task, showing no modulatory effects of language proficiency on the response inhibition. These results suggest that language proficiency may have an effect on performance monitoring, but not the inhibitory control per se. Thus, we infer that higher proficiency may lead to superior cognitive flexibility and an ability to adjust behavior that facilitates the attainment of the cognitive goal. These findings are in consonance with other current studies that suggest a top-down effect of bilingualism on action control systems.

  11. Dual Language versus English-Only Support for Bilingual Children with Hearing Loss Who Use Cochlear Implants and Hearing Aids

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bunta, Ferenc; Douglas, Michael; Dickson, Hanna; Cantu, Amy; Wickesberg, Jennifer; Gifford, René H.

    2016-01-01

    Background: There is a critical need to understand better speech and language development in bilingual children learning two spoken languages who use cochlear implants (CIs) and hearing aids (HAs). The paucity of knowledge in this area poses a significant barrier to providing maximal communicative outcomes to a growing number of children who have…

  12. Suggested Curriculum Guidelines for an Effective Bilingual Program. 1972-1973. Destrezas Comunicativas del Idioma Espanol. Spanish Language Skills. Second Grade, Level 2.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Artesia Public Schools, NM.

    This volume contains suggested curriculum guidelines for an effective bilingual program, with specific focus on Spanish language skills for the second grade level. The philosophy of the program views bilingual education as a vehicle and pedagogical tool to be used to better prepare all children to function in society. The point of departure for…

  13. Suggested Curriculum Guidelines for an Effective Bilingual Program, 1972-1973. Destrezas Comunicativas del Idioma Espanol. Spanish Language Skills. Third Grade, Level 3.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Artesia Public Schools, NM.

    This volume contains suggested curriculum guidelines for an effective bilingual program, with specific focus on Spanish language skills for the third grade level. The philosophy of the program views bilingual education as a vehicle and pedagogical tool to be used to better prepare all children to function in society. The point of departure for…

  14. Bilingualism accentuates children's conversational understanding.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michael Siegal

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Although bilingualism is prevalent throughout the world, little is known about the extent to which it influences children's conversational understanding. Our investigation involved children aged 3-6 years exposed to one or more of four major languages: English, German, Italian, and Japanese. In two experiments, we examined the children's ability to identify responses to questions as violations of conversational maxims (to be informative and avoid redundancy, to speak the truth, be relevant, and be polite. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In Experiment 1, with increasing age, children showed greater sensitivity to maxim violations. Children in Italy who were bilingual in German and Italian (with German as the dominant language L1 significantly outperformed Italian monolinguals. In Experiment 2, children in England who were bilingual in English and Japanese (with English as L1 significantly outperformed Japanese monolinguals in Japan with vocabulary age partialled out. CONCLUSIONS: As the monolingual and bilingual groups had a similar family SES background (Experiment 1 and similar family cultural identity (Experiment 2, these results point to a specific role for early bilingualism in accentuating children's developing ability to appreciate effective communicative responses.

  15. Neural processing of speech in children is influenced by bilingual experience

    Science.gov (United States)

    Krizman, Jennifer; Slater, Jessica; Skoe, Erika; Marian, Viorica; Kraus, Nina

    2014-01-01

    Language experience fine-tunes how the auditory system processes sound. For example, bilinguals, relative to monolinguals, have more robust evoked responses to speech that manifest as stronger neural encoding of the fundamental frequency (F0) and greater across-trial consistency. However, it is unknown whether such enhancements increase with increasing second language experience. We predict that F0 amplitude and neural consistency scale with dual-language experience during childhood, such that more years of bilingual experience leads to more robust F0 encoding and greater neural consistency. To test this hypothesis, we recorded auditory brainstem responses to the synthesized syllables ‘ba’ and ‘ga’ in two groups of bilingual children who were matched for age at test (8.4+/−0.67 years) but differed in their age of second language acquisition. One group learned English and Spanish simultaneously from birth (n=13), while the second group learned the two languages sequentially (n=15), spending on average their first four years as monolingual Spanish speakers. We find that simultaneous bilinguals have a larger F0 response to ‘ba’ and ‘ga’ and a more consistent response to ‘ba’ compared to sequential bilinguals. We also demonstrate that these neural enhancements positively relate with years of bilingual experience. These findings support the notion that bilingualism enhances subcortical auditory processing. PMID:25445377

  16. Language, Culture and Identity: A Sociolinguistic Study of Bilingual ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    This paper explores the dynamics of bilingual speech in the Lagos Island speech community in Central Lagos. Against the background of the unique social motivations for bilingual behaviour in this cosmopolitan community, this study explores the various sociolinguistic acts utilized by the Yoruba-English bilinguals in the ...

  17. Multiple literacies: Linking the research on bilingualism and biliteracies to the practical.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dufresne, Therese; Masny, Diana

    2006-11-01

    The present article addresses the fundamental developmental differences between monolingualism and bilingualism, as outlined in the literature. It takes into account research using qualitative and quantitative methodologies and reviews the advantages and possible disadvantages of bilingualism in preschool children. It then moves on to biliteracies in early childhood education. The questions addressed are: Will the early learning of a second language delay a child's language development? What effect does bilingualism have on the development of phonemic awareness, and does that have an impact on reading development? Do bilingual children have an advantage over monolingual children? What happens when a child with language impairment is called upon to develop two languages? What are some challenges regarding the acquisition of biliteracies? The present article concludes with recommendations for physicians who counsel bilingual families regarding early childhood literacy promotion and development.

  18. The effect of childhood bilingualism on episodic and semantic memory tasks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kormi-Nouri, Reza; Shojaei, Razie-Sadat; Moniri, Sadegheh; Gholami, Ali-Reza; Moradi, Ali-Reza; Akbari-Zardkhaneh, Saeed; Nilsson, Lars-Göran

    2008-04-01

    Kormi-Nouri, Moniri and Nilsson (2003) demonstrated that Swedish-Persian bilingual children recalled at a higher level than Swedish monolingual children, when they were tested using Swedish materials. The present study was designed to examine the bilingual advantage of children who use different languages in their everyday life but have the same cultural background and live in their communities in the same way as monolingual children. In four experiments, 488 monolingual and bilingual children were compared with regard to episodic and semantic memory tasks. In experiments 1 and 2 there were 144 boys and 144 girls in three school groups (aged 9-10 years, 13-14 years and 16-17 years) and in three language groups (Persian monolingual, Turkish-Persian bilingual, and Kurdish-Persian bilingual). In experiments 3 and 4, there were 200 male students in two school groups (aged 9-10 years and 16-17 years) and in two language groups (Persian monolingual and Turkish-Persian bilingual). In the episodic memory task, children learned sentences (experiments 1-3) and words (Experiment 4). Letter and category fluency tests were used as measures of semantic memory. To change cognitive demands in memory tasks, in Experiment 1, the integration of nouns and verbs within sentences was manipulated by the level of association between verb and noun in each sentence. At retrieval, a recognition test was used. In experiments 2 and 3, the organization between sentences was manipulated at encoding in Experiment 2 and at both encoding and retrieval in Experiment 3 through the use of categories among the objects. At retrieval, free recall or cued recall tests were employed. In Experiment 4, the bilingual children were tested with regard to both their first and their second language. In all four experiments, a positive effect of bilingualism was found on episodic and semantic memory tasks; the effect was more pronounced for older than younger children. The bilingual advantage was not affected by

  19. Teaching Language and Content: Instructor Strategies in a Bilingual Science Class at a Chinese University

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liang, Xiaoping; Smith, Sara W.

    2012-01-01

    The present research analyzes instructional strategies used to integrate the learning of content and English as a foreign language in a bilingual physics class at a university in Shanghai, China. It examines how the instructor handles meaning and form of new English science vocabulary in concept-focused physics lectures and the strategies he used…

  20. Autism and Bilingualism: A Qualitative Interview Study of Parents' Perspectives and Experiences

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hampton, Sarah; Rabagliati, Hugh; Sorace, Antonella; Fletcher-Watson, Sue

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: Research into how bilingual parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) make choices about their children's language environment is scarce. This study aimed to explore this issue, focusing on understanding how bilingual parents of children with ASD may make different language exposure choices compared with bilingual parents of…

  1. Bilingualism as a kind of therapy?

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hulk, A.; Unsworth, S.

    2010-01-01

    In her very interesting Keynote Article, Johanne Paradis gives a clear overview of recent research at the interface of bilingual development and child language disorders, and highlights its theoretical and clinical implications. She raises the challenging question of "whether bilingualism can be

  2. Vietnamese Female Spouses' Language Use Patterns in Self-Initiated Admonishment Sequences in Bilingual Taiwanese Families

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Li-Fen

    2014-01-01

    This paper aims to identify how Taiwanese and Mandarin (the two dominant languages in Taiwan) are used as interactional resources by Vietnamese female spouses in bilingual Taiwanese families. Three Vietnamese-Taiwanese transnational families (a total of seventeen people) participated in the research, and mealtime talks among the Vietnamese wives…

  3. Bilingualism in the English of tertiary students: A sine-qua-non for ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Effects of Bilingualism on the English of Tertiary Students as a mentorship and entrepreneurial tool were investigated. The term bilingualism is the use of two languages (repertoire) of an individual or a speech community. An important feature of bilingualism is that it is a consequence of language in contact which deals with ...

  4. Awake craniotomy and multilingualism: language testing during anaesthesia for awake craniotomy in a bilingual patient.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Costello, T G

    2014-08-01

    An awake craniotomy for epilepsy surgery is presented where a bilingual patient post-operatively reported temporary aphasia of his first language (Spanish). This case report discusses the potential causes for this clinical presentation and methods to prevent the occurrence of this in future patients undergoing this form of surgery. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  5. Cross-Language Transfer of Word Reading Accuracy and Word Reading Fluency in Spanish-English and Chinese-English Bilinguals: Script-Universal and Script-Specific Processes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pasquarella, Adrian; Chen, Xi; Gottardo, Alexandra; Geva, Esther

    2015-01-01

    This study examined cross-language transfer of word reading accuracy and word reading fluency in Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals. Participants included 51 Spanish-English and 64 Chinese-English bilinguals. Both groups of children completed parallel measures of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, word reading accuracy,…

  6. Polish-German bilingualism at school. A Polish perspective

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pulaczewska, Hanna

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available This article presents the institutional frames for the acquisition of Polish literacy skills in Germany and the maintenance of Polish-German bilingualism after the repatriation of bilingual children to Poland. These processes are examined in the context of recent developments in the European domestic job market. While the European Union has placed proficiency in several languages among its educational objectives, and foreign languages have been made obligatory school subjects in all member countries, the potential advantages of internal European migrations for producing high-proficiency bilinguals are being ignored. Bilingualism resulting from migration and biculturalism enjoys little social prestige in the host countries. In Germany, there is significant regional variation in how school authorities react to challenges posed by the presence of minority languages. In many cases, the linguistic potential of many second-generation migrants and re-emigrants gets largely wasted because of lacking interest and incentives from German and Polish institutions alike.

