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Effects of child and environmental factors in moderating the course of bilingual development were investigated using longitudinal data, from age 2.5 to 5 years, on 126 U.S.-born children with early exposure to Spanish and English. Multilevel models of Spanish and English expressive vocabulary identified children's phonological memory ability as a significant predictor of both outcomes, while also replicating the effect of the relative amount of language exposure. In addition, nonverbal IQ was a significant predictor of English vocabulary; birth order and maternal education in Spanish were significant predictors of Spanish vocabulary. These findings expand our understanding of the sources of the wide heterogeneity in bilingual development and of the requirements that language acquisition makes of learners and their environments., (© 2020 Society for Research in Child Development.)

We examined the size, content, and use of evaluative lexis by 26 English monolingual and 20 Spanish-English bilingual 30-month-old children in interaction with their mothers. We extracted the evaluative words, defined as words referring to cognition, volition, or emotion. Controlling for overall vocabulary skills as measured by the MacArthur-Bates inventories, monolinguals had a larger evaluative lexicon than the bilinguals' Spanish evaluative lexicon, but no difference was found between monolinguals' and bilinguals' English evaluative lexicons. There were differences between the monolinguals and bilinguals in the distribution of evaluative words across semantic categories: English monolingual children used more words pertaining to volition and cognition and talked more about volition than the Spanish-English bilingual children. These results suggest that the development of evaluative lexicons is influenced by cultural differences, and consequently, bilingual children, who are also bicultural, follow a different developmental path in both languages from the path followed by their monolingual peers.

Monolingual children identify referents uniquely in gesture before they do so with words, and parents translate these gestures into words. Children benefit from these translations, acquiring the words that their parents translated earlier than the ones that are not translated. Are bilingual children as likely as monolingual children to identify referents uniquely in gesture; and do parental translations have the same positive impact on the vocabulary development of bilingual children? Our results showed that the bilingual children - dominant in English or in Spanish - were as likely as monolingual children to identify referents uniquely in gesture. More importantly, the unique gestures, when translated into words by the parents, were as likely to enter bilingual and monolingual children's speech - independent of language dominance. Our results suggest that parental response to child gesture plays as crucial of a role in the vocabulary development of bilingual children as it does in monolingual children.

Sperry, Sperry, and Miller (2018) aim to debunk what is called the 30-million-word gap by claiming that children from lower income households hear more speech than Hart and Risley () reported. We address why the 30-million-word gap should not be abandoned, and the importance of retaining focus on the vital ingredient to language learning-quality speech directed to children rather than overheard speech, the focus of Sperry et al.'s argument. Three issues are addressed: Whether there is a language gap; the characteristics of speech that promote language development; and the importance of language in school achievement. There are serious risks to claims that low-income children, on average, hear sufficient, high-quality language relative to peers from higher income homes., (© 2018 Society for Research in Child Development.)

The robust relation between maternal education and child language that is observed in monolingual populations has not been reliably replicated among bilingual children from immigrant families in the United States. We hypothesized that a variable that operates in immigrant populations-the language in which mothers achieved their highest level of education, is relevant to the benefits of maternal education to children's language growth. The participants were 92 U.S.-born bilingually developing children (47 boys, 45 girls) with native Spanish-speaking immigrant mothers. The mothers varied both in their level of education and in the language (English or Spanish) in which they had achieved their highest level of education. The children's expressive vocabulary in English and Spanish was assessed at 6-month intervals between 30 and 60 months. Four sets of multilevel models, which included estimates of children's relative amount of input in each language and mothers' age of arrival, found that maternal level of education in English was significantly related to children's English skill, but not their Spanish skill, and that maternal level of education in Spanish was related to children's Spanish skill, but not their English skill. These language specific relations between mothers' levels of education and their children's language development potentially explain previous findings in immigrant populations. These findings further argue that maternal education benefits children's language because education changes mothers' use of the language in which that education was achieved. There was no evidence of a language general benefit of education, as might arise from increased knowledge of child development. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).)

