Phonological memory and language in young monolingual and bilingual children

描述（由申请人提供）：早期的口语发展为以后的学业成绩和读写能力奠定了基础。对于一些孩子来说，这种基础很薄弱，使他们处于危险之中。双语儿童的情况尤其如此，他们在早期口语技能损害日后学业成功机会的儿童中所占比例过高。因此，了解对单语和双语发展的影响是一个公共卫生问题。拟议研究的广泛目标是通过增加对单语和双语儿童早期语言发展中产生个体差异的外部原因和内部过程的科学理解来解决这一问题。本研究将检验语言输入影响语音记忆发展的假设，语音记忆反过来又影响语言发展。虽然语音记忆与语言发展之间的关系已经确立，但很少有研究研究语音记忆本身对发展的影响。此外，对语音记忆的研究主要局限于4岁以上的单语儿童。这些差距的部分原因可能是缺乏评估工具。在初步工作中，pi开发了一种评估2岁以下儿童语音记忆的程序。本研究的具体目的是：(1)建立该评估程序的信度和效度，包括将其扩展到西班牙语-英语双语儿童；(2)使用该程序来调查语言输入、语音记忆与早期单语和双语发展之间的关系。提出了一项短期纵向研究。对50名单语英语学习儿童和50名西班牙语和英语学习双语儿童，将在22个月时评估语言输入、语音记忆和语言发展，并在25个月时再次评估语言发展。将测试这些变量之间的并发关系和预测关系。该项目的结果将促进我们对语言输入和语音工作记忆在早期单语和双语语言发展中的作用的理解，并将为开发识别双语儿童后期语言障碍风险的工具提供第一步。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Early oral language development provides the foundation for later school achievement and literacy. In some children that foundation is weak, placing them at risk. This is particulary the case for bilingual children, who are overrepresented among children whose early oral language skills compromise their opportunties for later academic success. Understanding influences on monolingual and bilingual development is, therefore, a public health concern. The broad aim of the proposed research is to address this concern by increasing scientific understanding of the external causes and internal processes that produce individual differences in the early language development of monolingual and bilingual children. The proposed research will test the hypothesis that language input influences the development of phonological memory, which, in turn, influences language development. Although relations between phonological memory and language development are well established, very little work has investigated influences on the development of phonological memory itself. Furthermore, research on phonological memory is largely confined to monolingual children over the age of 4 years. These gaps may be due, in part, to a lack of assessment instruments. In preliminary work, the PIs have developed a procedure for assessing phonological memory in children younger than 2 years. The specific aims of the proposed research are: (1) to establish the reliability and validity of this assessment procedure, including extending it to Spanish- English bilingual children, and (2) to use this procedure in order to investigate the relations among language input, phonological memory, and early monolingual and bilingual development. One short-term longitudinal study is proposed. For 50 monolingual English-learning children and 50 Spanish- and English-learning bilingual children, language input, phonological memory, and language development will be assessed at 22 months and language development will be assessed again at 25 months of age. Concurrent and predictive relations among these variables will be tested. The outcomes of this project will advance our understanding of the role of language input and phonological working memory in early monolingual and bilingual language development and will provide the first steps toward the development of tools to identify bilingual children at risk for later language disorders.