  7. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BILINGUAL INSTRUCTION AND LEARNERS’ PERFORMANCE IN ENGLISH AS SECOND LANGUAGE CONTEXT

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    Huma Imran Khan

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available The prime purpose of this study was to explore a correlation between bilingual instruction in an ESL class and the class performance of the ESL learners at the secondary level. Quantitative research method was used to evaluate the test performance of 60 ESL learners divided into two groups: One was the controlled group (which was given instructions in L2 only and the other was the treatment group (which was given instructions in both L1 and L2 in Public School settings. Apart from the students, 15 language teachers’ feedback upon their perceptions of L1 usage in L2 classrooms was taken by using the Likert scale feedback forms. The results confirmed that the instructions given bilingually are directly associated to improved learner outcomes and teachers’ responses for the usage of L1 in classrooms showed a strong positive response.

  8. Bilingualism, Language Disorders and Intercultural Families in Contemporary Italy: Family Relations, Transmission of Language and Representations of Otherness.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bruno, Davide; Balottin, Umberto; Berlincioni, Vanna; Moro, Marie Rose

    2016-03-01

    This study aims to show how language disorders in children affect language transmission and the mixedness experience in intercultural families. To this end, it adopts a qualitative method of study based on the administration of ad hoc interviews to intercultural couples who consulted our Child Neuropsychiatry Service because of language disorders in their children. One of the main consequences, when the child of an intercultural couple presents a language disorder and a diagnostic process has to be initiated, may be interruption of the transmission of the second language, especially if it is the mother's language. The decision to do this, which may be taken on the advice of teachers and health professionals, but also because the parents themselves often attribute their child's language disorder to his bilingual condition, affects not only the relationship between the mother and her child, but also processes in the construction of parenthood and in the structuring of the child's personality and the plurality of his affiliations. A clear understanding of how the dialectic between the categories of "alien" and "familiar" is managed in these contemporary families, which have to reckon with the condition of otherness, is crucial for psychiatrists and psychotherapists working in settings in which cultural difference is an issue to consider.

  9. The Role of Oral Language Skills in Reading and Listening Comprehension of Text: A Comparison of Monolingual (L1) and Bilingual (L2) Speakers of English Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Babayigit, Selma

    2014-01-01

    The study examined the role of oral language skills in reading comprehension and listening comprehension levels of 125 monolingual (L1) and bilingual (L2) English-speaking learners (M = 121.5 months, SD = 4.65) in England. All testing was conducted in English. The L1 learners outperformed their L2 peers on the measures of oral language and text…

  10. Indigenous Knowledge and Language: Decolonizing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in a Mapuche Intercultural Bilingual Education Program in Chile

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ortiz, Patricio R.

    2009-01-01

    This article illustrates how Mapuche Indigenous knowledge (Kimun) and language (Mapudungun) incorporated into an Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) program of a school within a Mapuche context in Chile creates decolonizing counter-hegemonic narratives as forms of culturally relevant pedagogy. Based on a six-month school ethnography, this…

  11. Semantic Convergence in the Bilingual Lexicon

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ameel, Eef; Malt, Barbara C.; Storms, Gert; Van Assche, Fons

    2009-01-01

    Bilinguals' lexical mappings for their two languages have been found to converge toward a common naming pattern. The present paper investigates in more detail how semantic convergence is manifested in bilingual lexical knowledge. We examined how semantic convergence affects the centers and boundaries of lexical categories for common household…

  12. The influence of bilingualism on statistical word learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Poepsel, Timothy J; Weiss, Daniel J

    2016-07-01

    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. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  13. Do bilinguals outperform monolinguals?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sejdi Sejdiu

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available The relationship between second dialect acquisition and the psychological capacity of the learner is still a divisive topic that generates a lot of debate. A few researchers contend that the acquisition of the second dialect tends to improve the cognitive abilities in various individuals, but at the same time it could hinder the same abilities in other people. Currently, immersion is a common occurrence in some countries. In the recent past, it has significantly increased in its popularity, which has caused parents, professionals, and researchers to question whether second language acquisition has a positive impact on cognitive development, encompassing psychological ability. In rundown, the above might decide to comprehend the effects of using a second language based on the literal aptitudes connected with the native language. The issue of bilingualism was seen as a disadvantage until recently because of two languages being present which would hinder or delay the development of languages. However, recent studies have proven that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in tasks which require more attention.

  14. CHILD COMPREHENSION OF ADULTS’ VERBAL INPUT: A CASE OF BILINGUAL ACQUISITION IN INFANCY

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ni Luh Putu Sri Adnyani

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available Research concerning comprehension in early simultaneous bilingualism is still very limited. Thus, this study focuses on describing a bilingual infant’s comprehension of adults’ verbal input addressed to the child in an Indonesian-German language environment, and the child’s understanding of translation equivalents (TEs. The child, who was exposed to Indonesian and German simultaneously from birth, was observed from age 0;9 to age 1;3 using a diary supplemented with weekly video recordings. A “one parent-one language” system was applied in which the child received Indonesian language from the mother and German language from the father from birth. Since the family live in Indonesia and have regular contact to the collective family members, the child received dominant exposure in Indonesian compared to German. The data was transcribed and analysed using ELAN. The results show that the adults’ verbal inputs in the form of speech addressed to the child were in the form of short utterances which very often had a high-pitched sound and were rich in repetition. The adults’ speech was able to be discriminated by the child. In the pre-production stage, the child could understand approximately 6 (six proper nouns, 18 (eighteen Indonesian words and 14 (fourteen German words. The result reveals that the child could comprehend more words in Indonesian than in German. It was also found that the child could understand some bilingual synonyms, which implies that at the pre-production stage, the child already went through a process of bilingual development.

  15. Carpet or Carcel: The Effect of Age of Acquisition and Language Mode on Bilingual Lexical Access

    Science.gov (United States)

    Canseco-Gonzalez, Enriqueta; Brehm, Laurel; Brick, Cameron A.; Brown-Schmidt, Sarah; Fischer, Kara; Wagner, Katie

    2010-01-01

    Lexical access was examined in English-Spanish bilinguals by monitoring eye fixations on target and lexical competitors as participants followed spoken instructions in English to click on one of the objects presented on a computer (e.g., "Click on the beans"). Within-language lexical competitors had a phoneme onset in English that was shared with…

  16. Bilingualism increases neural response consistency and attentional control: evidence for sensory and cognitive coupling.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Krizman, Jennifer; Skoe, Erika; Marian, Viorica; Kraus, Nina

    2014-01-01

    Auditory processing is presumed to be influenced by cognitive processes - including attentional control - in a top-down manner. In bilinguals, activation of both languages during daily communication hones inhibitory skills, which subsequently bolster attentional control. We hypothesize that the heightened attentional demands of bilingual communication strengthens connections between cognitive (i.e., attentional control) and auditory processing, leading to greater across-trial consistency in the auditory evoked response (i.e., neural consistency) in bilinguals. To assess this, we collected passively-elicited auditory evoked responses to the syllable [da] in adolescent Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals and separately obtained measures of attentional control and language ability. Bilinguals demonstrated enhanced attentional control and more consistent brainstem and cortical responses. In bilinguals, but not monolinguals, brainstem consistency tracked with language proficiency and attentional control. We interpret these enhancements in neural consistency as the outcome of strengthened attentional control that emerged from experience communicating in two languages. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. Role of Auditory Non-Verbal Working Memory in Sentence Repetition for Bilingual Children with Primary Language Impairment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ebert, Kerry Danahy

    2014-01-01

    Background: Sentence repetition performance is attracting increasing interest as a valuable clinical marker for primary (or specific) language impairment (LI) in both monolingual and bilingual populations. Multiple aspects of memory appear to contribute to sentence repetition performance, but non-verbal memory has not yet been considered. Aims: To…

  18. Aphasia therapy in the age of globalization: cross-linguistic therapy effects in bilingual aphasia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ansaldo, Ana Inés; Saidi, Ladan Ghazi

    2014-01-01

    Globalization imposes challenges to the field of behavioural neurology, among which is an increase in the prevalence of bilingual aphasia. Thus, aphasiologists have increasingly focused on bilingual aphasia therapy and, more recently, on the identification of the most efficient procedures for triggering language recovery in bilinguals with aphasia. Therapy in both languages is often not available, and, thus, researchers have focused on the transfer of therapy effects from the treated language to the untreated one. This paper discusses the literature on bilingual aphasia therapy, with a focus on cross-linguistic therapy effects from the language in which therapy is provided to the untreated language. Fifteen articles including two systematic reviews, providing details on pre- and posttherapy in the adult bilingual population with poststroke aphasia and anomia are discussed with regard to variables that can influence the presence or absence of cross-linguistic transfer of therapy effects. . The potential for CLT of therapy effects from the treated to the untreated language depends on the word type, the degree of structural overlap between languages, the type of therapy approach, the pre- and postmorbid language proficiency profiles, and the status of the cognitive control circuit.

  19. Bilingualism and increased attention to speech: Evidence from event-related potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kuipers, Jan Rouke; Thierry, Guillaume

    2015-10-01

    A number of studies have shown that from an early age, bilinguals outperform their monolingual peers on executive control tasks. We previously found that bilingual children and adults also display greater attention to unexpected language switches within speech. Here, we investigated the effect of a bilingual upbringing on speech perception in one language. We recorded monolingual and bilingual toddlers' event-related potentials (ERPs) to spoken words preceded by pictures. Words matching the picture prime elicited an early frontal positivity in bilingual participants only, whereas later ERP amplitudes associated with semantic processing did not differ between groups. These results add to the growing body of evidence that bilingualism increases overall attention during speech perception whilst semantic integration is unaffected. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  20. Bimodal bilingualism as multisensory training?: Evidence for improved audiovisual speech perception after sign language exposure.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Williams, Joshua T; Darcy, Isabelle; Newman, Sharlene D

    2016-02-15

    The aim of the present study was to characterize effects of learning a sign language on the processing of a spoken language. Specifically, audiovisual phoneme comprehension was assessed before and after 13 weeks of sign language exposure. L2 ASL learners performed this task in the fMRI scanner. Results indicated that L2 American Sign Language (ASL) learners' behavioral classification of the speech sounds improved with time compared to hearing nonsigners. Results indicated increased activation in the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) after sign language exposure, which suggests concomitant increased phonological processing of speech. A multiple regression analysis indicated that learner's rating on co-sign speech use and lipreading ability was correlated with SMG activation. This pattern of results indicates that the increased use of mouthing and possibly lipreading during sign language acquisition may concurrently improve audiovisual speech processing in budding hearing bimodal bilinguals. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  1. Bilingual Education and L3 Learning: Metalinguistic Advantage or Not?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rutgers, Dieuwerke; Evans, Michael

    2017-01-01

    Metalinguistic skills are highlighted in the literature as providing bilinguals with an advantage in additional language (L3) learning. The extent to which this may apply to bilingual education and content-and-language-integrated-learning settings, however, is as yet little understood. This article reports on a study exploring and comparing the…

  2. Conceptual scoring of receptive and expressive vocabulary measures in simultaneous and sequential bilingual children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gross, Megan; Buac, Milijana; Kaushanskaya, Margarita

    2014-11-01

    The authors examined the effects of conceptual scoring on the performance of simultaneous and sequential bilinguals on standardized receptive and expressive vocabulary measures in English and Spanish. Participants included 40 English-speaking monolingual children, 39 simultaneous Spanish-English bilingual children, and 19 sequential bilingual children, ages 5-7. The children completed standardized receptive and expressive vocabulary measures in English and also in Spanish for those who were bilingual. After the standardized administration, bilingual children were given the opportunity to respond to missed items in their other language to obtain a conceptual score. Controlling for group differences in socioeconomic status (SES), both simultaneous and sequential bilingual children scored significantly below monolingual children on single-language measures of English receptive and expressive vocabulary. Conceptual scoring removed the significant difference between monolingual and simultaneous bilingual children in the receptive modality but not in the expressive modality; differences remained between monolingual and sequential bilingual children in both modalities. However, in both bilingual groups, conceptual scoring increased the proportion of children with vocabulary scores within the average range. Conceptual scoring does not fully ameliorate the bias inherent in single-language standardized vocabulary measures for bilingual children, but the procedures employed here may assist in ruling out vocabulary deficits, particularly in typically developing simultaneous bilingual children.

