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Profile effects in early bilingual language and literacy.
D Kimbrough Oller1, Barbara Z Pearson, Alan B Cobo-Lewis
1University of Memphis.
Applied Psycholinguistics
|May 29, 2012
Summary
Bilingual children show varied performance compared to monolinguals, excelling in basic reading but scoring lower in vocabulary. These "profile effects" highlight differences in bilingual language and literacy development.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Developmental Psychology
- Bilingualism Studies
Background:
- Bilingual children's language and literacy skills can vary across different domains.
- Previous research indicates potential differences in cognitive and linguistic abilities between bilingual and monolingual children.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate "profile effects" in bilingual Spanish-English learners by comparing their performance to monolingual peers.
- To examine how socioeconomic status, home language, and school setting influence these performance differences.
Main Methods:
- Reanalysis of data from a broad-scale study involving monolingual English and bilingual Spanish-English learners in Miami.
- Comparison of performance across various test types, including basic reading and vocabulary assessments.
Main Results:
- Consistent "profile effects" were observed across different socioeconomic statuses, home languages, and school settings.
- Bilingual children demonstrated comparable performance to monolinguals in basic reading tasks.
- Bilingual children exhibited lower vocabulary scores in both languages compared to monolinguals.
Conclusions:
- Bilingual children's language and literacy skills are domain-specific, showing strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others.
- The observed "profile effects" are likely attributed to the "distributed characteristic" of bilingual lexical knowledge, where vocabulary is spread across languages.
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