Phonological memory and language in young monolingual and bilingual children

早期口语发展为以后的学业成就和识字奠定了基础。在……里面 一些儿童的基础薄弱，将他们置于危险之中。这对于双语儿童来说尤其如此， 他们在儿童中的比例过高，他们的早期口语技能损害了他们获得 后来在学术上取得了成功。因此，了解对单语和双语发展的影响是一种 公共卫生问题。拟议研究的广泛目标是通过增加 对产生个体差异的外部原因和内部过程的科学理解 单语和双语儿童的早期语言发展。 这项拟议的研究将检验语言输入影响发展的假设 语音记忆，这反过来又影响语言的发展。虽然两国之间的关系 语音记忆和语言发展已经得到很好的证实，很少有研究工作 对语音记忆本身发展的影响。此外，音韵学的研究 记忆在很大程度上仅限于4岁以上的单语儿童。这些差距可能在一定程度上是由于 由于缺乏评估工具。在初步工作中，PIS制定了一项评估程序 2岁以下儿童的语音记忆。拟议研究的具体目标是： (1)确定这一评估程序的可靠性和有效性，包括将其推广到西班牙语-- 英语双语儿童，以及(2)使用这一程序来调查语言之间的关系 输入、语音记忆和早期单语和双语发展。一个短期纵向投资 提出了本文的研究方向。适用于50名学习单一语言英语的儿童和50名学习西班牙语和英语的儿童 双语儿童的语言输入、语音记忆和语言发展将在22岁时进行评估 两个月后，将在25个月大的时候再次评估语言发展。并发性和预测性 这些变量之间的关系将得到检验。 这个项目的结果将促进我们对语言输入和音位的作用的理解 工作记忆为早期单语和双语语言的发展提供了第一步 致力于开发工具，以确定双语儿童日后有语言障碍的风险。

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.