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Writing direction and language activation affect how Arabic-English bilingual speakers map time onto space.

ABSTRACT: We investigated whether writing direction and language activation influence how bilingual speakers map time onto space. More specifically, we investigated how Arabic-English bilingual speakers conceived where (e.g., on the left or on the right) different time periods (e.g., past, present, future) were located, depending on whether they were tested in Arabic (a language that is written from right to left) or in English (a language that is written from left to right). To analyze this, participants were given a task that involved arranging cards depicting different scenes of a story in chronological order. Results show that, when tested in Arabic, participants were significantly more likely to use right-to-left arrangements (following the Arabic writing direction), compared to when tested in English.

SUBMITTER: Park J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10849100 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Writing direction and language activation affect how Arabic-English bilingual speakers map time onto space.

Park Juana J Gagné Christina L CL Spalding Thomas L TL

Frontiers in psychology 20240124

We investigated whether writing direction and language activation influence how bilingual speakers map time onto space. More specifically, we investigated how Arabic-English bilingual speakers conceived where (e.g., on the left or on the right) different time periods (e.g., past, present, future) were located, depending on whether they were tested in Arabic (a language that is written from right to left) or in English (a language that is written from left to right). To analyze this, participants ...[more]

PMID: 38327507

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Project description:Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the diagnostic accuracy of traditional measures of phonological ability developed for monolingual English-speaking children with their bilingual peers in both English and Spanish. We predicted that a composite measure, derived from a combination of English and Spanish phonological measures, would result in higher diagnostic accuracy than examining the individual phonological measures of bilingual children separately by language. Method Sixty-six children, ages 3;3-6;3 (years;months), participated in this study: 29 typically developing bilingual Spanish-English-speaking children (x = 5;3), five bilingual Spanish-English-speaking children with speech sound disorders (x = 4;6), 26 typically developing monolingual English-speaking children (x = 4;8), and six monolingual English-speaking children with speech sound disorders (x = 4;9). Children were recorded producing single words using the Assessments of English and Spanish Phonology, and productions were phonetically transcribed and analyzed using the Logical International Phonetics Program. Overall consonants correct-revised; accuracy of early-, middle-, and late-developing sounds; and percent occurrence of phonological error patterns in both English and Spanish were calculated. Receiver operating characteristic curves and support vector machine models were applied to observe diagnostic accuracy, separately and combined, for each speaker group and each language. Results Findings indicated the combination of measures improved diagnostic accuracy within both the English and Spanish of bilingual children and significantly increased accuracy when measures from both languages of bilingual children were combined. Combining measures for the productions of monolingual English-speaking children did not increase diagnostic accuracy. Conclusion To prevent misdiagnosis of speech sound disorders in bilingual preschoolers, the composite phonological abilities of bilingual children need to be assessed across both gross and discrete measures of phonological ability. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16632604.

Project description:PurposeThis study examined the speech acoustic characteristics of Jamaican Creole (JC) and English in bilingual preschoolers and adults using acoustic duration measures. The aims were to determine if, for JC and English, (a) child and adult acoustic duration characteristics differ, (b) differences occur in preschoolers' duration patterns based on the language spoken, and (c) relationships exist between the preschoolers' personal contextual factors (i.e., age, sex, and percentage of language [%language] exposure and use) and acoustic duration.MethodData for this cross-sectional study were collected in Kingston, Jamaica, and New York City, New York, United States, during 2013-2019. Participants included typically developing simultaneous bilingual preschoolers (n = 120, ages 3;4-5;11 [years;months]) and adults (n = 15, ages 19;0-54;4) from the same linguistic community. Audio recordings of single-word productions of JC and English were collected through elicited picture-based tasks and used for acoustic analysis. Durational features (voice onset time [VOT], vowel duration, whole-word duration, and the proportion of vowel to whole-word duration) were measured using Praat, a speech analysis software program.ResultsJC-English-speaking children demonstrated developing speech motor control through differences in durational patterns compared with adults, including VOT for voiced plosives. Children's VOT, vowel duration, and whole-word duration were produced similarly across JC and English. The contextual factor %language use was predictive of vowel and whole-word duration in English.ConclusionsThe findings from this study contribute to a foundation of understanding typical bilingual speech characteristics and motor development as well as schema in JC-English speakers. In particular, minimal acoustic duration differences were observed across the post-Creole continuum, a feature that may be attributed to the JC-English bilingual environment.Supplemental materialhttps://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21760469.

Dataset Information

Writing direction and language activation affect how Arabic-English bilingual speakers map time onto space.

Publications

Writing direction and language activation affect how Arabic-English bilingual speakers map time onto space.

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