Self-ratings of spoken language dominance: A Multilingual Naming Test (MINT) and preliminary norms for young and aging Spanish–English bilinguals

Abstract

This study investigated correspondence between different measures of bilingual language proficiency contrasting self-report, proficiency interview, and picture naming skills. Fifty-two young (Experiment 1) and 20 aging (Experiment 2) Spanish-English bilinguals provided self-ratings of proficiency level, were interviewed for spoken proficiency, and named pictures in a Multilingual Naming Test (MINT, and in Experiment 1 also the Boston Naming Test; BNT). Self-ratings, proficiency interview, and the MINT did not differ significantly in classifying bilinguals into language-dominance groups, but naming tests (especially the BNT) classified bilinguals as more English-dominant than other measures. Strong correlations were observed between measures of proficiency in each language and language-dominance, but not degree of balanced bilingualism (index scores). Depending on the measure, up to 60% of bilinguals scored best in their self-reported non-dominant language. The BNT distorted bilingual assessment by underestimating ability in Spanish. These results illustrate what self-ratings can and cannot provide, illustrate the pitfalls of testing bilinguals with measures designed for monolinguals, and invite a multi-measure goal driven approach to classifying bilinguals into dominance groups.

Lying in a native and foreign language

“…Importantly, pupil sizes during the baseline period did not differ across groups (p > 0.96). For each of the three dependent measures (percentage of pupil size change, voice onset latency and utterance duration), trials in which the values exceeded more than ±2.5 standard deviations from the mean for each participant in each *Score corresponds to the number of correctly named drawings in the bilingual picture-naming test used to assess participants' vocabulary in each language (see Gollan et al, 2012) condition were considered outliers and were subsequently discarded from the analysis (percentage of pupil change: 1.63 % of the trials; voice onset latency: 1.36 % of the trials; utterance duration: 2.71 % of the trials). The remaining data were analyzed in a series of ANOVAs following a 2 × 2 Language (Native|Foreign) × Statement (True|False) design.…”

Gradient language dominance affects talker learning

“…Among the group of bilinguals we studied, the MiNT (Gollan et al, 2011), BDS (Dunn and Fox Tree, 2009), and reported age of English acquisition were highly correlated with one another, so all measures of bilingual dominance behaved similarly to the age of acquisition effects (Table 1). We report correlations with age of acquisition due to theoretical interest.…”

“…For bilingual participants, we assessed the relative dominance of English and Korean in two ways. Each participant completed a Bilingual Dominance Scale (BDS) (Dunn and Fox Tree, 2009) and a picture naming task assessing lexical inventory (MiNT) in English and Korean (modified from Gollan et al, 2011 by removing words that are cognates in English and Korean). Their BDS was scored as described in Dunn and Fox Tree (2009), and recorded as Korean score minus English score.…”

“…Note that no participants were near the ends of the range at À30 or +30. The MiNT (picture naming task) was scored as the number of correct uncued responses in Korean minus correct uncued responses in English, following Gollan et al, 2011 procedure. This score could theoretically range from À56 to +56 if a participant recognized all words in one language and none in the other.…”

Relative meaning frequencies for 578 homonyms in two Spanish dialects: A cross-linguistic extension of the English eDom norms

“…The participants were exposed to Spanish from a very early age (M = 0.76 years, SE = 0.2, max = 7) and showed very high overall proficiency in Spanish, as assessed using the BEST test (an adaptation of the MINT multilingual naming task for Basque, English, and Spanish; Duñabeitia, Casaponsa, Dimitropoulou, Martí, Larraza, & Carreiras, 2014;Gollan, Weissberger, Runnqvist, Montoya, & Cera, 2012; M = 76.1/77, SE = 0.2) and via in-person interviews that assessed fluency (M = 4.96/ 5, SE = 0.02). Participants were recruited at the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastián (UPV/EHU-Donostia), and were either completing or had recently completed an undergraduate degree.…”