The relation between language experience and receptive-expressive semantic gaps in bilingual children

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to explore the influence of language experience on the presence of the receptive-expressive gap. Each of 778 Spanish-English bilingual children screened pre-kindergarten in Utah and Texas were assigned to one of five language experience groups, ranging from functionally monolingual to balanced bilingual. Children’s scores from the language screener semantics subtest administered in both Spanish and English were standardized, and receptive and expressive semantic scores were compared. Children presented with a meaningful gap between receptive and expressive semantic knowledge in English but not Spanish. This gap increased as target-language exposure decreased. Results indicate that current language experience plays a dominant role in influencing the appearance and magnitude of the receptive-expressive gap.

Bilingual Development in Children of Immigrant Families

“…Bilingual children do not lag equally in all domains; at age 4, bilingual children are closer to the levels of monolingual children in grammar and phonology, but farthest in vocabulary . As illustrated in Figure , bilingual children often also have relatively stronger receptive than expressive skills in at least one of their languages . This might be because of bilingual children's diminished exposure to each language; input might more frequently and reliably illustrate the phonemes and grammatical structures of a language than it provides instances of individual words, or learning words might require more exposure than learning phonemes or grammatical structures.…”

The Receptive–Expressive Gap in English Narratives of Spanish–English Bilingual Children With and Without Language Impairment

“…Tests of language comprehension are often considered easier than tests of language production (Gibson et al, 2014a), but direct comparisons between the two can be made by converting raw scores to standard scores (assuming a co-normed sample). This conversion mathematically controls for the differences in difficulty level.…”

“…A significant discrepancy between receptive and expressive ability has been a hallmark of language impairment (Gibson, Jarmulowicz, & Oller, 2018). Recent research indicates that a receptive-expressive gap occurs in vocabulary (Gibson, Oller, Jarmulowicz, & Ethington, 2012) and semantic (Gibson, Peña, & Bedore, 2014a) testing for bilingual children with typical development (TD) and is exacerbated for bilingual children with PLI (Gibson, Peña, & Bedore, 2014b). The current study seeks to expand our understanding of the receptiveexpressive gap by investigating the trajectory and development of narrative receptive and expressive abilities of bilingual children with and without PLI.…”

“¿Cómo estas?” “I’m good.” Conversational code-switching is related to profiles of expressive and receptive proficiency in Spanish-English bilingual toddlers

“…That is, the children’s receptive abilities allow them to understand what is being said to them in both languages, but their expressive skills make it much easier to answer in one language than the other. Several studies of school-aged bilingual children have documented a receptive-expressive gap, in which the children’s standard scores on receptive measures exceed their standard scores on expressive measures in one or both of their languages (Gibson, Oller, Jarmulowicz, & Ethington, 2012; Gibson, Peña, & Bedore, 2012). The extreme of such a gap between receptive and expressive abilities is what has been termed passive or receptive bilingualism: a pattern of bilingual proficiency in which bilinguals understand two languages but are able to speak only one (Hurtado & Vega, 2004; Valdés, 2001).…”