  3. Language Assessment of a Farsi-Norwegian Bilingual Speaker with Aphasia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Koumanidi Knoph, Monica I.

    2011-01-01

    The increased occurrence of strokes combined with the high incidence of bilingualism in many regions of the world has led to an increasing number of bilingual adults with aphasia. The literature on bilingual aphasia shows the need for valid, comprehensive and reliable assessment tools for diagnostic and treatment purposes. In spite of a growing…

  4. The impact of late, non-balanced bilingualism on cognitive performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vega-Mendoza, Mariana; West, Holly; Sorace, Antonella; Bak, Thomas H

    2015-04-01

    We present a study examining cognitive functions in late non-balanced bilinguals with different levels of second language proficiency. We examined in two experiments a total of 193 mono- and bilingual university students. We assessed different aspects of attention (sustained, selective and attentional switching), verbal fluency (letter and category) as well as picture-word association as a measure of language proficiency. In Experiment 2 we also compared students in their first/initial (Y1) and fourth/final (Y4) year of either language or literature studies. There were no differences between both groups in category fluency. In selective attention, bilinguals outperformed monolinguals in Y1 and this difference remained significant in Y4 despite overall improvement in both groups. Contrasting results were found in attentional switching and letter fluency: while no differences were found in Y1 in both tasks, in Y4 there was an advantage for bilinguals in attentional switching and for monolinguals in letter fluency. We conclude that overall late-acquisition non-balanced bilinguals experience similar cognitive effects as their early-acquisition balanced counterparts. However, different cognitive effects may appear at different stages of adult second language acquisition. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  5. On the Parallel Deterioration of Lexico-Semantic Processes in the Bilinguals' Two Languages: Evidence from Alzheimer's Disease

    Science.gov (United States)

    Costa, Albert; Calabria, Marco; Marne, Paula; Hernandez, Mireia; Juncadella, Montserrat; Gascon-Bayarri, Jordi; Lleo, Alberto; Ortiz-Gil, Jordi; Ugas, Lidia; Blesa, Rafael; Rene, Ramon

    2012-01-01

    In this article we aimed to assess how Alzheimer's disease (AD), which is neurodegenerative, affects the linguistic performance of early, high-proficient bilinguals in their two languages. To this end, we compared the Picture Naming and Word Translation performances of two groups of AD patients varying in disease progression (Mild and Moderate)…

  6. Does Bilingualism Delay the Development of Dementia?

    OpenAIRE

    Amy L Atkinson

    2016-01-01

    It has been suggested that bilingualism (where individuals speak two languages) may delay the development of dementia. However, much of the research is inconclusive. Some researchers have reported that bilingualism delays the onset and diagnosis of dementia, whilst other studies have found weak or even detrimental effects. This paper reviews a series of nine empirical studies, published up until March 2016, which investigated whether bilingualism significantly delays the onset of dementia. Th...

  7. The timing and magnitude of Stroop interference and facilitation in monolinguals and bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Coderre, Emily L; VAN Heuven, Walter J B; Conklin, Kathy

    2013-04-01

    Executive control abilities and lexical access speed in Stroop performance were investigated in English monolinguals and two groups of bilinguals (English-Chinese and Chinese-English) in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages. Predictions were based on a bilingual cognitive advantage hypothesis, implicating cognitive control ability as the critical factor determining Stroop interference; and two bilingual lexical disadvantage hypotheses, focusing on lexical access speed. Importantly, each hypothesis predicts different response patterns in a Stroop task manipulating stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). There was evidence for a bilingual cognitive advantage, although this effect was sensitive to a number of variables including proficiency, language immersion, and script. In lexical access speed, no differences occurred between monolinguals and bilinguals in their native languages, but there was evidence for a delay in L2 processing speed relative to the L1. Overall, the data highlight the multitude of factors affecting executive control and lexical access speed in bilinguals.

  8. L1 and L2 Picture Naming in Mandarin-English Bilinguals: A Test of Bilingual Dual Coding Theory

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jared, Debra; Poh, Rebecca Pei Yun; Paivio, Allan

    2013-01-01

    This study examined the nature of bilinguals' conceptual representations and the links from these representations to words in L1 and L2. Specifically, we tested an assumption of the Bilingual Dual Coding Theory that conceptual representations include image representations, and that learning two languages in separate contexts can result in…

  9. Conceptual Scoring and Classification Accuracy of Vocabulary Testing in Bilingual Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anaya, Jissel B.; Peña, Elizabeth D.; Bedore, Lisa M.

    2018-01-01

    Purpose: This study examined the effects of single-language and conceptual scoring on the vocabulary performance of bilingual children with and without specific language impairment. We assessed classification accuracy across 3 scoring methods. Method: Participants included Spanish-English bilingual children (N = 247) aged 5;1 (years;months) to…

  10. Rapid naming, phonological memory and reading fluency in Brazilian bilingual students.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fleury, Fernanda Oppenheimer; Avila, Clara Regina Brandão de

    2015-01-01

    To characterize the performance of Brazilian students exposed to two languages in reading fluency, phonological memory, and rapid naming, according to grade level, and to investigate correlations between these variables. Sixty students took part in this study (50% female), enrolled in the third to the fifth grades of two elementary schools of the city of São Paulo. They constituted two groups - bilingual group: 30 Brazilian children whose mother tongue and language spoken at home was Brazilian Portuguese and who were daily exposed to English at school for a period not shorter than three years; monolingual group: 30 students, from a monolingual Brazilian elementary school, who were paired by gender, age, and grade level with the bilingual students. Foreign children, children with complaint or indication of speech and language disorder, or who had been retained were excluded. A rapid automatized naming, pseudoword repetition, and oral reading tests were administered. The bilingual children were assessed in both languages and their performances were compared among themselves and with the monolingual group, which was only assessed in Brazilian Portuguese. The bilingual group showed better performance in English, rapid naming, and pseudoword repetition tasks, whereas Brazilian Portuguese, in reading fluency. A higher number of correlations were found in Brazilian Portuguese. The results suggest that the acquisition of a second language may positively influence the abilities of rapid naming, reading rate, and accuracy. Brazilian bilingual students performed better in tasks of phonological memory in English and Brazilian Portuguese performed better in reading fluency. Different correlation patterns were found between the rapid naming, accuracy, and reading rate, in the bilingual group analysis, in both languages.

  11. Bilingual processing of ASL-English code-blends: The consequences of accessing two lexical representations simultaneously

    OpenAIRE

    Emmorey, Karen; Petrich, Jennifer; Gollan, Tamar H.

    2012-01-01

    Bilinguals who are fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) and English often produce code-blends - simultaneously articulating a sign and a word while conversing with other ASL-English bilinguals. To investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying code-blend processing, we compared picture-naming times (Experiment 1) and semantic categorization times (Experiment 2) for code-blends versus ASL signs and English words produced alone. In production, code-blending did not slow lexical retrieval for...

  12. State impulsive control strategies for a two-languages competitive model with bilingualism and interlinguistic similarity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nie, Lin-Fei; Teng, Zhi-Dong; Nieto, Juan J.; Jung, Il Hyo

    2015-07-01

    For reasons of preserving endangered languages, we propose, in this paper, a novel two-languages competitive model with bilingualism and interlinguistic similarity, where state-dependent impulsive control strategies are introduced. The novel control model includes two control threshold values, which are different from the previous state-dependent impulsive differential equations. By using qualitative analysis method, we obtain that the control model exhibits two stable positive order-1 periodic solutions under some general conditions. Moreover, numerical simulations clearly illustrate the main theoretical results and feasibility of state-dependent impulsive control strategies. Meanwhile numerical simulations also show that state-dependent impulsive control strategy can be applied to other general two-languages competitive model and obtain the desired result. The results indicate that the fractions of two competitive languages can be kept within a reasonable level under almost any circumstances. Theoretical basis for finding a new control measure to protect the endangered language is offered.

  13. Language&Learning

    OpenAIRE

    Saidi, Tamana; Djurhuus, Terji; Egeslund, Søren Due; Oikonomou, Anna Maria; Pietilä, Minerva

    2013-01-01

    This project aims to display how the process differs when acquiring a first language, two first languages simultaneously or a second language. The linguistic elements are presented in First Language and Second Language and in bilingualism. We will be looking at Chomsky’s Nativist approach, as well as Behaviorism by Skinner. Also, socio-cultural theory by Vygotsky and the cognitive approach are used. A study will be conducted to find out whether bilinguals can perform as well as native speaker...

  14. Does bilingualism influence cognitive aging?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bak, Thomas H; Nissan, Jack J; Allerhand, Michael M; Deary, Ian J

    2014-06-01

    Recent evidence suggests a positive impact of bilingualism on cognition, including later onset of dementia. However, monolinguals and bilinguals might have different baseline cognitive ability. We present the first study examining the effect of bilingualism on later-life cognition controlling for childhood intelligence. We studied 853 participants, first tested in 1947 (age = 11 years), and retested in 2008-2010. Bilinguals performed significantly better than predicted from their baseline cognitive abilities, with strongest effects on general intelligence and reading. Our results suggest a positive effect of bilingualism on later-life cognition, including in those who acquired their second language in adulthood. © 2014 The Authors Annals of Neurology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Neurological Association. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

  15. FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN YOUNG CHILDREN AND BILINGUALISM IN LIGHT OF LINGUISTICS, NEUROLINGUISTICS AND FINDINGS FROM BRAIN RESEARCH

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    Yunus PINAR

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available The present review shows that infants begin picking up elements of what will be their first language in the womb, and certainly long before their first coo according to the current guidelines and it presents a descriptive approach to bilingualism and multilingualism. This article is the outcome of a thorough survey of literature and primarily it aims to present the similarities and differences between the L1 and L2 acquisition in light of linguistics, neurolinguistics and findings from brain research. This Review will illustrate various thought and new hypotheses on first and second language development, bilingualism and multilingualism derived from studies in linguistics, neurolinguistics and brain research. In the context of our paper we shall try to describe aspects and stages of first language acquisition from even before birth especially the 20th week of the fetal development of the baby to 60th week of life, as well as the second language acquisition process, which is divided into three types: simultaneous, consecutive and adult. In particular, we will present and discuss some of the main results of the brain researchers like Franceschini and De Bleser and we shall interpret them.

