Department of Psychology,Georgia State University.
Department of Psychology,Florida Atlantic University.
J Child Lang. 2019 May;46(3):501-521. doi: 10.1017/S0305000918000594. Epub 2019 Mar 11.
Monolingual children identify referents uniquely in gesture before they do so with words, and parents translate these gestures into words. Children benefit from these translations, acquiring the words that their parents translated earlier than the ones that are not translated. Are bilingual children as likely as monolingual children to identify referents uniquely in gesture; and do parental translations have the same positive impact on the vocabulary development of bilingual children? Our results showed that the bilingual children - dominant in English or in Spanish - were as likely as monolingual children to identify referents uniquely in gesture. More importantly, the unique gestures, when translated into words by the parents, were as likely to enter bilingual and monolingual children's speech - independent of language dominance. Our results suggest that parental response to child gesture plays as crucial of a role in the vocabulary development of bilingual children as it does in monolingual children.
单语儿童在使用语言之前，会通过手势来识别指代对象，而父母则会将这些手势翻译成语言。儿童会从这些翻译中受益，他们会先习得父母之前翻译过的词语，而不是那些没有翻译过的词语。那么双语儿童是否像单语儿童一样，会通过手势独特地识别指代对象呢？父母的翻译是否对双语儿童的词汇发展有同样积极的影响呢？我们的研究结果表明，以英语或西班牙语为主导的双语儿童与单语儿童一样，会通过手势独特地识别指代对象。更重要的是，当父母将独特的手势翻译成词语时，这些词语同样有可能进入双语和单语儿童的语言中，而与语言主导地位无关。我们的研究结果表明，父母对儿童手势的反应在双语儿童的词汇发展中起着至关重要的作用，就像在单语儿童中一样。
