Patterns of Bilingual Development and their Environmental Correlates

双语发展模式及其环境相关性

• 批准号: 7900696
• 负责人: ERIKA HOFF
• 金额: $ 5.75万
• 依托单位: FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-04-15 至 2011-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7900696
• 关键词: 2 year old; Academic achievement; Attitude; Belief; Birth; Birth Order; Caregivers; Categories; Cereals; Child; Child Development; Child Language; Clinical Services; Cognitive; Competence; Data; Descriptor; Development; Dimensions; Distal; Economics; Education; Educational Background; Environment; Environmental Risk Factor; Family Relationship; Florida; Home environment; Household; Individual; Individual Differences; Interview; Knowledge; Language; Language Development; Linguistics; Link; Literature; Measures; Mothers; Nursery Schools; Outcome; Parents; Pattern; Population; Process; Property; Public Health; Relative (related person); Research; Research Design; Sampling; School-Age Population; Schools; Scientific Advances and Accomplishments; Services; Social Adjustment; Speech; Structure; Techniques; Testing; Work; base; bilingualism; college; diaries; experience; infancy; instrument; knowledge base; lexical; member; person centered; phonology; public health relevance; skills; success; syntax; theories

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.

描述（由申请人提供）：来自双语家庭的儿童是人口中的一个很大且不断增长的群体。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绩和社会适应，因此目前对早期双语发展的了解不足构成了一个重大的公共卫生问题。拟议研究的目标 1 是确定与从婴儿期接触两种语言的儿童成功双语发展相关的环境因素。对2 1/2岁西英双语儿童的语言技能和语言环境进行评估，并调查其语言技能与语言环境的关系。拟议的研究将首次描述双语幼儿的语言能力，包括两种语言的语音、词汇和形态句法发展，并使用标准化工具和基于自发语音样本的测量进行评估。拟议的研究将是第一个使用看护者访谈、看护者保存的孩子语言体验日记以及看护者用两种语言针对儿童的言语样本来描述双语环境的研究。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来产生描述。将使用这两种描述符对技能和环境之间的关系进行分析。拟议研究的目标 2 是根据双语儿童语言技能各组成部分之间的语言内和语言间相互关系的证据，检验有关语言发展机制的理论驱动假设。相对于单语标准，双语儿童可能表现出语音和形态句法发展比词汇发展更先进以及接受能力比生产能力更先进的发展模式。在这些双语儿童中，跨领域技能之间的相互关系应该与通常观察到的不同，这些相互关系的具体情况应该限制有关语言习得机制的假设，并提出两种语言知识的增长在语言习得过程中是否相互作用的方式。双语发展的过程。拟议的研究将填补为全国大部分儿童提供优质教育和临床服务所需的知识库的空白，并将促进对早期双语发展过程的科学理解。公共卫生相关性：目前缺乏有关双语家庭中成长的儿童的语言技能的信息，这阻碍了最大限度地发挥全国大部分儿童的经济潜力。拟议研究的目的是描述儿童所表现出的双语能力模式，并确定儿童发展早期关键时刻成功双语的环境相关性。