Lexical Access in the Second Year: a Study of Monolingual and Bilingual Vocabulary Development.

It is well established that vocabulary size is related to efficiency in auditory processing, such that children with larger vocabularies recognize words faster than children with smaller vocabularies. The present study evaluates whether this relation is specific to the language being assessed, or related to general language or cognitive processes. Speed of word processing was measured longitudinally in Spanish- and English-learning monolinguals and bilinguals at 16 and 22 months of age.

Developmental changes in maternal education and minimal exposure effects on vocabulary in English- and Spanish-learning toddlers.

The current research follows up on two previous findings: that children with minimal dual-language exposure have smaller receptive vocabularies at 16months of age and that maternal education is a predictor of vocabulary when the dominant language is English but not when it is Spanish. The current study extends this research to 22-month-olds to assess the developmental effects of minimal exposure and maternal education on direct and parent-report measures of vocabulary size. The effects of minimal exposure on vocabulary size are no longer present at 22months of age, whereas maternal education effects remain but only for English speakers.

The Language Exposure Assessment Tool: Quantifying Language Exposure in Infants and Children.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to develop the Language Exposure Assessment Tool (LEAT) and to examine its cross-linguistic validity, reliability, and utility. The LEAT is a computerized interview-style assessment that requests parents to estimate language exposure. The LEAT yields an automatic calculation of relative language exposure and captures qualitative aspects of early language experience.

Minimal second language exposure, SES, and early word comprehension: New evidence from a direct assessment.

Although the extant literature provides robust evidence of the influence of language exposure and socioeconomic status (SES) on language acquisition, it is unknown how sensitive the early receptive vocabulary system is to these factors. The current study investigates effects of minimal second language exposure and SES on the comprehension vocabulary of 16-month-old children in the language in which they receive the greatest exposure. Study 1 revealed minimal second language exposure and SES exert significant and independent effects on a direct measure of vocabulary comprehension in English-dominant and English monolingual children (N = 72).

Lexical processing and organization in bilingual first language acquisition: Guiding future research.

A rich body of work in adult bilinguals documents an interconnected lexical network across languages, such that early word retrieval is language independent. This literature has yielded a number of influential models of bilingual semantic memory. However, extant models provide limited predictions about the emergence of lexical organization in bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA).