Spanish-specific Patterns and Nonword Repetition Performance in English Language Learners

Spanish-specific Patterns and Nonword Repetition Performance in English Language Learners
Author: María R. Brea-Spahn
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2009
Genre:
ISBN:

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ABSTRACT: Nonword repetition tasks were originally devised to assess the efficiency of the phonological loop (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974), a component of the working memory system, where verbal information is temporarily stored and translated to support activities like phonological processing during early word-recognition (Snowling, 1981; Wagner et al., 2003), speech production (McCarthy & Warrington, 1984), and articulation (Watkins, Dronkers, & Vargha-Khadem, 2002; Yoss & Darley, 1974). From a practical perspective, there is a significant need for a systematically-designed Spanish nonword repetition measure that is equivalent to currently-available English measures. For this study, a database of nonwords that considered phonotactic and phonological properties of Spanish was devised. In a preliminary study, Spanish-speaking adults provided wordlikeness judgments about a large set of candidate nonwords. A subset of the rated nonwords was used in the development of a Spanish nonword repetition measure. The aim of the main experiment was to explore the contributions of participant factors (age, gender, and vocabulary knowledge) and item factors (word length, stress pattern, and wordlikeness) to Spanish repetition performance in this group of Spanish speaking, English language learning children. From a theoretical perspective, this investigation allowed a first observation of how experience with listening to and producing Spanish words influences the acquisition of Spanish-specific phonological patterns. A total of 68 children, ages four to six years with varying degrees of Spanish language knowledge participated in this study. Results revealed significant age and word length effects. However, stress pattern did not exert significant effects on repetition performance, which is not completely consistent with previous literature. That is, participants repeated nonwords from both the more frequent and the less frequent stress pattern with similar accuracy. Wordlikeness, a previously uninvestigated variable in nonword repetition was found to affect repetition accuracy. For all participants, nonwords rated as high in wordlikeness were more accurately repeated than were nonwords with low wordlikeness ratings. Findings of the study are discussed in terms of how they relate to working memory and usage-based models of phonological learning. Finally, the clinical relevance of nonword repetition in the assessment of coarse- and fine-grained mappings of phonological knowledge is suggested.

Working Memory in Spanish-English Bilinguals with Language Impairment

Working Memory in Spanish-English Bilinguals with Language Impairment
Author: Janet Calderón
Publisher:
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2003
Genre: Bilingualism in children
ISBN:

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The present research addresses two questions and goals. The first goal was to create and validate an alternative assessment tool for Spanish-speaking and Spanish-English bilingual children. In Experiment I we developed and selected the appropriate nonwords for the Spanish language. Experiment 2 compared Spanish nonword repetition performance for Spanish- and Spanish-English-speaking children with or without language impairment (LI). Numerous studies have documented that monolingual English-speaking children with LI differ from their peers on nonword repetition performance and have significantly more difficulty repeating three- and four-syllable nonwords. It was predicted that Spanish-speaking children with LI will have significantly more difficulty at Spanish nonword repetition performance, both in general and with the longer nonwords. The second research question examined the nature of language impairment in emerging bilingual populations. The various models of working memory (WM) differ in the explanations given for the underlying cause of the working memory deficits present in this population of children. A general limitation will cause the children with LI to perform significantly worse on all measures, while a specific limitation will produce errors specific to the verbal domain only. Both general processing and verbal processing measures were used to examine the nature of language impairment. It was predicted that the children with LI will demonstrate deficits on all measures, verbal and nonverbal, supporting the unitary claim that children with LI possess a general processing limitation. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the children with typical language development (TLD) performed significantly better than the group with LI on the Spanish Nonword Repetition task. The findings from Experiment 3 supported the unitary theory of WM; the combination of significant intercorrelations among the dependent variables, and the fact that the group with LI performed significantly worse on both the verbal and nonverbal measures provided evidence for a general working memory limitation. These children possess a working memory deficit--not a language impairment. The clinical implications of the experiments are exciting. The Spanish Nonword Repetition task has the potential of screening for WM deficits avoiding time consuming language sampling and transcriptions. Moreover, support for a general WM deficit has significant implications for therapy.

Language Disorders in Bilingual Children and Adults, Third Edition

Language Disorders in Bilingual Children and Adults, Third Edition
Author: Kathryn Kohnert
Publisher: Plural Publishing
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2020-08-26
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1635502063