  16. Psychometric function for NU-6 word recognition in noise: effects of first language and dominant language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shi, Lu-Feng; Zaki, Nancy A

    2014-01-01

    The present study attempted to establish psychometric function in individuals whose first language is not English. Psychometric function was obtained for one of the most commonly used clinical tests, the Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6 (Tillman & Carhart 1966), so that findings could be directly applied to everyday clinical practice. Five groups of 14 normal-hearing, adult listeners differing in their first language and dominant language (English monolinguals, English- and Arabic-dominant Arabic-English bilinguals, and English- and Russian-dominant Russian-English bilinguals) participated. Both forms of the Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6 test (8 lists of 50 monosyllabic English words) were presented. The lists were randomly assigned to eight signal-to-noise ratios (-3 to 18 dB in 3 dB steps). Listeners responded verbally and in writing. Psychometric functions were derived via logistic regression and described by two parameters: the 50% correct performance level (θ) and the slope (k). Both English-dominant bilingual groups obtained psychometric functions comparable with monolinguals. The θ and k of the functions for these three groups of participants were consistent with the literature. Compared with these three groups, non-English-dominant bilinguals' functions grew significantly more gradually (i.e., a significantly higher θ and a significantly lower k). No differences in either θ or k were found between bilinguals with the same dominant language but different first languages. Bilinguals reporting themselves to be dominant in English generate monolingual-like psychometric functions. By contrast, a different set of psychometric properties describes the function of bilinguals dominant in their first language. Because first language did not appear to be a significant factor in determining bilinguals' functions, it is concluded that English learning history and English proficiency are more important variables than first language for

  17. Cognitive reserve in Parkinson's disease: the effects of welsh-english bilingualism on executive function.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hindle, John V; Martin-Forbes, Pamela A; Bastable, Alexandra J M; Pye, Kirstie L; Martyr, Anthony; Whitaker, Christopher J; Craik, Fergus I M; Bialystok, Ellen; Thomas, Enlli M; Mueller Gathercole, Virginia C; Clare, Linda

    2015-01-01

    Objective. Bilingualism has been shown to benefit executive function (EF) and delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. This study aims at examining whether a bilingual advantage applies to EF in Parkinson's disease (PD). Method. In a cross-sectional outpatient cohort of monolingual English (n = 57) and bilingual Welsh/English (n = 46) speakers with PD we evaluated the effects of bilingualism compared with monolingualism on performance on EF tasks. In bilinguals we also assessed the effects of the degree of daily usage of each language and the degree of bilingualism. Results. Monolinguals showed an advantage in performance of language tests. There were no differences in performance of EF tests in monolinguals and bilinguals. Those who used Welsh less in daily life had better performance on one test of English vocabulary. The degree of bilingualism correlated with one test of nonverbal reasoning and one of working memory but with no other tests of EF. Discussion. The reasons why the expected benefit in EF in Welsh-English bilinguals with PD was not found require further study. Future studies in PD should include other language pairs, analysis of the effects of the degree of bilingualism, and longitudinal analysis of cognitive decline or dementia together with structural or functional neuroimaging.

  18. Tip-of-the-tongue in a second language: the effects of brief first-language exposure and long-term use.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kreiner, Hamutal; Degani, Tamar

    2015-04-01

    Bilinguals have more tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) incidents than monolinguals. Whereas previous research has focused on differences in the long term language experience between these groups, the present study examined the hypothesis that both long-term and transient context factors modulate TOT rates. Russian-Hebrew bilinguals who acquired Hebrew either early (11years) were compared to native Hebrew speakers on a picture naming task in Hebrew, before and after viewing a short movie in Russian. Both the short-term context (before-after the movie) and long-term language experience modulated TOT rates: Late bilinguals exhibited significantly higher TOT rates than early bilinguals who did not significantly differ from native Hebrew speakers. Critically, following the Russian movie, bilinguals in both groups differed from the native speakers of the target language. Thus, exposure to the non-target language exerted a global, non-item-specific, cross-language interference effect. The findings highlight the dynamic nature of the bilingual system in which both short and long-term language experience operate to influence bilingual performance. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  19. Oral Academic Language by Design: Bilingual Pre-Service Teachers' Purposeful Infusion of Paired Strategies during Science Instruction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arreguín-Anderson, María G.; Alanis, Iliana

    2017-01-01

    This study explores ways in which university science courses can be infused with opportunities for pre-service teachers to design student student interactions that promote language development and content mastery. Participants included bilingual pre-service teachers enrolled in an elementary science approaches course and its school-based fieldwork…

  20. Cognitive Representation of Colour in Bilinguals: The Case of Greek Blues

    Science.gov (United States)

    Athanasopoulos, Panos

    2009-01-01

    A number of recent studies demonstrate that bilinguals with languages that differ in grammatical and lexical categories may shift their cognitive representation of those categories towards that of monolingual speakers of their second language. The current paper extended that investigation to the domain of colour in Greek-English bilinguals with…

  1. Challenging Spanish: ways for nurses to become bilingual.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oderkirk, W

    1999-01-01

    A desire to provide culturally competent care to an increasing population of non-English-speakers may lead some nurses to consider learning another language as a way to minimize cross-cultural communication barriers. Nurses wishing to learn a second language may be surprised at the variety of ways to acquire bilingual skills, particularly in Spanish, the most common foreign language encountered in the United States. Reasons to learn Spanish are discussed and ways to do so are reviewed. Learning Spanish or another language can enrich the nurse-patient relationship, enhance nurses' self-esteem, and advance nurses' employment opportunities. Bilingual proficiency in English and Spanish (or another language) should be regarded as an authentic clinical skill supporting nurses' cultural and clinical competencies.

  2. Chinese Translation Errors in English/Chinese Bilingual Children's Picture Books

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Qiaoya; Chen, Xiaoning

    2012-01-01

    The aim of this study was to review the Chinese translation errors in 31 English/Chinese bilingual children's picture books. While bilingual children's books make definite contributions to language acquisition, few studies have examined the quality of these books, and even fewer have specifically focused on English/Chinese bilingual books.…

  3. Transforming Language Ideologies through Action Research: A Case Study of Bilingual Science Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Eunah

    This qualitative case study explored a third grade bilingual teacher's transformative language ideologies through participating in a collaborative action research project. By merging language ideologies theory, Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), and action research, I was able to identify the analytic focus of this study. I analyzed how one teacher and I, the researcher, collaboratively reflected on classroom language practices during the video analysis meetings and focus groups. Further, I analyzed twelve videos that we coded together to see the changes in the teacher's language practices over time. My unit of analysis was the discourse practice mediated by additive language ideologies. Throughout the collaborative action research process, we both critically reflected on the classroom language use. We also developed a critical consciousness about the participatory shifts and learning of focal English Learner (EL) students. Finally, the teacher made changes to her classroom language practices. The results of this study will contribute to the literacy education research field for theoretical, methodological, and practical insights. The integration of language ideologies, CHAT, and action research can help educational practitioners, researchers, and policy makers understand the importance of transforming teachers' language ideologies in designing additive learning contexts for ELs. From a methodological perspective, the transformative language ideologies through researcher and teacher collaborated video analysis process provide a unique contribution to the language ideologies in education literature, with analytic triangulation. As a practical implication, this study suggests action research can be one of the teacher education tools to help the teachers transform language ideologies for EL education.

  4. Bilingualism as Conceptualized and Bilingualism as Lived: A Critical Examination of the Monolingual Socialization of a Child with Autism in a Bilingual Family

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yu, Betty

    2016-01-01

    This is an ethnographic and discourse analytic case study of a bilingual, minority-language family of a six-year-old child with autism whose family members were committed to speaking English with him. Drawing on "family language policy," the study examines the tensions between the family members' stated beliefs, management efforts, and…

  5. Vocabulary Growth in Armenian-English Bilingual Kindergarteners

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hovsepian, Alice

    2018-01-01

    Four-year-old (n = 20) and five-year-old (n = 22) bilingual children were tested twice in six months on Armenian (minority language) and English (majority language) picture identification and picture naming tasks to examine receptive and expressive vocabulary growth in both languages. Parental education, Armenian/English language exposure, and…

  6. '¡Hable Bien M'Ijo O Gringo O Mx!': Language Ideologies in the Digital Communication Practices of Transnational Mexican Bilinguals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Christiansen, M. Sidury

    2018-01-01

    This article examines Facebook conversations between members of a transnational social network of US- and Mexico-born English/Spanish bilinguals. Extending Bourdieu's theory of language and symbolic power, the article uses the framework of language ideologies to explore how members establish identity and membership differently depending on whether…

  7. Plasticity of illusory vowel perception in Brazilian-Japanese bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Parlato-Oliveira, Erika; Christophe, Anne; Hirose, Yuki; Dupoux, Emmanuel

    2010-06-01

    Previous research shows that monolingual Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese listeners perceive illusory vowels (/u/ and /i/, respectively) within illegal sequences of consonants. Here, several populations of Japanese-Brazilian bilinguals are tested, using an explicit vowel identification task (experiment 1), and an implicit categorization and sequence recall task (experiment 2). Overall, second-generation immigrants, who first acquired Japanese at home and Brazilian during childhood (after age 4) showed a typical Brazilian pattern of result (and so did simultaneous bilinguals, who were exposed to both languages from birth on). In contrast, late bilinguals, who acquired their second language in adulthood, exhibited a pattern corresponding to their native language. In addition, an influence of the second language was observed in the explicit task of Exp. 1, but not in the implicit task used in Exp. 2, suggesting that second language experience affects mostly explicit or metalinguistic skills. These results are compared to other studies of phonological representations in adopted children or immigrants, and discussed in relation to the role of age of acquisition and sociolinguistic factors.

  8. DEEP LEARNING MODEL FOR BILINGUAL SENTIMENT CLASSIFICATION OF SHORT TEXTS

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    Y. B. Abdullin

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Sentiment analysis of short texts such as Twitter messages and comments in news portals is challenging due to the lack of contextual information. We propose a deep neural network model that uses bilingual word embeddings to effectively solve sentiment classification problem for a given pair of languages. We apply our approach to two corpora of two different language pairs: English-Russian and Russian-Kazakh. We show how to train a classifier in one language and predict in another. Our approach achieves 73% accuracy for English and 74% accuracy for Russian. For Kazakh sentiment analysis, we propose a baseline method, that achieves 60% accuracy; and a method to learn bilingual embeddings from a large unlabeled corpus using a bilingual word pairs.