The unique relation of language use (i.e., output) to language growth was investigated for forty-seven 30-month-old Spanish-English bilingual children (27 girls, 20 boys) whose choices of which language to speak resulted in their levels of English output differing from their levels of English input. English expressive vocabularies and receptive language skills were assessed at 30, 36, and 42 months. Longitudinal multilevel modeling indicated an effect of output on expressive vocabulary growth only. The finding that output specifically benefits the development of expressive language skill has implications for understanding effects of language use on language skill in monolingual and bilingual development, and potentially, for understanding consequences of cultural differences in how much children are expected to talk in conversation with adults., (© 2017 The Authors. Child Development © 2017 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.)

In this article, we comment on the significant contributions to science and to clinical practice made by Floccia et al.'s study of over 400 bilingual 2-year-old children. To science, this work contributes new findings on the linguistic factors that make some pairs of languages easier to learn than others and rich data on the environmental factors that influence bilingual development. Their results provide clues to the nature of the language learning process. To clinical practice, Floccia et al. contribute a new instrument for the diagnosis of risk for language impairment in bilingual children and a new method for the development of assessment instruments more generally. The experience-adjusted approach to norming that they illustrate here provides an example for others to follow. Their method holds promise for test development in many domains where the goal is to assess children's internal capacity but the evidence that is available in children's achievement is systematically influenced by environmental factors., (© 2018 The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.)

Basic research on bilingual development suggests several conclusions that can inform clinical practice with children from bilingual environments. They include the following: (1) Dual language input does not confuse children. (2) It is not necessary for the two languages to be kept separate in children's experience to avoid confusion. (3) Learning two languages takes longer than learning one; on average, bilingual children lag behind monolingual children in single language comparisons. (4) A dominant language is not equivalent to an only language. (5) A measure of total vocabulary provides the best indicator of young bilingual children's language learning capacity. (6) Bilingual children can have different strengths in each language. (7) The quantity and quality of bilingual children's input in each language influence their rates of development in each language. (8) Immigrant parents should not be discouraged from speaking their native language to their children. (9) Bilingual environments vary enormously in the support they provide for each language, with the result that bilingual children vary enormously in their dual language skills. Empirical findings in support of each conclusion are presented., (Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.)

Language skills in young bilingual children are highly varied as a result of the variability in their language experiences, making it difficult for speech-language pathologists to differentiate language disorder from language difference in bilingual children. Understanding the sources of variability in bilingual contexts and the resulting variability in children's skills will help improve language assessment practices by speech-language pathologists. In this article, we review literature on bilingual first language development for children under 5 years of age. We describe the rate of development in single and total language growth, we describe effects of quantity of input and quality of input on growth, and we describe effects of family composition on language input and language growth in bilingual children. We provide recommendations for language assessment of young bilingual children and consider implications for optimizing children's dual language development., (Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.)

Purpose: Vocabulary assessment holds promise as a way to identify young bilingual children at risk for language delay. This study compares 2 measures of vocabulary in a group of young Spanish-English bilingual children to a single-language measure used with monolingual children., Method: Total vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary were used to measure mean vocabulary size and growth in 47 Spanish-English bilingually developing children from 22 to 30 months of age based on results from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI; Fenson et al., 1993) and the Inventario del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas ( Jackson-Maldonado et al., 2003). Bilingual children's scores of total vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary were compared with CDI scores for a control group of 56 monolingual children., Results: The total vocabulary measure resulted in mean vocabulary scores and average rate of growth similar to monolingual growth, whereas conceptual vocabulary scores were significantly smaller and grew at a slower rate than total vocabulary scores. Total vocabulary identified the same proportion of bilingual children below the 25th percentile on monolingual norms as the CDI did for monolingual children., Conclusion: These results support the use of total vocabulary as a means of assessing early language development in young bilingual Spanish-English speaking children.