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Language Disorders in Bilingual Children and Adults, Third Edition, provides speech-language pathologists, advanced students in communication disorders programs, and clinical language researchers with information needed to formulate and respond to questions related to effective service delivery to bilingual children and adults with suspected or confirmed language disorders. The bilinguals of interest represent varying levels of first and second language proficiency across the lifespan. That is, bilingualism is not determined here by proficiency in each language, but rather by the individual's experience or need for two languages. In separate chapters, the book synthesizes the literature on bilingual children and adults with typical and atypical language skills. These chapters give the reader a deep understanding of the multiple factors that affect language development and disorders in those who rely on two languages for meaningful interactions. Chapters on assessment and intervention issues and methods are then presented for each population. For children, the text focuses on developmental language disorder but also discusses secondary language disorders (such as autism spectrum disorder) in bilingual populations. For adults, the focus is on aphasia, with additional discussion of dementia, traumatic brain injury, and right hemisphere disorder. Although child and adult, typical and atypical populations are presented separately, all are considered within a unifying Dynamic Interactive Processing perspective and within a new Means-Opportunities-Motives framework for understanding language disorders in bilinguals. This broad theoretical framework emphasizes interactions between social, cognitive, and communicative systems to form the basis for very practical implications related to assessment and intervention. This third edition has been completely updated to reflect the current research on bilingual populations and the best practices for working with them. Studies at the intersection of bilingualism and language disorders have expanded to include additional disorders and new language combinations. The authors synthesize the current literature and translate it for clinical use. New to the Third Edition • Coauthors Kerry Danahy Ebert, PhD, CCC-SLP and Giang Thuy Pham, PhD, CCC-SLP • Updated literature review and references to reflect new research on bilingualism, cultural competence, cognitive advantages and clinical practice with linguistically diverse populations • Case studies on assessment with bilingual children and adults • Additional tables and figures summarizing key information • Available evidence on additional child and adult language disorders in bilinguals • Updated extension activities and resource supplement

Language Development and Disorders in Spanish-speaking Children

Language Development and Disorders in Spanish-speaking Children
Author: Alejandra Auza Benavides
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2017-06-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 331953646X

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Prominent researchers from the US, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Spain contribute experimental reports on language development of children who are acquiring Spanish. The chapters cover a wide range of dimensions in acquisition: comprehension and production; monolingualism and bilingualism; typical development, children who are at risk and children with language disorders, phonology, semantics, and morphosyntax. These studies will inform linguistic theory development in clinical linguistics as well as offer insights on how language works in relation to cognitive functions that are associated with when children understand or use language. The unique data from child language offer perspectives that cannot be drawn from adult language. The first part is dedicated to the acquisition of Spanish as a first or second language by typically-developing children, the second part offers studies on children who are at risk of language delays, and the third part focuses on children with specific language impairment, disorders and syndromes.

Paired-associate and Cross-situational Word Learning in Monolingual and Bilingual Adults

Paired-associate and Cross-situational Word Learning in Monolingual and Bilingual Adults
Author: Anne Neveu
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022
Genre:
ISBN:

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The overarching goal of the present dissertation was to examine the mechanisms that underlie two word learning paradigms: paired-associate (PAL) and cross-situational word learning (CSWL), when studied via a comparable design. Each paradigm has been developed under different theoretical umbrellas, and thus has been studied separately, limiting the ability to gain a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms that might be common across them. Four factors hypothesized to affect novel word learning have been investigated in PAL: novel word familiarity, phonological working memory, bilingualism, and delayed testing. In contrast, very few studies have manipulated word familiarity in CSWL, and those that did have used different methods than in PAL. Similarly, the role of phonological working memory in CSWL has not yet been directly investigated. In bilingual studies of PAL and CSWL, a bilingual advantage in learning has been found in PAL, but less reliably so in CSWL. In PAL, this effect has been attributed to better phonological working memory, although findings are mixed. No direct study of the role of phonological working memory has been conducted in bilingual CSWL. Finally, few studies exist in PAL and CSWL examining long-term retention of novel words. We examined the role of word learning paradigm, word familiarity and phonological working memory in word learning in monolinguals in Experiment 1, and across monolinguals and bilinguals in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 examined how characteristics of PAL and CSWL might influence retention of novel words at immediate and delayed testing, and whether phonological working memory would support word learning in the two paradigms differently across different time points. English-speaking monolinguals (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) and native English (L1) - Spanish (second language, L2) adult bilinguals (Experiment 2) were recruited and randomly assigned to either PAL or CSWL (Experiments 1, 2, and 3), and immediate or delayed testing condition (Experiment 3). Additionally, we included two measures of phonological working memory: a backward digit-span and a nonword repetition task. Findings in Experiment 1 suggest that PAL is easier than CSWL, likely due a lower level of ambiguity at learning, and that phonological working memory and word familiarity facilitate word learning across both paradigms. In Experiment 2, results suggest a weak trend for bilinguals to perform better than monolinguals in PAL, with both groups showing similar sensitivity to familiarity and reliance on phonological working memory. The familiarity effect was stronger in CSWL than in PAL, and there was a trend for phonological working memory to be more strongly involved in PAL compared to CSWL. In Experiment 3, performance was higher in PAL than in CSWL, at both immediate and delayed testing, and phonological working memory supported learning to a similar extent across paradigms and testing points. Taken together, these findings suggest that although PAL and CSWL have been studied under drastically different theoretical frameworks, the two paradigms are remarkably similar in their reliance on phonological working memory, and in their sensitivity to novel word familiarity. Additionally, this study tested both monolingual and bilingual adults in PAL and CSWL for the first time and suggests minimal effects of bilingualism on both types of learning, and instead highlights robust consistency in word learning patterns and the mechanisms that enable them across groups. Finally, retention across both paradigms was also tested for the first time and indicates similar reliance on phonological working memory and comparable performance within paradigms over time. Together, the results of this dissertation suggest the need to consider word learning via different paradigms - such an approach can bridge disparate theories of word learning and can ultimately lead to the development of a comprehensive theoretical framework. Practically, these findings show that, whether in the classroom or in an immersion setting, word learning is robust to individual differences and linguistic and timing factors.