  9. Novel Morpheme Learning in Monolingual and Bilingual Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gross, Megan; Sheena, Enanna; Roman, Rachel

    2017-01-01

    Purpose The purpose of the present study was to examine the utility of a novel morpheme learning task for indexing typical language abilities in children characterized by diverse language backgrounds. Method Three groups of 5- to 6-year-old children were tested: monolingual speakers of English, native speakers of Spanish who also spoke English (Spanish-L1 bilinguals), and native speakers of English who also spoke Spanish (English-L1 bilinguals). All children were taught a new derivational morpheme /ku/ marking part–whole distinction in conjunction with English nouns. Retention was measured via a receptive task, and sensitivity and reaction time (RT) data were collected. Results All three groups of children learned the novel morpheme successfully and were able to generalize its use to untaught nouns. Furthermore, language characteristics (degree of exposure and levels of performance on standardized measures) did not contribute to bilingual children's learning outcomes. Conclusion Together, the findings indicate that this particular version of the novel morpheme learning task may be resistant to influences associated with language background and suggest potential usefulness of the task to clinical practice. PMID:28399578

  10. The Role of Emergent Bilingualism in the Development of Morphological Awareness in Arabic and Hebrew.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schwartz, Mila; Taha, Haitham; Assad, Hanan; Khamaisi, Ferdos; Eviatar, Zohar

    2016-08-01

    The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of dual language development and cross-linguistic influence on morphological awareness in young bilinguals' first language (L1) and second language (L2). We examined whether (a) the bilingual children (L1/L2 Arabic and L1/L2 Hebrew) precede their monolingual Hebrew- or Arabic-speaking peers in L1 and L2 morphological awareness, and (b) 1 Semitic language (Arabic) has cross-linguistic influence on another Semitic language (Hebrew) in morphological awareness. The study sample comprised 93 six-year-old children. The bilinguals had attended bilingual Hebrew-Arabic kindergartens for 1 academic year and were divided into 2 groups: home language Hebrew (L1) and home language Arabic (L1). These groups were compared to age-matched monolingual Hebrew speakers and monolingual Arabic speakers. We used nonwords similar in structure to familiar words in both target languages, representing 6 inflectional morphological categories. L1 Arabic and L1 Hebrew bilinguals performed significantly better than Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking monolinguals in the respective languages. Differences were not found between the bilingual groups. We found evidence of cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness from Arabic to Hebrew in 2 categories-bound possessives and dual number-probably because these categories are more salient in Palestinian Spoken Arabic than in Hebrew. We conclude that children with even an initial exposure to L2 reveal acceleration of sensitivity to word structure in both of their languages. We suggest that this is due to the fact that two Semitic languages, Arabic and Hebrew, share a common core of linguistic features, together with favorable contextual factors and instructional factors.

  11. Cognitive control, cognitive reserve, and memory in the aging bilingual brain

    OpenAIRE

    Grant, Angela; Dennis, Nancy A.; Li, Ping

    2014-01-01

    In recent years bilingualism has been linked to both advantages in executive control and positive impacts on aging. Such positive cognitive effects of bilingualism have been attributed to the increased need for language control during bilingual processing and increased cognitive reserve, respectively. However, a mechanistic explanation of how bilingual experience contributes to cognitive reserve is still lacking. The current paper proposes a new focus on bilingual memory as an avenue to explo...

  12. New Directions in ASL-English Bilingual Ebooks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stone, Adam

    2014-01-01

    The widespread adoption of smartphones and tablet computers have enabled the rapid creation and distribution of innovative American Sign Language (ASL) and written English bilingual ebooks, aimed primarily at deaf and hard-of-hearing children. These sign-print bilingual ebooks are unique in how they take advantage of digital platforms to display…

  13. Bilingual Learning for Language Development of Deaf Children in the Context of Intercultural Education

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    Anna Irasiak

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available The article includes an analysis of issues concerning the question of intercultural pedagogy, i.e. the notions of multiculturalism and interculturalism, creating identity in the context of multiculturalism and multicultural and intercultural education. It also presents the situation of people with hearing impairment and the culture they create on the basis of sign language, a way of communication different from the dominant one, in relation with the culture of the dominant group, people who are perfectly able and use the phonic language. Coexistence of distinct cultures of unequal status in the same area has consequences for the education of a deaf child. One solution might be a method of bilingual teaching that enables unimpeded development (in particular language development while passing on norms and values typical of the minority culture and acquiring general facts in a manner appropriate to the learner’s needs.

  14. Cross-Linguistic Interactions Influence Reading Development in Bilinguals: A Comparison between Early Balanced French-Basque and Spanish-Basque Bilingual Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lallier, Marie; Acha, Joana; Carreiras, Manuel

    2016-01-01

    This study investigates whether orthographic consistency and transparency of languages have an impact on the development of reading strategies and reading sub-skills (i.e. phonemic awareness and visual attention span) in bilingual children. We evaluated 21 French (opaque)-Basque (transparent) bilingual children and 21 Spanish (transparent)-Basque…

  15. Effectiveness of Bilingual Education in Cambodia: A Longitudinal Comparative Case Study of Ethnic Minority Children in Bilingual and Monolingual Schools

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Scott; Watt, Ron; Frawley, Jack

    2015-01-01

    There is little research in the developing countries of South East Asia on the effectiveness of bilingual education programmes that use first language instruction for ethnic minority children. This study investigated the effectiveness of a bilingual education programme involving ethnic minority children in Cambodia by comparing their performance…

  16. The Influence of Semantic Constraints on Bilingual Word Recognition during Sentence Reading

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van Assche, Eva; Drieghe, Denis; Duyck, Wouter; Welvaert, Marijke; Hartsuiker, Robert J.

    2011-01-01

    The present study investigates how semantic constraint of a sentence context modulates language-non-selective activation in bilingual visual word recognition. We recorded Dutch-English bilinguals' eye movements while they read cognates and controls in low and high semantically constraining sentences in their second language. Early and late…

  17. Serial-position effects on a free-recall task in bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yoo, Jeewon; Kaushanskaya, Margarita

    2016-01-01

    In this study, we examined mechanisms that underlie free-recall performance in bilinguals' first language (L1) and second language (L2) through the prism of serial-position effects. On free-recall tasks, a typical pattern of performance follows a U-shaped serial-position curve, where items from the beginning of the list (the primacy effect) and items from the end of the list (the recency effect) are recalled with higher accuracy than items from the middle of the list. The present study contrasted serial-position effects on the free-recall task in Korean-English bilinguals' L1 vs. L2 and examined the relationship between an independent working memory (WM) measure and serial-position effects in bilinguals' two languages. Results revealed stronger pre-recency (primacy and middle) effects in L1 than in L2, but similar recency effects in the two languages. A close association was observed between WM and recall performance in the pre-recency region in the L1 but not in the L2. Together, these findings suggest that linguistic knowledge constrains free-recall performance in bilinguals, but only in the pre-recency region.

  18. Comparing Narrative Microstructure between Bilingual Balochi-Persian and Monolingual Persian Preschoolers

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    Maryam Arabpour

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available Background: To date, with rapid increase of bilingual children, more attention about different patterns of the bilingual children narratives is needed. The aim of this study was to compare microstructure level of narratives generated by typical developing kindergarten children who were bilingual in Persian and Balochi with monolingual Persian speakers. Method: Thirty Persian-speaking monolingual and thirteen available bilingual children (aged 48 months old participated in this study. Children’s story telling was audio-recorded and analyzed using the Persian-NAP (Narrative Assessment Protocol guidelines. Results: All of the NAP indicators include of group structure, phrase structure, modifiers, noun and verbs didn’t show significant difference between monolingual and bilingual children (0.06≤p≤0.5. Conclusion: We didn’t find different performance in the five NAP indicators between bilingual and monolingual children. It may be suggested that the different patterns of creating phrases and sentences in two languages don’t affect the grammatical use of them in second language.

  19. Cognitive Reserve in Parkinson’s Disease: The Effects of Welsh-English Bilingualism on Executive Function

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    John V. Hindle

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Objective. Bilingualism has been shown to benefit executive function (EF and delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. This study aims at examining whether a bilingual advantage applies to EF in Parkinson’s disease (PD. Method. In a cross-sectional outpatient cohort of monolingual English (n=57 and bilingual Welsh/English (n=46 speakers with PD we evaluated the effects of bilingualism compared with monolingualism on performance on EF tasks. In bilinguals we also assessed the effects of the degree of daily usage of each language and the degree of bilingualism. Results. Monolinguals showed an advantage in performance of language tests. There were no differences in performance of EF tests in monolinguals and bilinguals. Those who used Welsh less in daily life had better performance on one test of English vocabulary. The degree of bilingualism correlated with one test of nonverbal reasoning and one of working memory but with no other tests of EF. Discussion. The reasons why the expected benefit in EF in Welsh-English bilinguals with PD was not found require further study. Future studies in PD should include other language pairs, analysis of the effects of the degree of bilingualism, and longitudinal analysis of cognitive decline or dementia together with structural or functional neuroimaging.

  20. Bilingual Education Model in Prekmurje, and the Dictionary as a Teaching Aid

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jutka Rudaš

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available The model of bilingual education is one of the two-way models of preserving two languages and cultures. This paper describes the successful implementation of a bilingual education process, with a short developmental span and an emphasis on the key deficiencies of the model. By getting to know two cultures and two social relationships and by understanding them, pupils develop a positive attitude to cultural diversity as well as intercultural relationships. Within the framework of school subjects, we teach professional terminology in both languages and thus educate speakers in a way that they experience linguistic and cultural diversity in the ethnically mixed area of Prekmurje. The model of the two-way preservation of the mother tongue makes sense only if the community and the society benefit from bilingualism, and if important and above-average intercultural and social competences that contribute to peaceful coexistence of different cultures are allowed access. Practice shows that so far these goals have not been fully implemented, that there is no ideal relationship between the languages of instruction and that the desired results are not implemented. We have found that there are two shortcomings in this respect: the incomplete didactic aspect and the inadequate competence of teachers in bilingual educational institutions owing to the lack of possibility of acquiring the appropriate competences, particularly in the Hungarian language. Among the most important means for the efficiency of the language structure acquisition and language use are bilingual textbooks and other teaching aids. Based on these findings, this paper presents cognitive and other skills that enable the integration of a bilingual dictionary into the teaching process. As this is a demanding and important skill, it is crucial that teachers and pupils are trained in this activity. The dictionary as a didactic tool is not merely a means of information but also a basis for the

  1. To electrify bilingualism: Electrophysiological insights into bilingual metaphor comprehension.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jankowiak, Katarzyna; Rataj, Karolina; Naskręcki, Ryszard

    2017-01-01

    Though metaphoric language comprehension has previously been investigated with event-related potentials, little attention has been devoted to extending this research from the monolingual to the bilingual context. In the current study, late proficient unbalanced Polish (L1)-English (L2) bilinguals performed a semantic decision task to novel metaphoric, conventional metaphoric, literal, and anomalous word pairs presented in L1 and L2. The results showed more pronounced P200 amplitudes to L2 than L1, which can be accounted for by differences in the subjective frequency of the native and non-native lexical items. Within the early N400 time window (300-400 ms), L2 word dyads evoked delayed and attenuated amplitudes relative to L1 word pairs, possibly indicating extended lexical search during foreign language processing, and weaker semantic interconnectivity for L2 compared to L1 words within the memory system. The effect of utterance type was observed within the late N400 time window (400-500 ms), with smallest amplitudes evoked by literal, followed by conventional metaphoric, novel metaphoric, and anomalous word dyads. Such findings are interpreted as reflecting more resource intensive cognitive mechanisms governing novel compared to conventional metaphor comprehension in both the native and non-native language. Within the late positivity time window (500-800 ms), Polish novel metaphors evoked reduced amplitudes relative to literal utterances. In English, on the other hand, this effect was observed for both novel and conventional metaphoric word dyads. This finding might indicate continued effort in information retrieval or access to the non-literal route during novel metaphor comprehension in L1, and during novel and conventional metaphor comprehension in L2. Altogether, the present results point to decreased automaticity of cognitive mechanisms engaged in non-native and non-dominant language processing, and suggest a decreased sensitivity to the levels of

  2. Materiales en marcha para el esfuerzo bilingue-bicultural (Materials on the March for the Promotion of Bilingualism/Biculturalism), September 1973.

