Language-Specific & Conceptual Vocabulary in Bilingual Children

and Their Primary Caregivers

Christina J. AusickCardon Children’s Medical Center

Margarita KaushanskayaUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison

Introduction

• What we know…• The influences on MONOLINGUAL

children’s vocabulary development

• Potential factors that influence BILINGUAL children’s vocabulary development, but these are conflicting.

Goals of this project:

1. Explore the relationship between primary caregivers language abilities and children’s vocabulary performance in monolingual and bilingual groups.

2. Compare monolingual and bilingual children’s performance on language-specific and conceptual vocabulary measures.

Participants/Demographics

* = Raw Scores reported for children, and Standard Scores reported for primary caregivers.

Monolinguals Bilinguals

Sample Size 11 (5 males, 6 females) 10 (4 males, 6 females)

Chronological Age 6.32 (0.97) 6.33 (0.93)

Performance on K-BIT* 21.73 (7.46) 18.00 (5.64)

Primary Caregivers Sample Size 11 (1 male, 10 females) 10 (2 males, 8 females)

Primary Caregivers’ Years of Education 19.36 (4.39) 13.8 (3.58)

Primary Caregivers’ Chronological Age 39.98 (5.48) 29.46 (4.03)

Primary Caregivers’ K-BIT* 122.00 (9.04) 91.1 (17.49)

Vocabulary Measures

• Expressive Vocabulary Measures English:

• Woodcock-Johnson III: Picture Vocabulary

Spanish:• Batería III Woodcock-

Muñoz: Vocabulario Sobre Dibujos

• Receptive Vocabulary Measures English:

• PPVT-III (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III)

Spanish:• TVIP (Test de

Vocabulario en Imagenes Peabody)

Total Conceptual Vocabulary Score: Only for bilingual children and their caregivers, includes English and Spanish expressive and receptive vocabulary measures.

Total Conceptual Vocabulary Score: Only for bilingual children and their caregivers, includes English and Spanish expressive and receptive vocabulary measures.

WJ- III Picture Vocabulary Subtest; form used for Total Conceptual Vocabulary

Results: Monolingual vs. Bilingual English Vocabulary Performance

50

60

70

80

90

100

110

120

130

Receptive Vocabulary Raw Scores

Monolingual

Bilingual Language -Specific

Bilingual Conceptual

10

12

14

16

18

20

22

Expressive Vocabulary Raw Scores

Results: Bilinguals’ Vocabulary Performance in English (Caregivers vs. Children)

Results: Bilinguals’ Vocabulary Performance in Spanish (Caregivers vs. Children)

Results: Monolingual Children vs. Primary Caregivers

Discussion: Vocabulary Performance

• Monolingual Children scored higher on English vocabulary measures compared to Bilingual Children

• Conceptual scoring increases Bilinguals’ scores, but does not eliminate the performance gap. Larger gap for receptive vocabulary Conceptual vocabulary calculation

method

Discussion: Input Quality

• Primary Caregiver’s Vocabulary Performance vs. their Child’s Vocabulary Performance Monolingual group’s correlations were not

significant. Bilingual group’s correlations were significant

for English vocabulary measures, but not for Spanish vocabulary measures.

Acknowledgements

• A big “Thank You” goes out to: Julie Washington Susan Ellis Weismer Vanessa Montoya Stephanie Van Hecke Marissa Stern and, Ann Rogers

• Funding• NIH XXXX

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