MAPLE: A Multilingual Approach to Parent Language Estimates

• In Event: 1-098 - Describing and Quantifying “Bilingualism” Part 3; the Need for Consistency and Accuracy for Research and Education

Integrative Statement

Bilingual infants vary in when, how, and how often they hear each of their languages. Variables such as the particular languages of exposure, the community context, the onset of exposure, the amount of exposure, and socioeconomic status are crucial for describing any infant bilingual sample. Parent report is an effective approach for gathering data about infants’ language experience, given parents’ detailed knowledge of their infants’ lives. It has many advantages: it is relatively fast and easy to implement. Moreover, it is possible to assess language exposure both currently and over the infant’s entire life, which is not usually feasible in daily diary or home recording studies. This is important given that infants’ language exposure changes with their daily routines over time. At the same time, parents’ memories, effects of social desirability, and challenges in accurately translating parents’ qualitative knowledge of their infants’ lives to a quantitative measurement can affect the reliability and validity of parent report. Thus, the quality of parent report is highly dependent on how information is elicited. Yet, labs new to bilingualism research and newer trainees often lack concrete recommendations and examples of how to effectively use parent report to gather information about infants’ language background.

Here we introduce MAPLE: A Multilingual Approach to Parent Language Estimates. MAPLE provides recommendations for using structured interviews (similar to Bosch & Sebastián-Gallés, 2001; DeAnda et al., 2016), to reliably elicit information from parents on bilingual infants’ language background, with an emphasis on the challenging task of quantifying infants’ relative exposure to each language. We discuss sensitive issues that must be navigated in this process, including diversity in family characteristics and cultural values. Next, we identify six systematic effects that can impact parent report, including the Good Parent Effect (e.g., “I want my child to be bilingual, so that means he/she is hearing English half of the time and Spanish half of the time.”), the Equal Caregiving Effect (e.g., “I only speak French and my partner only speaks English, so our child is exposed to 50% French and 50% English.”), the Dora Effect (e.g., “My child hears a lot of Spanish from watching Dora the Explorer every day.” ), the Grocery Store Effect (e.g.,“My child hears a lot of French from everybody who says ‘bonjour!’ at the grocery store.”), the Wishful Grandma Effect (e.g., “We have lunch with Grandma every week, and she speaks both English and Italian, so my child knows Italian too.”) and the Daycare Black Hole Effect (e.g., “It’s supposed to be a bilingual daycare, but in practice I don’t know if this is really the case…”). We discuss several strategies for minimizing the influence of these effects.

Finally, we share sample forms and example videos of implementing MAPLE via the Open Science Framework. MAPLE improves the measurement of infant language background by providing a consistent and sensitive approach, which can nonetheless be tailored to individual families and communities.

Authors

• Krista Byers-Heinlein, Concordia University
  Presenting Author

• Esther Schott, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ana Maria Gonzalez-Barrero, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author