John Benjamins Publishing Company
Language exposure and online processing efficiency in bilingual development
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Abstract
This chapter summarizes what we know so far about the development of online processing skill in young bilingual children, with a focus on the relation between individual differences in language exposure and processing skill. We discuss evidence from studies with Spanish-English bilingual children in California, showing clear contingencies between language exposure and both vocabulary size and online processing efficiency as measured in the looking-while-listening (LWL) procedure. However, the strength of these contingencies is critically affected by whether the constructs are operationalized in relative or absolute terms. While relative amount of language exposure is only weakly related to absolute processing speed, we find a more solid association when both exposure and outcome are cast in relative terms. Finally, we consider the advantages, as well as the challenges, of using absolute measures for both language exposure and outcome measures. Our ongoing studies explore ways to capture variation in the absolute amount of talk that young bilinguals hear from their caregivers, presenting preliminary evidence that variation in caregiver engagement is critical for language outcomes in bilingual children, as many earlier studies have shown for monolinguals.
Abstract
This chapter summarizes what we know so far about the development of online processing skill in young bilingual children, with a focus on the relation between individual differences in language exposure and processing skill. We discuss evidence from studies with Spanish-English bilingual children in California, showing clear contingencies between language exposure and both vocabulary size and online processing efficiency as measured in the looking-while-listening (LWL) procedure. However, the strength of these contingencies is critically affected by whether the constructs are operationalized in relative or absolute terms. While relative amount of language exposure is only weakly related to absolute processing speed, we find a more solid association when both exposure and outcome are cast in relative terms. Finally, we consider the advantages, as well as the challenges, of using absolute measures for both language exposure and outcome measures. Our ongoing studies explore ways to capture variation in the absolute amount of talk that young bilinguals hear from their caregivers, presenting preliminary evidence that variation in caregiver engagement is critical for language outcomes in bilingual children, as many earlier studies have shown for monolinguals.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Introduction to “Input and experience in bilingual development” 1
- Language exposure and online processing efficiency in bilingual development 15
- The absolute frequency of maternal input to bilingual and monolingual children 37
- Language input and language learning 59
- Language exposure, ethnolinguistic identity and attitudes in the acquisition of Hebrew as a second language among bilingual preschool children from Russian- and English-speaking backgrounds 77
- Interactions between input factors in bilingual language acquisition 99
- Properties of dual language input that shape bilingual development and properties of environments that shape dual language input 119
- The typical development of simultaneous bilinguals 141
- French-English bilingual children’s sensitivity to child-level and language-level input factors in morphosyntactic acquisition 161
- Comparing the role of input in bilingual acquisition across domains 181
- Index 203
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Introduction to “Input and experience in bilingual development” 1
- Language exposure and online processing efficiency in bilingual development 15
- The absolute frequency of maternal input to bilingual and monolingual children 37
- Language input and language learning 59
- Language exposure, ethnolinguistic identity and attitudes in the acquisition of Hebrew as a second language among bilingual preschool children from Russian- and English-speaking backgrounds 77
- Interactions between input factors in bilingual language acquisition 99
- Properties of dual language input that shape bilingual development and properties of environments that shape dual language input 119
- The typical development of simultaneous bilinguals 141
- French-English bilingual children’s sensitivity to child-level and language-level input factors in morphosyntactic acquisition 161
- Comparing the role of input in bilingual acquisition across domains 181
- Index 203