On average, children from low socioeconomic status (SES) homes and children from homes in which a language other than English is spoken have language development trajectories that are different from those of children from middle-class, monolingual English-speaking homes. Children from low-SES and language minority homes have unique linguistic strengths, but many reach school age with lower levels of English language skill than do middle-class, monolingual children. Because early differences in English oral language skill have consequences for academic achievement, low levels of English language skill constitute a deficit for children about to enter school in the United States. Declaring all developmental trajectories to be equally valid would not change the robust relation between English oral language skills and academic achievement and would not help children with poor English skills to be successful in school. Remedies aimed at supporting the development of the English skills required for academic success need not and should not entail devaluing or diminishing children's other language skills.

The extant literature includes conflicting assertions regarding the influence of bilingualism on the rate of language development. The present study compared the language development of equivalently high-SES samples of bilingually and monolingually developing children from 1 ; 10 to 2 ; 6. The monolingually developing children were significantly more advanced than the bilingually developing children on measures of both vocabulary and grammar in single language comparisons, but they were comparable on a measure of total vocabulary. Within the bilingually developing sample, all measures of vocabulary and grammar were related to the relative amount of input in that language. Implications for theories of language acquisition and for understanding bilingual development are discussed.

The mothers of 29 Spanish English bilingual 25-month-olds kept diary records of their children's dual language exposure and provided information on their children's English and Spanish language development using the MacArthur-Bates inventories. Relative amount of exposure predicted language outcomes in English and Spanish. In addition, the number of different speakers from whom the children heard English and the percent of their English input that was provided by native speakers were unique sources of variance in children's English skills. These properties of children's dual language exposure and their bilingual proficiency varied as a function of whether the children's mother, father, or both parents were native Spanish speakers. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed., (© 2011 The Authors. Child Development © 2011 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.)

The relation of phonological memory to language experience and development was investigated in 41 Spanish-English bilingual first language learners. The children's relative exposure to English and Spanish and their phonological memory for English- and Spanish-like nonwords were assessed at 22 months of age, and their productive vocabulary and grammar in both languages were assessed at 25 months of age. Phonological memory for English-like nonwords was highly correlated with that for Spanish-like nonwords, and each was related to vocabulary and grammar in both languages, suggesting a language-general component to phonological memory skill. In addition, there was evidence of language-specific benefits of language exposure to phonological memory skill and of language-specific benefits of phonological memory skill to language development., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Flexibility and productivity are hallmarks of human language use. Competent speakers have the capacity to use the words they know to serve a variety of communicative functions, to refer to new and varied exemplars of the categories to which words refer, and in new and varied combinations with other words. When and how children achieve this flexibility and when they are truly productive language users--are central issues among accounts of language acquisition. The current study tests competing hypotheses of the achievement of flexibility and some kinds of productivity against data on children's first uses of their first-acquired verbs. Eight mothers recorded their children's first 10 uses of 34 early acquired verbs, if those verbs were produced within the window of the study. The children were between 16 and 20 months when the study began (depending on when the children started to produce verbs), were followed for between 3 and 12 months, and produced between 13 and 31 of the target verbs. These diary records provided the basis for a description of the pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic properties of early verb use. The data revealed that within this early, initial period of verb use, children use their verbs both to command and describe, they use their verbs in reference to a variety of appropriate actions enacted by variety of actors and with a variety of affected objects, and they use their verbs in a variety of syntactic structures. All 8 children displayed semantic and grammatical flexibility before 24 months of age. These findings are more consistent with a model of the language-learning child as an avid generalizer than as a conservative language user. Children's early verb use suggests abilities and inclinations to abstract from experience that may indeed begin in infancy.

