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Taxonomic Development in Young Bilingual Children: Task Matters, and So Does Scoring Method.
1Department of Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology, University of North Texas, Denton.
American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology
|August 5, 2020
Summary
Bilingual children
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Taxonomic awareness is crucial for vocabulary development.
- The effect of bilingualism on taxonomic knowledge levels is not well understood.
- Scoring methods may influence the assessment of taxonomic awareness in bilingual children.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of divided language input on different taxonomic hierarchy levels in bilingual children.
- To examine the influence of scoring methods on tasks assessing taxonomic awareness.
- To compare taxonomic awareness in monolingual and bilingual children.
Main Methods:
- Twenty-seven monolingual and 79 bilingual children (ages 4-7) participated.
- Tasks assessed superordinate awareness, coordinate awareness, and vocabulary size.
- Bilinguals completed tasks in both languages, generating single-language and conceptual scores.
Main Results:
- Single-language scoring showed bilingual children had lower English vocabulary and superordinate awareness.
- Conceptual scoring eliminated the bilingual disadvantage in naming and superordinate tasks.
- Bilingual children demonstrated an advantage in coordinate awareness with conceptual scoring.
Conclusions:
- Bilingual children's taxonomic development varies based on task demands and scoring methods.
- Scoring methods significantly impact the measurement of vocabulary depth and taxonomic knowledge in bilinguals.
- Bilingualism has a nuanced effect on different levels of the taxonomic hierarchy.
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