    Science.gov (United States)

    San Diego City Schools, CA.

    This newsletter is designed to promote the needs and interests of bilingual-bicultural education. This issue contains the following articles: (1) What in the World Is a Team-Teaching, Continuous Progress, Non-Graded, Open Classroom in Bilingual Bicultural Education?, (2) Laughter and Anaya's "Lenguaje," (3) "Alegrias" and the Language Experience…

  3. Materiales en Marcha para el Esfuerzo Bilingue--Bicultural (Materials on the March for the Promotion of Bilingualism/Biculturalism), August 1972.

    Science.gov (United States)

    San Diego City Schools, CA.

    This newsletter seeks to promote the concept of bilingual-bicultural education. Among its articles are "Steps Toward Effective Bilingualism,""A 'Used' Teacher's View of New Language Arts Materials,""Rich Resources for Reading," and "Tidbits to Turn On Science Students and Teachers." Book reviews and a list of recommended reading materials are…

  4. “The Language of Gods”: The Pragmatics of Bilingual Parallelism in Ritual Ch’orti’ Maya Discourse

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kerry Hull

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available In this study I investigate the discursive function of parallelism in the ritual speech of Ch’orti’ Maya. Specifically, I examine the exploitation of the dual lexicons of Ch’orti’ Mayan and Spanish in the production of parallel structures. Ch’orti’ ritual speech is almost universally constructed in parallelistic fashion, accomplishing at once a near hypnotic cadence when performed, while also serving various pragmatic functions. I detail the dynamic breadth of what I refer to as bilingual parallelism, i.e., parallelism that involves the pairing of synonymous terms from different languages in a distich. The effective use of parallelistic speech is said by the Ch’orti’ to be an imitation of the speech patterns of the gods themselves, thereby further explaining its importance in ceremonial contexts when speaking to gods and otherworld beings.

  5. Attitudinal Dimensions of Guarani-Spanish Bilingualism in Paraguay.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gynan, Shaw N.

    1998-01-01

    Provides a study of language attitudes in Paraguay's unique Spanish-Guarani bilingual situation. Suggests issues of public opinion that language policy makers should consider in determining the roles of the two languages, especially with respect to literacy education. (Author/VWL)

  6. Bilingual Latino Students Learn Science for Fun While Developing Language and Cognition: Biophilia at a La Clase Mágica Site

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    María G. Arreguín-Anderson

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available Abstract In this article, the author suggests that children’s natural inclination to explore nature, or biophilia, can be explored as a factor that encourages both cognitive engagement and language development. The author summarizes the types of scientific inquiries that bilingual elementary students and their university partners engaged in when guided to design their own projects at a predominantly Mexican-American school. Children inquiries took place at a La Clase Mágica site, an after school program in which university undergraduates, faculty, bilingual children, and the community come together with the purpose of learning and exploring technology through interdisciplinary methodologies. The findings indicate that children overwhelmingly chose living organisms and life-like processes as the focus of their inquiries. The author presents the work of an exemplary dyad to illustrate how children engaged in scientific inquiry while developing language and complex thinking.

  7. Two Languages, Number One Authors: The Influence of Bilingual Upbringing on the Literary Accomplishments of Roald Dahl and Dr. Seuss

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ivana Marinić

    2008-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper focuses on the nature and impact of bilingual upbringing on cognitive development, thought and cultural experience of two bestselling authors, Roald Dahl and Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss. It argues that this bilingual upbringing resulted in a specific use of language in their literary accomplishments. Several segments from representative works by Dahl and Dr. Seuss are examined in order to reveal the stylistic particularities of the two authors, such as their original argot, word play, neologisms, the art of exaggeration and nonsense, as well as various aspects of metaphor. This is to show that bilingualism may be a decisive factor in creating a fruitful environment for the development of original and recognizable mode of written expression, which not only transcends cognitive and linguistic boundaries, but also cultural borderlines, resulting in the emergence of a new cultural artistic identity.

  8. The Baby and the Bathwater or What Immersion Has to Say about Bilingual Education: Teaching and Learning in Bilingual Education--Significant Immersion Instructional Features.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Genesee, Fred

    1986-01-01

    Identifies differences between bilingual programs for minority language children and second-language immersion programs for majority language children. Examines points of mutual relevance between approaches. Discusses exemplary characteristics of effective second-language learning environments: integration of language and academic instruction,…

  9. [The early expressive vocabulary size in simultaneous bilingual growing-up infants - a diagnostic relevant criterion?].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kiese-Himmel, C; Sellner, L; Bockmann, A-K

    2013-08-01

    Bilingual young children's early expressive vocabulary size and its composition (as one domain of the language development) should be examined to find out whether children with a risk for delayed language development may be identified in this way. 30 bilingual kindergarten infants from Berlin (with simultaneous language acquisition; second language German) and 30 monolingual German infants from the greater areas of Stuttgart and Heidelberg were pair matched (mean chronological age 22.5 [SD 3.1] months; min 16; max 26). The German expressive vocabulary checklist Elternfragebogen zur Wort-schatzentwicklung im frühen Kindesalter (ELAN; Bockmann & Kiese-Himmel, 2006) was filled out by all parents. In addition, parents of bilingual infants completed the adaption of the German vocabulary checklist Sprachbeurteilung durch Eltern (SBE-2-KT; v. Suchodoletz & Sachse, 2008) for the second mother tongue. The monolinguals' word sum in the ELAN (145.7; SD 75.8) differed significantly (p=0.001) from the bilinguals' word sum (78.3; SD 78.9 words). In contrast, bilinguals did not significantly differ in their overall expressive vocabulary size (ELAN+SBE-2-KT: 101.2; SD 77.0 words) from their monolingual counterparts (ELAN). Because bilinguals had a similar sized overall early vocabulary (both languages) like monolingual German-learning infants, the diagnostic criterion to identify late talkers with 24 months of age (less than 50 German words and no word combinations) should not be applied to bilingually infants with simultaneously double language acquisition. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

  10. The Use of the Bilingual Aphasia Test for Assessment and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to Modulate Language Acquisition in Minimally Verbal Children with Autism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schneider, Harry D.; Hopp, Jenna P.

    2011-01-01

    Minimally verbal children with autism commonly demonstrate language dysfunction, including immature syntax acquisition. We hypothesised that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) should facilitate language acquisition in a cohort (n = 10) of children with immature syntax. We modified the English version of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT)…

  11. Impact of Bilingual Education Programs on Limited English Proficient Students and Their Peers

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Daysal, N. Meltem; Chin, Aimee; Imberman, Scott

    2013-01-01

    bilingual education above this 20-student cutoff. Using this discontinuity as an instrument for district bilingual education provision, we find that providing bilingual education programs (relative to providing only English as a Second Language programs) does not significantly impact the standardized test...... scores of students with Spanish as their home language (comprised primarily of ever-LEP students). However, we find significant positive impacts on non-LEP students’ achievement, which indicates that education programs for LEP students have spillover effects to non-LEP students.......Texas requires a school district to offer bilingual education when its enrollment of limited English proficient (LEP) students in a particular elementary grade and language is twenty or higher. Using school panel data, we find a significant increase in the probability that a district provides...

  12. Bilingual child acquisition through the lens of sociolinguistic approaches

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Cornips, L.; Miller, David; Bayram, Fatih; Rothman, Jason; Serratrice, Ludovica

    2018-01-01

    This paper entails a perspective on bilingual child acquisition through the lens of sociolinguistic approaches. A discussion of the concepts of monolingual language ideology and power dynamics is undertaken in order to reveal their important consequences on studying bilingual child acquisition, in

  13. Story grammar elements and causal relations in the narratives of Russian-Hebrew bilingual children with SLI and typical language development.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fichman, Sveta; Altman, Carmit; Voloskovich, Anna; Armon-Lotem, Sharon; Walters, Joel

    2017-09-01

    While there is general agreement regarding poor performance of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) on microstructure measures of narrative production, findings on macrostructure are inconsistent. The present study analyzed narrative abilities of Russian-Hebrew bilingual preschool children with and without SLI, with a particular focus on story grammar (SG) elements and causal relations, in order to identify macrostructure features which distinguish bilingual children with SLI from those with typical development. Narratives were collected from 35 typically developing bilinguals (BiTD) and 14 bilinguals with SLI (BiSLI) in both Russian/L1 and Hebrew/L2 using a retelling procedure (LITMUS-Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives) (Gagarina, Klop, Kunnari, Tantele, Välimaa, Balčiūnienė, Bohnacker, & Walters, 2012). Each story contained three episodes, and each episode introduced a different protagonist with explicitly stated Goals (G), Attempts (A) and Outcomes (O). Causal relations assessed included Enabling, Physical, Motivational, and Psychological relations, following Trabasso & Nickels (1992). Each Goal-Attempt-Outcome (GAO) episode was examined for the use of SG elements and causal relations. Group differences emerged for both aspects of macrostructure. For causal relations, narratives of BiSLI children contained fewer Enabling and Physical relations, and differed qualitatively from those of BiTD children. For SG elements, BiSLI children referred to fewer SG elements than BiTD children in the first episode, but performed like BiTD children in the second and the third episodes. Story grammar elements in specific episodes along with Enabling and Physical causal relations distinguish the narratives of children with BiSLI from those with BiTD, which stresses the importance of examining wider array of macrostructure features in narratives. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  14. Zionism & Bilingualism

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hvid, Carmit Romano

    2010-01-01

    In Today’s Israel the school system is divided by nationality and language. Jews study in Jewish only schools and the medium of instruction is Hebrew, while Arabs study in Arab only schools and the medium of instruction is Arabic. The first initiative of Arab-Jewish bilingual education is from...... schools throughout the country. In those schools, pupils from the two populations, Jews and Arabs receive their primary schooling in the two languages concurrently. This unique educational phenomenon has attracted considerable attention in the media and the published press, and both documentary films...

