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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