Poster #109 - Effects of Linguistic Context on Spanish-English Bilinguals' Word Learning

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Language, Communication

Integrative Statement

English-monolingual children develop a shape bias early in language acquisition, such that they are more likely to generalize a novel label based on shape than other features (Smith, Landau, & Jones, 1988). Spanish-monolingual children, however, do not show this bias to the same extent (Hahn & Cantrell, 2012). The shape bias is hypothesized to result from syntactic regularities that are obligatory in English; these regularities are more flexible in Spanish. Studying children who are simultaneously learning both languages presents a unique opportunity to further investigate how this word-learning bias develops. Thus, we asked to what extent Spanish-English bilingual children (Mage=21.31 months; range=18.9-23.6 months) show a shape bias in a novel-noun generalization (NNG) task. We tested two hypotheses regarding the weighting of factors influencing children’s novel noun generalization. If current linguistic context has a greater impact, children who complete the task in English should show a stronger shape bias than those who complete the task in Spanish, regardless of prior language experience. Instead, it may be that children’s exposure to English increases the likelihood of a child developing a shape bias, regardless of their exposure to other languages. If prior language experience has a greater impact on children’s novel noun generalization, then all children should show a shape bias, regardless of the language in which they complete the task.
Participants completed the NNG task either in English (N=16) or in Spanish (N=10); data collection is ongoing. Parents completed a language exposure survey and the Spanish and English versions of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI). Participants’ English exposure and English vocabulary size were comparable between conditions (Table 1).
In the NNG task, the experimenter presented the child with a novel object, labeling it six times (e.g., English: “Look at the teema!”; Spanish: “Mira, es una teema!”). The experimenter then removed the exemplar and presented the child with four new objects. Each new object shared one feature with the exemplar but was different in other features (e.g., the new object that matched the exemplar’s color had a different shape and texture; see Figure 1). The experimenter then asked the child to give them an object, using the same label as the exemplar (“Can you give me another teema?”/”Me puedes dar otra teema?”). Children also completed language understanding tasks in both English and Spanish to ensure that they understood what the experimenter was asking them to do.
A 2x4 ANOVA revealed a marginally significant Condition x Choice Type interaction, p=.058. Follow-up t-tests showed that children in the English condition made significantly more shape-based generalizations than children in the Spanish condition, t(24)=2.21, p=.03. Furthermore, children in the Spanish condition showed no reliable bias; their choices of the shape-match, color-match, texture-match, or distracter objects did not significantly differ from chance (.25), ps>.14. Neither English exposure nor English vocabulary size predicted proportion of shape choices, ps>.50. These results suggest that when learning new words, children are attuned to the regularities of the language currently in use, and prior language experiences may play a more secondary role.

Authors

• Christina Schonberg, UW-Madison
  Presenting Author

• Emily Russell, California State University - Northridge
  Non-Presenting Author