  15. Multilingualism (but not always bilingualism) delays the onset of Alzheimer disease: evidence from a bilingual community.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chertkow, Howard; Whitehead, Victor; Phillips, Natalie; Wolfson, Christina; Atherton, Julie; Bergman, Howard

    2010-01-01

    A recent paper by Bialystok et al in Neuropsychologia (vol. 45, pgs. 459 to 464) suggested that early bilingualism produced a statistically significant 4.1-year delay in onset of memory loss symptoms in older individuals with Alzheimer disease, possibly reflecting an increase in the cognitive reserve of these individuals. That study focused on multilingual elderly patients of whom 90% were immigrants. Our memory clinic, in Montreal Canada, has the advantage of having a large set of individuals who are either multilingual immigrants to Canada, or who are nonimmigrants but raised in both official languages of Canada--French and English. We thus attempted to replicate the above findings using a larger cohort in a different setting. We examined age at diagnosis of Alzheimer disease and age at symptom onset for all unilingual versus multilingual participants, and then for those who were nonimmigrant English/French bilinguals. Overall, we found a small but significant protective effect of more than 2 languages spoken, but we found no significant benefit in bilinguals overall in relation to age at diagnosis or age at symptom onset. However, in the immigrant group, the results mirrored those of Bialystok et al with 2 or more languages delaying the diagnosis of Alzheimer disease by almost 5 years. A trend toward the same effect was also seen in nonimmigrants whose first language was French. In contrast, in nonimmigrants whose first language was English, no such effect was found. These results are discussed in relation to the earlier findings and the theory of cognitive reserve.

  16. Constructing and positioning oneself bilingual: Code-switching in classroom interactions of two Turkish-Norwegian fifth-graders.

    OpenAIRE

    Kucherenko, Svitlana

    2011-01-01

    This case-study compares the language use of two Turkish-Norwegian fifth-graders, examining how they utilize their bilingual resources in order to position themselves as learning and social individuals. A common perception of bilingualism as a mental quality of an individual often results in measurement of the bilingual practices in accordance to monolingual criteria. Thus, the fact that bilinguals daily appear to be a part of a setting with two or more languages present, often remains ignore...

  17. Survey of Spanish parents of children who are deaf or hard of hearing: decision-making factors associated with communication modality and bilingualism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guiberson, Mark

    2013-06-01

    The purpose of the present study was (a) to describe factors and trends associated with Spanish parents’ choice of communication modality and spoken language bilingualism for children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) and (b) to identify if bilingual variables predict children’s bilingual status in a country where bilingualism is common. Seventy-one Spanish parents of children who are DHH completed an online survey that included questions about demographics, family and professional involvement and support, accessibility to information and services, and bilingual background and beliefs. Analyses were completed to describe groups and to examine how variables were associated with parents’ decisions. Thirty-eight percent of parents chose to raise their children to be spoken-language bilingual. Most parents indicated that they believed being bilingual was beneficial for their children and that children who are DHH are capable of becoming bilingual in spoken languages. Parent’s bilingual score, beliefs about raising children who are DHH bilingually, and encouragement to do so, were significantly associated with children’s bilingual status. In communities where bilingualism is common, bilingual parents will often choose to raise children who are DHH bilingual in spoken languages. Implications for practice and future studies in the United States are provided.

  18. Does bilingualism contribute to cognitive reserve? Cognitive and neural perspectives.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guzmán-Vélez, Edmarie; Tranel, Daniel

    2015-01-01

    Cognitive reserve refers to how individuals actively utilize neural resources to cope with neuropathology to maintain cognitive functioning. The present review aims to critically examine the literature addressing the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive reserve to elucidate whether bilingualism delays the onset of cognitive and behavioral manifestations of dementia. Potential neural mechanisms behind this relationship are discussed. PubMed and PsycINFO databases were searched (through January 2014) for original research articles in English or Spanish languages. The following search strings were used as keywords for study retrieval: "bilingual AND reserve," "reserve AND neural mechanisms," and "reserve AND multilingualism." Growing scientific evidence suggests that lifelong bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve and delays the onset of Alzheimer's disease symptoms, allowing bilingual individuals affected by Alzheimer's disease to live an independent and richer life for a longer time than their monolingual counterparts. Lifelong bilingualism is related to more efficient use of brain resources that help individuals maintain cognitive functioning in the presence of neuropathology. We propose multiple putative neural mechanisms through which lifelong bilinguals cope with neuropathology. The roles of immigration status, education, age of onset, proficiency, and frequency of language use on the relationship between cognitive reserve and bilingualism are considered. Implications of these results for preventive practices and future research are discussed. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.

  19. Does Bilingualism Contribute to Cognitive Reserve? Cognitive and Neural Perspectives

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guzmán-Vélez, Edmarie; Tranel, Daniel

    2015-01-01

    Objective Cognitive reserve refers to how individuals actively utilize neural resources to cope with neuropathology in order to maintain cognitive functioning. The present review aims to critically examine the literature addressing the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive reserve in order to elucidate whether bilingualism delays the onset of cognitive and behavioral manifestations of dementia. Potential neural mechanisms behind this relationship are discussed. Method Pubmed and PsychINFO databases were searched (through January 2014) for original research articles in English or Spanish languages. The following search strings were employed as keywords for study retrieval: ‘bilingual AND reserve’, ‘reserve AND neural mechanisms’, and ‘reserve AND multilingualism’. Results Growing scientific evidence suggests that lifelong bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve and delays the onset of Alzheimer's disease symptoms, allowing bilingual individuals affected by Alzheimer's disease to live an independent and richer life for a longer time than their monolingual counterparts. Lifelong bilingualism is related to more efficient use of brain resources that help individuals maintain cognitive functioning in the presence of neuropathology. We propose multiple putative neural mechanisms through which lifelong bilinguals cope with neuropathology. The roles of immigration status, education, age of onset, proficiency and frequency of language use on the relationship between cognitive reserve and bilingualism are considered. Conclusions Implications of these results for preventive practices and future research are discussed. PMID:24933492

  20. Bilingualism Alters Children's Frontal Lobe Functioning for Attentional Control

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arredondo, Maria M.; Hu, Xiao-Su; Satterfield, Teresa; Kovelman, Ioulia

    2017-01-01

    Bilingualism is a typical linguistic experience, yet relatively little is known about its impact on children's cognitive and brain development. Theories of bilingualism suggest that early dual-language acquisition can improve children's cognitive abilities, specifically those relying on frontal lobe functioning. While behavioral findings present…

  1. How to "Save Your Skin" When Processing L2 Idioms: An Eye Movement Analysis of Idiom Transparency and Cross-Language Similarity among Bilinguals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cieslicka, Anna B.; Heredia, Roberto R.

    2017-01-01

    The current study looks at whether bilinguals varying in language dominance show a processing advantage for idiomatic over non-idiomatic phrases and to what extent this effect is modulated by idiom transparency (i.e., the degree to which the idiom's figurative meaning can be inferred from its literal analysis) and cross-language similarity (i.e.,…

  2. Age of Bilingual Exposure Is Related to the Contribution of Phonological and Semantic Knowledge to Successful Reading Development.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jasińska, Kaja K; Petitto, Laura-Ann

    2018-01-01

    Bilingual children's reading as a function of age of first bilingual language exposure (AoE) was examined. Bilingual (varied AoE) and monolingual children (N = 421) were compared in their English language and reading abilities (6-10 years) using phonological awareness, semantic knowledge, and reading tasks. Structural equation modeling was applied to determine how bilingual AoE predicts reading outcomes. Early exposed bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on phonological awareness and word reading. Phonology and semantic (vocabulary) knowledge differentially predicted reading depending on the bilingual experience and AoE. Understanding how bilingual experiences impact phonological awareness and semantic knowledge, and in turn, impact reading outcomes is relevant for our understanding of what language and reading skills are best to focus on, and when, to promote optimal reading success. © 2017 The Authors. Child Development © 2017 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

  3. Reading, syntactic, orthographic, and working memory skills of bilingual Arabic-English speaking Canadian children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Abu-Rabia, Salim; Siegel, Linda S

    2002-11-01

    This study assessed the reading, language, and memory skills of 56 bilingual Arab-Canadian children age's 9-14. English was their main instructional language, and Arabic was the language spoken at home. All children attended a Heritage Language Program in Toronto where they were taught to read and write Arabic. The children were administered word and pseudo-word reading, language, and working memory tests in English and Arabic. The majority of the children showed at least adequate proficiency in both languages. There was a significant relationship between the acquisition of word and pseudo-word reading working memory, and syntactic awareness skills in the two languages. The poor readers in Arabic had lower scores on all linguistic tasks, except the visual task. There were no significant differences between bilingual English Arabic children and monolingual English-speaking children on the reading, language, and memory tasks. However, bilingual English Arabic children who had reading problems in English had higher scores on English pseudo-word reading and spelling tasks than monolingual English-speaking children with reading disabilities, probably because of positive transfer from the regular nature of Arabic orthography. In this case, bilingualism does not appear to have negative consequences for the development of language reading skills in both languages--Arabic and English--despite the different nature of the two orthographies.

  4. Using What Matters to Students in Bilingual Mathematics Problems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dominguez, Higinio

    2011-01-01

    In this study, the author represented what matters to bilingual students in their everyday lives--namely bilingualism and everyday experiences--in school-based mathematical problems. Solving problems in pairs, students demonstrated different patterns of organizing and coordinating talk across problem contexts and across languages. Because these…

  5. The gender congruency effect during bilingual spoken-word recognition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morales, Luis; Paolieri, Daniela; Dussias, Paola E.; Valdés kroff, Jorge R.; Gerfen, Chip; Bajo, María Teresa

    2016-01-01

    We investigate the ‘gender-congruency’ effect during a spoken-word recognition task using the visual world paradigm. Eye movements of Italian–Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals were monitored while they viewed a pair of objects on a computer screen. Participants listened to instructions in Spanish (encuentra la bufanda / ‘find the scarf’) and clicked on the object named in the instruction. Grammatical gender of the objects’ name was manipulated so that pairs of objects had the same (congruent) or different (incongruent) gender in Italian, but gender in Spanish was always congruent. Results showed that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, looked at target objects less when they were incongruent in gender, suggesting a between-language gender competition effect. In addition, bilinguals looked at target objects more when the definite article in the spoken instructions provided a valid cue to anticipate its selection (different-gender condition). The temporal dynamics of gender processing and cross-language activation in bilinguals are discussed. PMID:28018132

  6. Bilingual visual word recognition and lexical access

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Dijkstra, A.F.J.; Kroll, J.F.; Groot, A.M.B. de

    2005-01-01

    In spite of the intuition of many bilinguals, a review of empirical studies indicates that during reading under many circumstances, possible words from different languages temporarily become active. Such evidence for "language non-selective lexical access" is found using stimulus materials of

  7. Age of acquisition and naming performance in Frisian-Dutch bilingual speakers with dementia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Veenstra, Wencke S; Huisman, Mark; Miller, Nick

    2014-01-01

    Age of acquisition (AoA) of words is a recognised variable affecting language processing in speakers with and without language disorders. For bi- and multilingual speakers their languages can be differentially affected in neurological illness. Study of language loss in bilingual speakers with dementia has been relatively neglected. We investigated whether AoA of words was associated with level of naming impairment in bilingual speakers with probable Alzheimer's dementia within and across their languages. Twenty-six Frisian-Dutch bilinguals with mild to moderate dementia named 90 pictures in each language, employing items with rated AoA and other word variable measures matched across languages. Quantitative (totals correct) and qualitative (error types and (in)appropriate switching) aspects were measured. Impaired retrieval occurred in Frisian (Language 1) and Dutch (Language 2), with a significant effect of AoA on naming in both languages. Earlier acquired words were better preserved and retrieved. Performance was identical across languages, but better in Dutch when controlling for covariates. However, participants demonstrated more inappropriate code switching within the Frisian test setting. On qualitative analysis, no differences in overall error distribution were found between languages for early or late acquired words. There existed a significantly higher percentage of semantically than visually-related errors. These findings have implications for understanding problems in lexical retrieval among bilingual individuals with dementia and its relation to decline in other cognitive functions which may play a role in inappropriate code switching. We discuss the findings in the light of the close relationship between Frisian and Dutch and the pattern of usage across the life-span.

