Children’s Code-Switching Changes From 2.5 to 3.5 Years, Reflecting Changes in Their Bilingual Proficiency

• In Event: Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

Code-switching is a common feature of bilingual language use, occurring within utterances, between utterances within speaker turns, and across speakers. Previous research has identified multiple factors that influence the frequency and type of code-switching, including bilinguals’ relative strength in their two languages, their exposure to others’ code-switching, and the perceived language proficiency of their interlocutor. Little work has examined code-switching in children as young as 2.5 years or developmental changes in code-switching that may occur as children’s language and social skills develop. The aims of the present study were to test preregistered hypotheses regarding the influences on code-switching in Spanish-English bilingual children studied longitudinally at 2.5 and 3.5 years and to ask whether and why the frequency and types of children’s code-switching changes with development.
The participants were 56 Spanish-English bilingual children, selected from a larger, ongoing study, for whom recorded sessions of Spanish-designated and English-designated interactions with a caregiver were available at 2.5 and 3.5 years. The caregivers complied with instructions to speak only English or only Spanish, but the children did not, providing the data for the present study. Sessions were transcribed with CHILDES and analyzed using CLAN (MacWhinney, 2000). Each utterance by the child was categorized as not a code-switch, a within-utterance code-switch, a between-utterance within turn code-switch, or an across-speaker code-switch. Interrater reliability based on double coding of 14 percent of the data was high (κ > 0.95). Children’s language dominance and balance were calculated using their scores on a standardized test of expressive vocabulary; properties of interlocutors’ speech were calculated from the transcripts.
At both ages, combining across all types of code-switches, children switched to English in the Spanish context more frequently (F(1, 110) = 5.12, p = .03) than they switched to Spanish in the English context (F(1, 110) = 8.70, p = .004). At both ages, the children’s degree of English dominance was a positive predictor of their frequency of switching to English and a negative predictor of their frequency of switching to Spanish. Controlling for the effect of children’s English dominance the only other significant relation was that at 2.5 years, children’s exposure to code-switching was a negative predictor of the frequency of their switching to Spanish in the English context only (r = -.38, p = .02).
Language dominance and code-switching changed with development. Between 2.5 and 3.5 years, children became more English dominant, and their rate of switching to English increased while their rate of switching to Spanish decreased (Figure 1). This change in dominance affects the three types of switching children produce (Figure 2).
The present findings suggest that the strongest influence on bilingual children’s code-switch is their relative proficiency in their two languages. As others have suggested, children reach into their dominant language to fill gaps in their knowledge of their non-dominant language. Also as others have suggested, children with more balanced proficiency more frequently produce within-utterance code-switches. The present findings also demonstrate that as bilingual children’s relative proficiency changes, their code-switching changes.

Authors

• Michelle K. Tulloch, Florida Atlantic University
  Presenting Author

• Erika Hoff, Florida Atlantic University
  Non-Presenting Author