Cognitive and Linguistic Predictors of Language Control in Bilingual Children

Abstract

In order to communicate effectively with a variety of conversation partners and in a variety of settings, bilingual children must develop language control, the ability to control which language is used for production. Past work has focused on linguistic skills as the limiting factor in children's ability to control their language choice, while cognitive control has been the focus of adult models of language control. The current study examined the effects of both language ability and cognitive control on language control in 4−6 year old Spanish/English bilingual children with a broad range of language skills, including those with low skills in both languages. To measure language control, children participated in an interactive scripted confederate dialogue paradigm in which they took turns describing picture scenes with video partners who presented themselves as monolingual speakers of English or monolingual speakers of Spanish. The paradigm had two conditions: a single-language context, in which children interacted with only one partner, and a dual-language context, in which children needed to switch between languages to address different partners. The Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) indexed cognitive control. The findings revealed an overall effect of language ability, such that children with lower language skills were more likely to produce words in the language not understood by their conversation partner. There was also an effect of cognitive control on children's ability to adjust to the dual-language context. Based on these findings, we suggest that a model of language control in children should consider both linguistic and cognitive factors. However, language ability appears to be the main limiting factor, with cognitive control playing a more restricted role in adapting to a dual-language context.

Cognate facilitation in single- and dual-language contexts in bilingual children’s word processing

“…Interestingly, cognate effects were not necessarily stronger in the duallanguage context. This is different from what we predicted based on e.g., Elston-Güttler et al (2005) and Gross and Kaushanskaya (2020). Differences between studies may be partly explained by several methodological differences, such as stimulus type and manipulation of language context.…”

“…For example, duallanguage contexts are cognitively demanding for bilingual adults, as they involve multiple cognitive control processes, such as interference suppression and selective response inhibition (Green & Abutalebi, 2013; see e.g., Misra et al, 2012). Similarly, Gross and Kaushanskaya (2020) found effects of language context, modulated by several cognitive control abilities, in Spanish-English bilingual children between four and seven years old. Children with lower cognitive control abilities had more difficulty in maintaining the target language in interactions in dual-language contexts than in single-language contexts, producing more codeswitches and blends (see also Gross & Kaushanskaya, 2018).…”

“…Stimulus list composition may be viewed as a more local operationalization of language context, which could provide insights into the mechanisms behind the more global language context effects as in Gross and Kaushanskaya (2020). However, whilst Green and Abutalebi's (2013) view on language context was developed around language production in naturalistic interactions, studies into stimulus list composition have mostly involved (cognate and/or interlingual homograph) word recognition in strictly experimental settings.…”

“…To fully understand the effect of language context on cognate processing, we also took children's language dominance into account (following e.g., Gross & Kaushanskaya, 2020). Dominance effects and context effects stem from different processes -respectively, lexicon-internal differences in activation and lexiconexternal (specifically, decision-level) differences in inhibition.…”

Language experience, cognitive skills, and English and Spanish semantic abilities in bilingual children with typical development and language impairments

“…For analysis, we divided participants into two groups: children with typical development; and children with LIs. Using converging evidence (e.g., standardized test scores and parent report) is best practice in identification of bilingual children with LI (Castilla-Earls et al, 2020; Sheng et al, 2012) and frequently a criteria threshold is used to operationalize LI in research with bilingual children (e.g., Gross & Kaushanskaya, 2020; Restrepo et al, 2013; Sheng et al, 2012). For the purpose of this research, we identified children with LI if they met two out of three of the following criteria: (a) received scores less than 85 (1 standard deviation from the mean) on the bilingual language index of the Bilingual English–Spanish Assessment (BESA; Peña et al, 2014); (b) had a previous diagnosis of LI from a speech–language pathologist; or (c) parents reported concern regarding their child’s language development on a demographic information form.…”