The hypothesis was tested that children whose families differ in socioeconomic status (SES) differ in their rates of productive vocabulary development because they have different language-learning experiences. Naturalistic interaction between 33 high-SES and 30 mid-SES mothers and their 2-year-old children was recorded at 2 time points 10 weeks apart. Transcripts of these interactions provided the basis for estimating the growth in children's productive vocabularies between the first and second visits and properties of maternal speech at the first visit. The high-SES children grew more than the mid-SES children in the size of their productive vocabularies. Properties of maternal speech that differed as a function of SES fully accounted for this difference. Implications of these findings for mechanisms of environmental influence on child development are discussed.

The contributions of social processes and computational processes to early lexical development were evaluated. A re-analysis and review of previous research cast doubt on the sufficiency of social approaches to word learning. An empirical investigation of the relation of social-pragmatic and data-providing features of input to the productive vocabulary of sixty-three 2-year-old children revealed benefits of data provided in mother-child conversation, but no effects of social aspects of those conversations. The findings further revealed that the properties of data that benefit lexical development in 2-year-olds are quantity, lexical richness, and syntactic complexity. The nature of the computational mechanisms implied by these findings is discussed. An integrated account of the roles of social and computational processes to lexical development is proposed.

• Home literacy environments impact language/preliteracy even with high childcare dosage. • Home literacy environment benefits are stronger for language-minority children. • Earlier entry in childcare supports language and preliteracy skills. • Home literacy environment effects are increased, not diminished, by early childcare. Preschool children's language and preliteracy skills are influenced by their home literacy environments. We asked to what extent this is true even for children in a context, Denmark, with near-universal childcare (97% at age 3–5), and additionally, if it holds specifically for dual-language learners. The sample consisted of 5791 4–6-year-olds from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, who had attended full-time childcare since age 1–1½ on average. Despite years in childcare programs, two home literacy factors, book exposure and preliteracy activities, were significantly related to children's Danish language and preliteracy skills. Moreover, this relation was significantly stronger for children learning a minority language at home. High book exposure either narrowed or closed the Danish majority language skill gap with single-language learners. Early entry in childcare predicted stronger language and preliteracy skills; however, early entry increased rather than diminished effects of home literacy environments on language skills, suggesting possible cross fertilization of home and childcare environments. Children with a native and a nonnative parent had substantially higher Danish language and preliteracy skills when the mother was the native than when the father was, a difference equivalent to ¾ year's language development. Nonnative parents' Danish proficiency and degree of Danish use showed complex relations to child outcomes, including positive, negative and null effects. Overall, the results indicate that childcare works as an addition, not a substitute for a supportive home literacy environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of children living in the United States who are learning two languages is increasing greatly. However, relatively little research has been conducted on the language and literacy development of dual language learners (DLLs), particularly during the early childhood years. To summarize the extant literature and guide future research, a critical analysis of the literature was conducted. A search of major databases for studies on young typically developing DLLs between 2000 and 2011 yielded 182 peer-reviewed articles. Findings about DLL children's developmental trajectories in the various areas of language and literacy are presented. Much of these findings should be considered preliminary, because there were few areas where multiple studies were conducted. Conclusions were reached when sufficient evidence existed in a particular area. First, the research shows that DLLs have two separate language systems early in life. Second, differences in some areas of language development, such as vocabulary, appear to exist among DLLs depending on when they were first exposed to their second language. Third, DLLs’ language and literacy development may differ from that of monolinguals, although DLLs appear to catch up over time. Fourth, little is known about factors that influence DLLs’ development, although the amount of language exposure to and usage of DLLs’ two languages appears to play key roles. Methodological issues are addressed, and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The human potential for language is based in human biology but makes requirements of the social environment to be realized. This paper reports evidence regarding (1) the nature of those environmental requirements, (2) the ways in which the varied social contexts in which children live meet those requirements, and (3) the effects of environmental variability in meeting those requirements on the course of language development. The evidence suggests that all human environments support language acquisition by providing children with opportunities for communicative experience, which motivate the language acquisition process, and a language model, which serves as data for the language acquisition mechanism. Different environments do so to different degrees, thereby producing group and individual differences in the rate and course of language development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]