Individual differences and language interdependence: a study of sequential bilingual development in Spanish–English preschool children

Castilla, Anny Patricia; Restrepo, M. Adelaida; Pérez‐Leroux, Ana Teresa

doi:10.1080/13670050802357795

Cited by 72 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…The notion of a CUP is similar to hypotheses advanced by others. For example, the General Abilities Model (e.g., Castilla, Restrepo, & Perez-Leroux, 2009) posits that the strong relation between skills in L1 and L2 represents an underlying language-learning capacity that children have independent of their intelligence or overall cognitive abilities.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Do early literacy skills in children's first language promote development of skills in their second language? An experimental evaluation of transfer.

Goodrich¹,

Lonigan²,

Farver³

2013

Journal of Educational Psychology

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The purpose of this study was to evaluate the cross-language transfer of the emergent literacy skills of preschoolers who were Spanish-speaking language minority children in the context of an experimental intervention study. Ninety-four children were randomly assigned to either a control condition (High/Scope preschool curriculum) or to receive small-group pull-out instruction (Literacy Express Preschool Curriculum) in English or initially in Spanish and transitioning to English. We examined whether children's initial skills in one language moderated the impact of the intervention on those same skills in the other language at posttest. Results demonstrated that, for children in the English-only intervention condition, initial Spanish receptive vocabulary and elision skills moderated the impact of the intervention on English receptive vocabulary and elision skills at posttest, respectively. For children in the transitional intervention condition, initial English definitional vocabulary and elision skills moderated the impact of the intervention on Spanish definitional vocabulary and elision skills at posttest, respectively. Results for the vocabulary interactions, as well as the elision interaction for the English-only intervention group comparisons, supported the notion of transfer of specific linguistic information across languages. Results for elision interaction for the transitional intervention group comparisons supported language-independent transfer. Implications for the theory of cross-language transfer of emergent literacy skills are discussed.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Do early literacy skills in children's first language promote development of skills in their second language? An experimental evaluation of transfer.

Goodrich¹,

Lonigan²,

Farver³

2013

Journal of Educational Psychology

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“…This finding suggests that the common underlying proficiencies for code-related skills represent a general language-learning capacity (Castilla et al, 2009) rather than construct-specific abilities. Specific English and Spanish early literacy abilities were generally related to each other within but not across languages (e.g., specific Spanish phonological awareness was related to Spanish expressive vocabulary but not English expressive vocabulary).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…For example, if language-independent phonological awareness and print knowledge skills represented abilities that were entirely unique to phonological awareness and print knowledge, respectively, those constructs would not be related to each other or to other language-specific aspects of early literacy (e.g., English oral language). However, some researchers have speculated that evidence of cross-language relations of academic skills emerges due to children’s underlying language-learning capacity (Castilla, Restrepo, & Perez-Leroux, 2009). If the common underlying proficiency is indicative of a general language-learning capacity and is not unique to any specific construct, it would be expected that children’s common underlying proficiencies would be related to each other and to language-specific aspects of early literacy across constructs (e.g., common underlying proficiency for print knowledge would be correlated with Spanish-specific aspects of phonological awareness).…”

Section: Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Language-independent and language-specific aspects of early literacy: An evaluation of the common underlying proficiency model.

Goodrich¹,

Lonigan²

2017

Journal of Educational Psychology

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According to the common underlying proficiency model (Cummins, 1981), as children acquire academic knowledge and skills in their first language, they also acquire language-independent information about those skills that can be applied when learning a second language. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relevance of the common underlying proficiency model for the early literacy skills of Spanish-speaking language-minority children using confirmatory factor analysis. Eight hundred fifty-eight Spanish-speaking language-minority preschoolers (mean age = 60.83 months, 50.2% female) participated in this study. Results indicated that bifactor models that consisted of language-independent as well as language-specific early literacy factors provided the best fits to the data for children’s phonological awareness and print knowledge skills. Correlated factors models that only included skills specific to Spanish and English provided the best fits to the data for children’s oral language skills. Children’s language-independent early literacy skills were significantly related across constructs and to language-specific aspects of early literacy. Language-specific aspects of early literacy skills were significantly related within but not across languages. These findings suggest that language-minority preschoolers have a common underlying proficiency for code-related skills but not language-related skills that may allow them to transfer knowledge across languages.

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“…Applied to grammatical development, the CUP hypothesis predicts positive transfer of grammatical knowledge between structures with similar surface features in bilinguals. There is also the issue of interdependence between the L1 and the L2 and not necessarily only with structures sharing similar features [57]. Assuming a child has no developmental delays in the first language, that child should relate L1 knowledge and skills to the L2.…”

Section: Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparison of the Grammatical Production of Child Heritage Speakers of Spanish across Language and Grade: Kindergarten and Grade 1

et al. 2017

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Abstract:In this study, we elicited grammatical forms (oral production) from a group of child heritage speakers of Spanish (N = 45) in English and Spanish, using the morphosyntax subtest of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment (BESA), (Peña et al. 2014). A cross-sectional design was used with 25 participants in kindergarten and 20 in first grade. All children spoke Spanish at home and attended English rural schools. We controlled for L2 class environment and socio-economic status. Research findings indicated children produced more target structures in L1 Spanish. This project supports the view that sequential bilingualism and continuous exposure to the heritage language may assist heritage speakers to maintain some L1 structures (Miller and Cuza 2013; Pascual y Cabo and Gómez Soler 2015). Patterns of L2 development are also addressed.

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Individual differences and language interdependence: a study of sequential bilingual development in Spanish–English preschool children

Cited by 72 publications

References 34 publications

Do early literacy skills in children's first language promote development of skills in their second language? An experimental evaluation of transfer.

Do early literacy skills in children's first language promote development of skills in their second language? An experimental evaluation of transfer.

Language-independent and language-specific aspects of early literacy: An evaluation of the common underlying proficiency model.

A Comparison of the Grammatical Production of Child Heritage Speakers of Spanish across Language and Grade: Kindergarten and Grade 1

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