Early skills that predict English reading ability: A longitudinal study of bilingual children from 5 to 10 years.

Despite substantial research, the contribution of oral language skills acquired in Spanish to Spanish-English bilingual children's acquisition of English reading skill is unclear. The current study addressed this question with data on the oral language and pre-literacy skills of 101 Spanish-English bilingual learners at 5 years of age and their English word reading (i.e., decoding) and reading comprehension skills at 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 years. Separate multilevel models using English language, Spanish language, and pre-literacy skills as predictors of these outcomes identified English phonological awareness, Spanish phonological awareness, and concepts of print knowledge as positive predictors of word reading. A final model including all these significant predictors found only Spanish phonological awareness and concept of print to be significant predictors. Significant predictors of reading comprehension in separate models were English vocabulary, Spanish phonological awareness, and concepts about print. In the final model, only English vocabulary and Spanish phonological awareness predicted English reading comprehension. These findings provide evidence that phonological awareness is a language-general skill that supports reading across languages, consistent with the common underlying proficiency model of bilingual reading development. The finding that only English vocabulary predicts English reading comprehension suggests that vocabulary knowledge is not part of a common underlying proficiency but is language specific in its value to reading ability.

Bilingual Children's Vocabulary Skills at 5 Years Predict Reading Comprehension Development Within, Not Across, Languages.

Extensive evidence indicates that early vocabulary skills predict later reading development among monolingually developing children. Some evidence suggests that a relationship between vocabulary and later reading also holds across languages among children whose home language differs from the school language. However, these findings have been mixed and it remains unclear if, and under what circumstances, vocabulary in one language supports reading comprehension development in another. The present study followed 84 Spanish-English bilingual children, assessing their vocabulary skills at 5 years and their reading comprehension at 6, 7, 8, and 9 years. Longitudinal multilevel models revealed significant within-language relations between early vocabulary knowledge and subsequent reading comprehension in both English and Spanish and no across-language relations. There were significant concurrent across-language relations between English and Spanish reading comprehension skills. These findings suggest that the contribution of vocabulary knowledge to reading comprehension is language specific but that there are also language general components to reading comprehension, which result in significant concurrent relations between reading comprehension skill across languages.

The Impact of Smartphone Use on Course Comprehension and Psychological Well-Being in the College Classroom.

The present study explores the impact of smartphone use on course comprehension and the psychological well-being of students during class. Students in four classes (N = 106) were assigned to either a control group or quasi-experimental group. Students in the quasi-experimental group were instructed to place their smartphones on the front desk upon entering the class, while the control group had no instructions regarding smartphone use. Students filled out a brief survey about their course comprehension and psychological state (anxiety and mindfulness) during class. Results indicated that students whose smartphones were physically removed during class had higher levels of course comprehension, lower levels of anxiety, and higher levels of mindfulness than the control group. This study gives a comprehensive picture of the impact of smartphone use on students' psychological well-being in the classroom. The findings can aide educators in curriculum design that reduces technology use in order to improve the student learning experience.

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

In bilingual children, more so than in monolingual children, comprehension abilities exceed production abilities. While this receptive-expressive gap in bilinguals has been well documented, little is known about its development. The present study tracked growth in the Spanish and English receptive and expressive vocabularies of 52 bilingual children from 4.5 to 10 years. The children's English vocabularies grew faster than their Spanish vocabularies, more so in the expressive domain than the receptive domain. The proportion of children who were English-dominant also increased more in the expressive than the receptive domain. By age 10, the children's expressive skills were almost always English dominant while their receptive skills were most frequently balanced. Among children who hear a heritage language at home and a societal language at school, trajectories of dual language development differs in the expressive and receptive domains. These longitudinal data suggest continuity between the receptive-expressive gap observed in bilingual children and the receptive bilingualism often observed in adults.

Majority language skill, not measures of bilingualism, predicts executive attention in bilingual children.

Evidence is mixed regarding whether and why bilingual children might be advantaged in the development of executive functions. Five preregistered hypotheses regarding sources of a bilingual advantage were tested with data from 102 Spanish-English bilingual children and 25 English monolingual children who were administered a test of executive attention, the flanker task, at 7, 8, and 9 years of age. Measures of the children's early and concurrent bilingual exposure and their concurrent English and Spanish skill were available from a larger longitudinal study in which these children participated. Tests of the preregistered hypotheses yielded null findings: The bilingual children's executive attention abilities were unrelated to their amount of early exposure to mixed input, to balance in their early dual language exposure, to balance in their concurrent exposure, to their degree of bilingualism, or to their combined Spanish + English vocabulary score. English vocabulary score was a positive significant correlate of executive attention among the bilingual children, but those bilingual children above the group median in English vocabulary did not outperform the monolingual children when the comparison was adjusted for nonverbal IQ. These findings suggest that a language learning ability may explain the association between bilingualism and executive function. Because the best statistical approach to testing for effects on differences is a matter of dispute, all analyses were conducted with both a difference score and a residual gain score as the outcome variable. The central findings, but not all findings, were the same with both approaches.

Home language and societal language skills in second-generation bilingual adults.