  8. Specific Language Impairment, Nonverbal IQ, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Cochlear Implants, Bilingualism, and Dialectal Variants: Defining the Boundaries, Clarifying Clinical Conditions, and Sorting Out Causes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rice, Mabel L

    2016-02-01

    The purpose of this research forum article is to provide an overview of a collection of invited articles on the topic "specific language impairment (SLI) in children with concomitant health conditions or nonmainstream language backgrounds." Topics include SLI, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, cochlear implants, bilingualism, and dialectal language learning contexts. The topic is timely due to current debates about the diagnosis of SLI. An overarching comparative conceptual framework is provided for comparisons of SLI with other clinical conditions. Comparisons of SLI in children with low-normal or normal nonverbal IQ illustrate the unexpected outcomes of 2 × 2 comparison designs. Comparative studies reveal unexpected relationships among speech, language, cognitive, and social dimensions of children's development as well as precise ways to identify children with SLI who are bilingual or dialect speakers. The diagnosis of SLI is essential for elucidating possible causal pathways of language impairments, risks for language impairments, assessments for identification of language impairments, linguistic dimensions of language impairments, and long-term outcomes. Although children's language acquisition is robust under high levels of risk, unexplained individual variations in language acquisition lead to persistent language impairments.

  9. Processing emotional words in two languages with one brain: ERP and fMRI evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Peiyao; Lin, Jie; Chen, Bingle; Lu, Chunming; Guo, Taomei

    2015-10-01

    Emotional words in a bilingual's second language (L2) seem to have less emotional impact compared to emotional words in the first language (L1). The present study examined the neural mechanisms of emotional word processing in Chinese-English bilinguals' two languages by using both event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Behavioral results show a robust positive word processing advantage in L1 such that responses to positive words were faster and more accurate compared to responses to neutral words and negative words. In L2, emotional words only received higher accuracies than neutral words. In ERPs, positive words elicited a larger early posterior negativity and a smaller late positive component than neutral words in L1, while a trend of reduced N400 component was found for positive words compared to neutral words in L2. In fMRI, reduced activation was found for L1 emotional words in both the left middle occipital gyrus and the left cerebellum whereas increased activation in the left cerebellum was found for L2 emotional words. Altogether, these results suggest that emotional word processing advantage in L1 relies on rapid and automatic attention capture while facilitated semantic retrieval might help processing emotional words in L2. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  10. Bilingualism in older Mexican-American immigrants is associated with higher scores on cognitive screening

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Claudia Padilla

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Bilingualism may protect against cognitive aging and delay the onset of dementia. However, studies comparing monolinguals and bilinguals on such metrics have produced inconsistent results complicated by confounding variables and methodological concerns. Methods We addressed this issue by comparing cognitive performance in a more culturally homogeneous cohort of older Spanish-speaking monolingual (n = 289 and Spanish-English bilingual (n = 339 Mexican-American immigrants from the Sacramento Longitudinal Study on Aging. Results After adjusting for demographic differences and depressive symptoms, both groups performed similarly at baseline on verbal memory but the bilingual group performed significantly better than the monolingual group on a cognitive screening test, the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination (3MS; p < 0.001. Group differences on the 3MS were driven by language/executive and language/praxis factors. Within the bilingual group, neither language of testing nor degree of bilingualism was significantly associated with 3MS or verbal memory scores. Amongst individuals who performed in the normal or better range on both tests at baseline and were followed for an average of 6 years, both monolinguals and bilinguals exhibited similar rates of cognitive decline on both measures. Conclusions These findings suggest that bilingualism is associated with modest benefits in cognitive screening performance in older individuals in cross-sectional analyses that persist across longitudinal analyses. The effects of bilingualism should be considered when cognitively screening is performed in aging immigrant populations.

  11. Non-Selective Lexical Access in Late Arabic-English Bilinguals: Evidence from Gating.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boudelaa, Sami

    2018-02-07

    Previous research suggests that late bilinguals who speak typologically distant languages are the least likely to show evidence of non-selective lexical access processes. This study puts this claim to test by using the gating task to determine whether words beginning with speech sounds that are phonetically similar in Arabic and English (e.g., [b,d,m,n]) give rise to selective or non-selective lexical access processes in late Arabic-English bilinguals. The results show that an acoustic-phonetic input (e.g., [bæ]) that is consistent with words in Arabic (e.g., [bædrun] "moon") and English (e.g., [bæd] "bad") activates lexical representations in both languages of the bilingual. This non-selective activation holds equally well for mixed lists with words from both Arabic and English and blocked lists consisting only of Arabic or English words. These results suggest that non-selective lexical access processes are the default mechanism even in late bilinguals of typologically distant languages.

  12. The effects of bilingualism on the white matter structure of the brain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pliatsikas, Christos; Moschopoulou, Elisavet; Saddy, James Douglas

    2015-02-03

    Recent studies suggest that learning and using a second language (L2) can affect brain structure, including the structure of white matter (WM) tracts. This observation comes from research looking at early and older bilingual individuals who have been using both their first and second languages on an everyday basis for many years. This study investigated whether young, highly immersed late bilinguals would also show structural effects in the WM that can be attributed to everyday L2 use, irrespective of critical periods or the length of L2 learning. Our Tract-Based Spatial Statistics analysis revealed higher fractional anisotropy values for bilinguals vs. monolinguals in several WM tracts that have been linked to language processing and in a pattern closely resembling the results reported for older and early bilinguals. We propose that learning and actively using an L2 after childhood can have rapid dynamic effects on WM structure, which in turn may assist in preserving WM integrity in older age.

  13. Differences in Word Recognition between Early Bilinguals and Monolinguals: Behavioral and ERP Evidence

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lehtonen, Minna; Hulten, Annika; Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni; Cunillera, Toni; Tuomainen, Jyrki; Laine, Matti

    2012-01-01

    We investigated the behavioral and brain responses (ERPs) of bilingual word recognition to three fundamental psycholinguistic factors, frequency, morphology, and lexicality, in early bilinguals vs. monolinguals. Earlier behavioral studies have reported larger frequency effects in bilinguals' nondominant vs. dominant language and in some studies…

  14. Specifying the Needs of a "Bilingual" Developmentally Disabled Population: Issues and Case Studies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Greenlee, Mel

    Linguistic and cognitive assessment of children whose home language is not English involves a number of complex issues: minority labeling, the relationship between cognition and bilingualism, "normal" data on bilingual development, and monolingual versus bilingual environment for children experiencing delay. This paper concentrates on reviewing…

  15. The Role of Emergent Bilingualism in the Development of Morphological Awareness in Arabic and Hebrew

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schwartz, Mila; Taha, Haitham; Assad, Hanan; Khamaisi, Ferdos; Eviatar, Zohar

    2016-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of dual language development and cross-linguistic influence on morphological awareness in young bilinguals' first language (L1) and second language (L2). We examined whether (a) the bilingual children (L1/L2 Arabic and L1/L2 Hebrew) precede their monolingual Hebrew- or…

  16. Immigration, Language Proficiency, and Autobiographical Memories: Lifespan Distribution and Second-Language Access

    OpenAIRE

    Esposito, Alena G.; Baker-Ward, Lynne

    2015-01-01

    This investigation examined two controversies in the autobiographical literature: how cross-language immigration affects the distribution of autobiographical memories across the lifespan and under what circumstances language-dependent recall is observed. Both Spanish/English bilingual immigrants and English monolingual non-immigrants participated in a cue word study, with the bilingual sample taking part in a within-subject language manipulation. The expected bump in the num...

  17. Oral Narratives in Monolingual and Bilingual Preschoolers with SLI

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rezzonico, Stefano; Chen, Xi; Cleave, Patricia L.; Greenberg, Janice; Hipfner-Boucher, Kathleen; Johnson, Carla J.; Milburn, Trelani; Pelletier, Janette; Weitzman, Elaine; Girolametto, Luigi

    2015-01-01

    Background: The body of literature on narratives of bilingual children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) is growing. However, little is known about the narrative abilities of bilingual preschool children with SLI and their patterns of growth. Aims: To determine the similarities and differences in narrative abilities between…

  18. Parsing and Tagging of Bilingual Dictionary

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Ma, Huanfeng; Karagol-Ayan, Burcu; Doermann, David S; Oard, Doug; Wang, Jianqiang

    2003-01-01

    Bilingual dictionaries hold great potential as a source of lexical resources for training and testing automated systems for optical character recognition, machine translation, and cross-language information retrieval...

  19. Bilingualism modulates infants' selective attention to the mouth of a talking face.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pons, Ferran; Bosch, Laura; Lewkowicz, David J

    2015-04-01

    Infants growing up in bilingual environments succeed at learning two languages. What adaptive processes enable them to master the more complex nature of bilingual input? One possibility is that bilingual infants take greater advantage of the redundancy of the audiovisual speech that they usually experience during social interactions. Thus, we investigated whether bilingual infants' need to keep languages apart increases their attention to the mouth as a source of redundant and reliable speech cues. We measured selective attention to talking faces in 4-, 8-, and 12-month-old Catalan and Spanish monolingual and bilingual infants. Monolinguals looked more at the eyes than the mouth at 4 months and more at the mouth than the eyes at 8 months in response to both native and nonnative speech, but they looked more at the mouth than the eyes at 12 months only in response to nonnative speech. In contrast, bilinguals looked equally at the eyes and mouth at 4 months, more at the mouth than the eyes at 8 months, and more at the mouth than the eyes at 12 months, and these patterns of responses were found for both native and nonnative speech at all ages. Thus, to support their dual-language acquisition processes, bilingual infants exploit the greater perceptual salience of redundant audiovisual speech cues at an earlier age and for a longer time than monolingual infants. © The Author(s) 2015.

  20. The effect of bilingualism on amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ossher, Lynn; Bialystok, Ellen; Craik, Fergus I M; Murphy, Kelly J; Troyer, Angela K

    2013-01-01

    Previous reports have found that lifelong bilingualism is associated with a delay in the onset of dementia, including Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type (DAT). Because amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) is often a transition stage between normal aging and DAT, our aim in this paper was to establish whether this delay in symptom onset for bilinguals would also be seen in the onset of symptoms of aMCI and whether this delay would be consistent in different subtypes of aMCI. We examined the effect of bilingualism on the age of diagnosis in individuals with single- or multiple-domain aMCI who were administered a battery of neuropsychological tests and questionnaires about their language and social background. Our results showed an interaction between aMCI type and language history. Only individuals diagnosed with single-domain aMCI demonstrated a later age of diagnosis for bilinguals (M = 79.4 years) than monolinguals (M = 74.9 years). This preliminary evidence suggests that the early protective advantage of bilingualism may be specific to single-domain aMCI, which is the type of aMCI most specifically associated with progression to DAT.