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Cross-language comparisons of maze use in Spanish and English in functionally monolingual and bilingual children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2006

LISA M. BEDORE
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Austin
CHRISTINE E. FIESTAS
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Austin
ELIZABETH D. PEÑA
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Austin
VANESSA J. NAGY
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

Maze use appears to be higher in bilingual speakers than in their functionally monolingual peers. One question is whether this is due to the speaker's bilingual status or to the characteristics of the bilingual's language(s). Narratives for 22 Spanish–English bilingual 4–6-year-olds and their functionally monolingual age-matched peers were analyzed for maze use. Bilingual and functionally monolingual children used similar percentages and patterns of mazes. Children produced more grammatical revisions in Spanish than English. Bilingual and functionally monolingual children used similar grammatical revision strategies in Spanish and English. Children's maze use in each language was correlated with measures of language productivity such as mean length of utterance and number of words used in the sample. These findings suggest that the role of language is important in maze use and that bilingual children do not necessarily have greater levels of linguistic uncertainty than do their functionally monolingual peers.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Cambridge University Press 2006

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Footnotes

This research was supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIDCD) Contract #N01-DC-8-2100.