Gross Megan C, Kaushanskaya Margarita
Department of Communication Disorders, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, United States.
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States.
Front Psychol. 2020 May 19;11:968. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00968. eCollection 2020.
In order to communicate effectively with a variety of conversation partners and in a variety of settings, bilingual children must develop language control, the ability to control which language is used for production. Past work has focused on linguistic skills as the limiting factor in children's ability to control their language choice, while cognitive control has been the focus of adult models of language control. The current study examined the effects of both language ability and cognitive control on language control in 4-6 year old Spanish/English bilingual children with a broad range of language skills, including those with low skills in both languages. To measure language control, children participated in an interactive scripted confederate dialogue paradigm in which they took turns describing picture scenes with video partners who presented themselves as monolingual speakers of English or monolingual speakers of Spanish. The paradigm had two conditions: a single-language context, in which children interacted with only one partner, and a dual-language context, in which children needed to switch between languages to address different partners. The Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) indexed cognitive control. The findings revealed an overall effect of language ability, such that children with lower language skills were more likely to produce words in the language not understood by their conversation partner. There was also an effect of cognitive control on children's ability to adjust to the dual-language context. Based on these findings, we suggest that a model of language control in children should consider both linguistic and cognitive factors. However, language ability appears to be the main limiting factor, with cognitive control playing a more restricted role in adapting to a dual-language context.
为了在各种场合与不同的对话伙伴进行有效沟通，双语儿童必须培养语言控制能力，即控制使用哪种语言进行表达的能力。过去的研究主要关注语言技能是儿童控制语言选择能力的限制因素，而认知控制则是成人语言控制模型的重点。本研究考察了语言能力和认知控制对4至6岁西班牙语/英语双语儿童语言控制的影响，这些儿童具有广泛的语言技能，包括两种语言技能都较低的儿童。为了测量语言控制能力，儿童参与了一种交互式的脚本化同盟对话范式，在这个范式中，他们轮流与视频伙伴描述图片场景，这些视频伙伴分别表现为只会说英语的单语者或只会说西班牙语的单语者。该范式有两种条件：单语言情境，即儿童只与一个伙伴互动；双语情境，即儿童需要在两种语言之间切换以与不同的伙伴交流。维度变化卡片分类任务（DCCS）用于衡量认知控制能力。研究结果揭示了语言能力的总体影响，即语言技能较低的儿童更有可能用对话伙伴听不懂的语言说出单词。认知控制对儿童适应双语情境的能力也有影响。基于这些发现，我们建议儿童语言控制模型应同时考虑语言和认知因素。然而，语言能力似乎是主要的限制因素，认知控制在适应双语情境中发挥的作用更为有限。
