Patterns of Bilingual Development and their Environmental Correlates

描述(由申请人提供)：来自双语家庭的儿童在人口中占很大比例，而且还在不断增长。他们早期的语言能力既没有得到很好的描述，也没有被理解。由于学龄前阶段的语言技能预示着以后的学业成就和社会适应，目前对早期双语发展的缺乏了解构成了一个重大的公共卫生问题。这项研究的目的1是确定与从婴儿期开始接触两种语言的儿童成功双语发展相关的环境因素。对2岁半的西班牙语-英语双语儿童的语言技能和语言环境进行了评估，并调查了他们的语言技能与语言环境的关系。这项研究将首次描述幼儿双语儿童在两种语言的语音、词汇和形态句法发展方面的能力，采用标准化工具和基于自发言语样本的测量方法进行评估。这项拟议的研究将首次使用照顾者访谈、照顾者保存的儿童语言经历的日记，以及照顾者以两种语言指导儿童的言语样本来描述双语环境。描述儿童语言能力和语言环境的方法将利用以变量为中心和以人为中心的数据分析技术，根据可变性的连续维度和频繁出现的类型或类别进行描述。将使用这两种描述符来分析技能和环境之间的关系。本研究的目的二是针对双语儿童语言技能的内部和跨语言相互关系的证据，检验理论驱动的关于语言发展机制的假说。相对于单语常模，双语儿童可能会表现出语音和形态句法发展比词汇发展更先进，接受能力比产出能力更先进的发展模式。在这样的双语儿童中，不同领域技能之间的相互关系应该与通常观察到的不同，这些相互关系的细节应该限制关于语言习得机制的假设，并提出两种语言的增长知识在双语发展过程中相互作用或不相互作用的方式。这项拟议的研究将填补为全国相当一部分儿童提供高质量教育和临床服务所需的知识基础的空白，并将促进对早期双语发展过程的科学理解。与公共卫生相关：目前缺乏关于在双语家庭中长大的儿童语言技能的信息，这是最大限度地发挥该国相当一部分儿童的经济潜力的障碍。这项拟议研究的目的是描述儿童双语能力的模式，并确定在儿童发展的早期关键时刻成功掌握双语的环境相关因素。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Children from bilingual homes are a large and growing segment of the population. Their early language competencies are neither well described nor understood. Because language skills during the preschool years are predictive of later academic achievement and social adjustment, the current poor understanding of early bilingual development constitutes a significant public health problem. Aim 1 of the proposed research is to identify the environmental factors associated with successful bilingual development in children exposed to two languages from infancy. The language skills and language environments of 2 1/2 -year-old Spanish-English bilingual children will be assessed, and the relation of their language skills to their language environments investigated. The proposed research will be the first to describe young bilingual children's language competencies in terms of their phonological, lexical, and morphosyntactic development in both languages, assessed with standardized instruments and with measures based on spontaneous speech samples. The proposed research will be the first to describe bilingual environments using caregiver interviews, caregiver-kept diaries of their children's language experience, and samples of caregivers' child-directed speech in both languages. The approaches to describing children's language competencies and language environments will make use of variable-centered and person-centered data analytic techniques, yielding descriptions in terms of continuous dimensions of variability and in terms of frequently-occurring types, or categories. Analyses of the relations between skills and environments will be conducted using both kinds of descriptors. Aim 2 of the proposed research is to test theory-driven hypotheses regarding mechanisms of language development against the evidence of within- and across-language interrelations among components of language skill in bilingual children. Bilingual children may show patterns of development in which phonological and morphosyntactic development are more advanced than lexical development and in which receptive competence is more advanced than productive competence, relative to monolingual norms. In such bilingual children, the interrelations among skills across domains should differ from those typically observed, and the specifics of those interrcorrelations should constrain hypotheses regarding the mechanisms of language acquisition and suggest ways in which growing knowledge of two languages does or does not interact in the process of bilingual development. The proposed research will fill a gap in the knowledge base needed to provide quality educational and clinical services to a substantial segment of the nation's children and will advance scientific understanding of the process of early bilingual development. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The current lack of information about the language skills of children growing up in bilingual homes is an obstacle to maximizing the economic potential of a substantial segment of the nation's children. The aims of the proposed research are to describe the patterns of bilingual competencies that children display and to identify environmental correlates of successful bilingualism at an early, critical juncture in children's development.