Aims: Research aims were (a) to test competing predictions regarding the levels of heritage and societal language proficiency among young adults who experienced early exposure to both languages, and (b) to identify sources of individual differences in degree of bilingualism. Design/methodology/approach: Participants comprised 65 Spanish-English bilinguals who reported using both languages on a weekly basis, 25 native English monolinguals, and 25 native Spanish monolinguals. Language and literacy skills were assessed with a battery of standardized and research-based assessments. Degree of bilingualism was calculated for the bilingual participants. Data and analysis: Paired sample t-tests compared the bilinguals' skills in English to their skills in Spanish. Hierarchical regression evaluated factors related to their degree of bilingualism. Independent sample t-tests compared bilinguals' single-language skills to monolinguals. Findings/conclusions: The bilinguals' English skills were stronger than their Spanish skills on every measure. Thus, degree of bilingualism was largely a function of level of Spanish skill and was associated with concurrent Spanish exposure. Bilinguals' English skills were not different from the monolinguals except in speed of lexical access. The bilinguals' Spanish skills were significantly lower than the Spanish monolinguals on every measure except in accuracy judgments for grammatically correct sentences. Originality: Previous studies of bilingual adults have focused on sequential bilinguals and previous studies of heritage language speakers have focused on their grammatical skills. This is the first study, to our knowledge, to assess a wide range of functionally relevant skills in adults with early exposure to a heritage and societal language. Significance/implications: These findings demonstrate that early exposure to and continued use of a home language does not interfere with the achievement of societal language and literacy skills, while also demonstrating that even a widely and frequently used home language may not be acquired to the same skill level as a societal language used in school.

What explains the correlation between growth in vocabulary and grammar? New evidence from latent change score analyses of simultaneous bilingual development.

A close relationship between children's vocabulary size and the grammatical complexity of their speech is well attested but not well understood. The present study used latent change score modeling to examine the dynamic relationships between vocabulary and grammar growth within and across languages in longitudinal data from 90 simultaneous Spanish-English bilingual children who were assessed at 6-month intervals between 30 and 48 months. Slopes of vocabulary and grammar growth were strongly correlated within each language and showed moderate or nonsignificant relationships across languages. There was no evidence that vocabulary level predicted subsequent grammar growth or that the level of grammatical development predicted subsequent vocabulary growth. We propose that a common influence of properties of input on vocabulary and grammatical development is the source of their correlated but uncoupled growth. An unanticipated across-language finding was a negative relationship between level of English skill and subsequent Spanish growth. We propose that the cultural context of Spanish-English bilingualism in the US is the reason that strong English skills jeopardize Spanish language growth, while Spanish skills do not affect English growth. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/qEHSQ0yRre0.

The Development of English and Spanish Among Children in Immigrant Families in the United States.

The variable language skills of children from immigrant families create challenges for families, teachers, and policy makers. A first step toward meeting those challenges is to understand the factors that influence language development in children who hear a language other than the country's majority language at home. We present findings from analyses of longitudinal data on children in immigrant families in the United States that contribute to that understanding. Our findings support four broad conclusions: (1) Children who are exposed to two languages simultaneously will lag behind monolingual children in their rates of single language growth. This is the normal result of distributed language exposure. (2) Language exposure provided by native speakers is more supportive of language growth than exposure provided by nonnative speakers. Therefore, immigrant parents should be encouraged to interact with their children in the language that allows the richest, most meaningful conversations, not necessarily in the majority language. (3) Preschool attendance does not always provide support for majority language skill. Attention needs to be paid to the quality of language support provided in preschool classrooms if they are to benefit language growth. (4) Acquiring the heritage language does not interfere with acquiring the majority language. Rather, it is heritage language acquisition that is vulnerable.

Las habilidades variables del lenguaje en niños de familias inmigrantes crean desafíos para las familias, profesores y actores políticos. Un primer paso para acercarse a estos desafíos, es entender los factores que influencian el desarrollo de lenguaje en niños que escuchan un lenguaje distinto al del país de residencia en sus hogares. En este artículo presentamos hallazgos de análisis longitudinales sobre datos de niños de familias inmigrantes en los Estados Unidos que contribuye al entendimiento de estos desafíos. Nuestros hallazgos muestran cuatro grandes conclusiones: (1) Los niños que están expuestos a dos lenguajes simultáneamente presentan un desfase con respecto a los niños monolingües respecto a los índices de crecimiento de uno de los idiomas. Este es el resultado normal de una exposición al lenguaje de manera distribuida. (2) La exposición al lenguaje proporcionada por los hablantes nativos es de mayor apoyo al desarrollo del lenguaje que la exposición proporcionada por hablantes no-nativos. Es por eso, que los padres inmigrantes deben ser alentados a interactuar con sus hijos en el lenguaje que permita intercambios significativos y abundantes en conversaciones, no necesariamente en el idioma de la mayoría. (3) La asistencia a cursos preescolares no siempre ofrece apoyo hacia las habilidades del lenguaje. Se necesita prestar atención a la calidad del apoyo del lenguaje que se proporciona en las aulas del preescolar si estas presentan beneficios al desarrollo del lenguaje. (4) Adquirir el idioma heredado no interfiere con la adquisición del idioma mayoritario, más bien, la adquisición del idioma heredado es el que se encuentra vulnerable.

Language specificity in the relation of maternal education to bilingual children's vocabulary growth.

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