Language development in bilingual preschoolers: A cross-linguistic and cross-cultural comparison

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Project Summary/Abstract There is a fundamental gap in our understanding of language development in linguistically and culturally diverse preschoolers, including those who are dual language learners of English and another language. In order to identify atypical patterns of language development in bilingual children, there first needs to be an understanding of the typical variation in communication that naturally exists across languages in bilinguals. The objective of the proposed work is to examine whether bilingual mothers and their young children interact differently in each of their two languages. The central hypothesis is that there are unique culture-specific communicative norms that manifest differently depending upon which of a bilingual's two languages is being spoken at any given time. Using Thai as a test case because of the availability of monolingual comparison data, and building on cross- cultural findings that monolingual Thai and monolingual American-English mother-child dyads differ in their communicative styles, the proposed research has three Specific Aims: 1) examine whether Thai-English bilingual children communicate with their mothers differently in their two languages, 2) examine whether Thai-English bilingual mothers communicate with their children differently in their two languages, and 3) examine the relationship between maternal and child patterns of conversation in their two languages. Four naturalistic, culturally-, and ecologically-valid tasks are utilized: prompted reminiscing, book sharing, toy play, and child personal narrative. This is the first systematic study to examine whether bilingual mothers and their young children interact differently in their two languages and in different communicative settings and is innovative in its scope and approach. Upon study completion, the collected data will be made publicly available to other researchers as de-identified transcripts via a free repository for further study. This research contributes to understanding the consequences of bilingualism for linguistic, cognitive, and social development of children growing up with two languages, specifically how learning more than one language influences interpersonal communication and interactions during the preschool years. The project carries practical implications for clinical assessment, treatment, and education of linguistically and culturally diverse bilingual preschoolers and will help minimize the risk of misdiagnosing differences as disorders in non-WEIRD (white, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) populations.