Bilingual Development in the Receptive and Expressive Domains: They Differ.

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics
• Bilingualism Studies

Background:

• Bilingual children often exhibit a receptive-expressive gap, where comprehension exceeds production.
• The developmental trajectory of this gap in bilingual children remains under-researched.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the longitudinal development of the receptive-expressive gap in bilingual children.
• To examine vocabulary growth in both receptive and expressive domains across Spanish and English.

Main Methods:

• Longitudinal study tracking 52 bilingual children aged 4.5 to 10 years.
• Assessment of Spanish and English receptive and expressive vocabularies.
• Analysis of vocabulary growth rates and language dominance shifts.

Main Results:

• English vocabularies demonstrated faster growth than Spanish, particularly in the expressive domain.
• The proportion of English-dominant children increased more significantly in expressive than receptive skills.
• By age 10, expressive skills were predominantly English-dominant, while receptive skills were more balanced.

Conclusions:

• Dual language development trajectories differ between expressive and receptive domains.
• Longitudinal data support a continuity between the childhood receptive-expressive gap and adult receptive bilingualism.
• Findings highlight the dynamic nature of language development in bilingual children.