Error Patterns in Bilingual Sentence Repetition

Error Patterns in Bilingual Sentence Repetition
Author: Tiana Cowan
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2021
Genre:
ISBN:

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Purpose: Sentence repetition is a measure that has been commonly used to assist in the identification of language disorders for bilingual individuals. It has been observed that bilinguals with typical and atypical language skills produce different error patterns when repeating sentences. Those with typical language most commonly replace target words, and those with language disorders most commonly omit words and nominal or grammatical morphemes during repetition. However, the underlying factors associated with different error types are inadequately understood. The present paper evaluated individual-level factors, like cognitive-linguistic skills, and stimuli-related factors, like lexical-semantic content, to see how each predicted omission and substitution errors during sentence repetition for bilingual and monolingual adults. Method: Twenty-one Spanish-English speaking adults and twenty monolingual English-speaking adults completed four cognitive-linguistic tasks. The models predicted substitution or omission errors during a sentence repetition task containing low semantic predictability sentences that varied in concreteness and frequency. The independent variables were scores derived from the LexTALE vocabulary test, which represented lexical knowledge in English; forward and backward digit span tasks, which together represented verbal memory; and a language history questionnaire, used to estimate exposure to English. Research Question 1 evaluated how language background (i.e., monolingual or bilingual) and lexical knowledge were associated with omission and substitution errors during sentence repetition. Research Question 2 evaluated how concreteness, frequency, syntactic structure, and part of speech interacted with cognitive-linguistic factors to predict errors for bilingual and monolingual adults. Research Question 3 used the data derived from bilingual performance on the sentence repetition task to evaluate how lexical knowledge predicted the semantic similarity between substitution errors and the target words they replaced. Results: The results showed that bilingual and monolingual adults exhibited different patterns of error production during sentence repetition. Bilingual adults were more likely to produce substitution errors than monolinguals after accounting for lexical knowledge and verbal memory abilities. However, both groups were equally likely to omit words during sentence repetition. The evaluation of how individual-level and sentence-related factors interacted to predict omission errors identified additional differences for bilingual and monolingual adults that were associated with language experience. For bilinguals, omission errors were negatively associated with exposure to English with this association being modulated by lexical knowledge. Moreover, bilinguals with lower amounts of English exposure were more likely to omit concrete or low frequency words, with both effects being modulated by lexical knowledge. Substitution errors were associated with verbal memory and word-related factors, but not with lexical knowledge or English exposure. For monolinguals, verbal memory variable was associated with omission errors, but lexical knowledge was not significant in any model. An exploratory analysis was conducted to see if differences in the semantic similarity between target words and substitution errors could be analyzed to derive information about bilingual individuals' lexical knowledge. The results indicated that those relatively high amounts of exposure to English were more likely to replace low frequency target words with ones that were conceptually similar in meaning compared to those with less exposure to English. Bilingual adults with relatively low exposure to English replaced low frequency targets with unrelated words, with this association being modulated by lexical knowledge. It is possible that the association between lexical knowledge and the semantic similarity of substitution errors could, in part, account for the lack of association between lexical knowledge and overall substitution error rates in the other models. Conclusion: Improving the understanding of which cognitive-linguistic factors underlie error productions during sentence repetition would aid in the accurate interpretation of task performance for linguistically diverse populations. In clinical practice errors are treated equally by most scoring protocols. The present paper identified a potential weakness in this approach by documenting that Spanish-English bilinguals produce qualitatively different substitution errors depending upon their English exposure and lexical knowledge. Therefore, important information about individual differences in language skills might be missed by traditional scoring protocols.

Assessing Multilingual Children

Assessing Multilingual Children
Author: Sharon Armon-Lotem
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2015
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1783093129

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Second language learners often produce language forms resembling those of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). At present, professionals working in language assessment and education have only limited diagnostic instruments to distinguish language impaired migrant children from those who will eventually catch up with their monolingual peers. This book presents a comprehensive set of tools for assessing the linguistic abilities of bilingual children. It aims to disentangle effects of bilingualism from those of SLI, making use of both models of bilingualism and models of language impairment. The book's methods-oriented focus will make it an essential handbook for practitioners who look for measures which could be adapted to a variety of languages in diverse communities, as well as academic researchers.

Bilingual Language Development & Disorders in Spanish-English Speakers

Bilingual Language Development & Disorders in Spanish-English Speakers
Author: Brian Goldstein
Publisher: Paul H Brookes Publishing
Total Pages:
Release: 2022
Genre: EDUCATION
ISBN: 9781681254005

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"This fully revised, comprehensive graduate-level text and reference offers the most current information on language development and disorders of Spanish-English bilingual children"--