De Anda Stephanie, Friend Margaret
Department of Special Education and Clinical Sciences, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, United States.
Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, United States.
Front Psychol. 2020 Dec 17;11:508363. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.508363. eCollection 2020.
An important question in early bilingual first language acquisition concerns the development of lexical-semantic associations within and across two languages. The present study investigates the earliest emergence of lexical-semantic priming at 18 and 24 months in Spanish-English bilinguals ( = 32) and its relation to vocabulary knowledge within and across languages. Results indicate a remarkably similar pattern of development between monolingual and bilingual children, such that lexical-semantic development begins at 18 months and strengthens by 24 months. Further, measures of cross-language lexical knowledge are stronger predictors of children's lexical-semantic processing skill than measures that capture single-language knowledge only. This suggests that children make use of both languages when processing semantic information. Together these findings inform the understanding of the relation between lexical-semantic breadth and organization in the context of dual language learners in early development.
早期双语第一语言习得中的一个重要问题涉及两种语言内部及跨语言的词汇语义关联发展。本研究调查了18个月和24个月大的西班牙-英语双语儿童（ = 32）词汇语义启动的最早出现情况及其与两种语言内部及跨语言词汇知识的关系。结果表明，单语和双语儿童的发展模式非常相似，即词汇语义发展始于18个月，并在24个月时得到加强。此外，跨语言词汇知识的测量比仅捕捉单一语言知识的测量更能预测儿童的词汇语义处理技能。这表明儿童在处理语义信息时会同时使用两种语言。这些发现共同为理解早期发展中双语学习者背景下词汇语义广度与组织之间的关系提供了依据。
