Such links suggest that efficient real-time language use and lexical knowledge are directly coupled, working together to support language learning. Moreover, early efficiency in lexical processing is associated not only with faster vocabulary growth but also with long-term language and cognitive outcomes ( Fernald, Perfors & Marchman, 2006 Marchman & Fernald, 2008). Studies of online lexical comprehension with monolingual Spanish- and English-learners show that over the 2 nd year toddlers get faster at identifying the referents of familiar words presented in continuous speech ( Fernald, Pinto, Swingley, Weinberg, & McRoberts, 1998 Hurtado, Marchman & Fernald, 2007).
In this study, we examine vocabulary development and real-time lexical comprehension in 30-month-old children learning both Spanish and English at the same time. When learning two languages, do such emerging bilingual children follow developmental trajectories that are similar to those of children learning just one? Or do bilingual and monolingual children differ in important aspects of language development? Such questions are increasingly of interest to researchers exploring how young bilingual children begin to gain proficiency in two languages and are informative for theories of language development more generally (e.g., Werker & Byers-Heinlein, 2008). For example, as members of the largest and fastest growing minority group in the U.S., many first-generation Latino children are regularly exposed to both Spanish and English as infants and have the opportunity to become proficient in both languages prior to entering school. However, many of the world’s children are exposed to two languages from birth and begin to learn both over the first few years of life ( McCardle & Hoff, 2004). The great majority of studies of early language learning have focused on children growing up in monolingual environments who are learning a single language. These links between efficiency of lexical access and vocabulary knowledge in bilinguals parallel those previously reported for Spanish and English monolinguals, suggesting that children’s ability to abstract information from the input in building a working lexicon relates fundamentally to mechanisms underlying the construction of language. Instead, efficiency of online processing in one language was significantly related to vocabulary size in that language, after controlling for processing speed and vocabulary size in the other language. Between-language associations were weak: vocabulary size in Spanish was uncorrelated with vocabulary in English, and children’s facility in online comprehension in Spanish was unrelated to their facility in English. Here we examined speech processing efficiency in relation to vocabulary development in bilingual children learning both Spanish and English ( n=26 2 6 yrs).
Research using online comprehension measures with monolingual children shows that speed and accuracy of spoken word recognition are correlated with lexical development.
0 kommentar(er)
