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Language specificity in the relation of maternal education to bilingual children's vocabulary growth.

ABSTRACT: The robust relation between maternal education and child language that is observed in monolingual populations has not been reliably replicated among bilingual children from immigrant families in the United States. We hypothesized that a variable that operates in immigrant populations-the language in which mothers achieved their highest level of education, is relevant to the benefits of maternal education to children's language growth. The participants were 92 U.S.-born bilingually developing children (47 boys, 45 girls) with native Spanish-speaking immigrant mothers. The mothers varied both in their level of education and in the language (English or Spanish) in which they had achieved their highest level of education. The children's expressive vocabulary in English and Spanish was assessed at 6-month intervals between 30 and 60 months. Four sets of multilevel models, which included estimates of children's relative amount of input in each language and mothers' age of arrival, found that maternal level of education in English was significantly related to children's English skill, but not their Spanish skill, and that maternal level of education in Spanish was related to children's Spanish skill, but not their English skill. These language specific relations between mothers' levels of education and their children's language development potentially explain previous findings in immigrant populations. These findings further argue that maternal education benefits children's language because education changes mothers' use of the language in which that education was achieved. There was no evidence of a language general benefit of education, as might arise from increased knowledge of child development. (PsycINFO Database Record

SUBMITTER: Hoff E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5962365 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Language specificity in the relation of maternal education to bilingual children's vocabulary growth.

Hoff Erika E Burridge Andrea A Ribot Krystal M KM Giguere David D

Developmental psychology 20171228 6

The robust relation between maternal education and child language that is observed in monolingual populations has not been reliably replicated among bilingual children from immigrant families in the United States. We hypothesized that a variable that operates in immigrant populations-the language in which mothers achieved their highest level of education, is relevant to the benefits of maternal education to children's language growth. The participants were 92 U.S.-born bilingually developing chi ...[more]

PMID: 29283595

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Project description: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 community language.

Project description:Introduction: Research in recent years has explored the vocabulary size (lexical breadth) of bilingual children, but less is known about the richness of bilingual word knowledge (lexical depth), and about how knowledge of words in the two languages interact. This study explores how bilingual narrative intervention with vocabulary instruction in each language may modulate crosslinguistic influence (CLI) between the languages of bilingual kindergarten children, focusing on CLI of lexical knowledge, and which factors modulate performance. Methods: Forty-one typically developing English-Hebrew bilingual children (M = 64.63 months) participated. A bilingual adaptation of Story Champs narrative intervention program (Spencer and Petersen, 2012) was used to deliver vocabulary instruction in separate blocks of home language (HL) and school language (SL) sessions. Different intervention words were targeted in each language, but the children were tested on all target words in both languages. Lexical knowledge was assessed with a definition task four times throughout the study: prior to intervention, after each intervention block, and 4-6 weeks later. Learner characteristics (chronological age, age of onset of bilingualism and length of exposure) and proficiency in each language (standardized tests, familiarity with the vocabulary introduced in the intervention at baseline) were examined as possible modulators of performance. Results: Children showed growth in lexical breadth and depth in their HL/English after HL intervention and in lexical breadth in the SL/Hebrew following SL intervention, with CLI for semantic depth observed via a qualitative analysis, but not quantitatively. Better HL/English performance was correlated with later AoB (and shorter SL exposure) and higher HL language proficiency scores. Children with higher HL/English proficiency responded better to the SL/Hebrew intervention, gaining more than those with lower English proficiency. Children with SL/Hebrew vocabulary dominance at the outset of the study also gained more from the HL/English intervention. No correlations were found between learner characteristics and SL performance. Discussion: The current study indicates that bilingual narrative intervention with vocabulary instruction may be efficacious for improving the lexical breadth and depth of bilingual kindergarten children. It suggests that CLI may enhance bilingual children's language learning success, and points to the importance of strengthening both languages of bilingual children.

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Language specificity in the relation of maternal education to bilingual children's vocabulary growth.

Publications

Language specificity in the relation of maternal education to bilingual children's vocabulary growth.

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