A longitudinal study of the social and academic competence of economically disadvantaged bilingual preschool children.

This longitudinal study was conducted to gain understanding of the social–emotional and academic development of economically disadvantaged bilingual preschool children. In Study 1, the authors combined cognitive, psychosocial, and cultural-linguistic factors to determine profiles of social competence as measured by peer play. A person-centered analysis of 207 Hispanic American preschoolers (ages 4 and 5 years) yielded 6 distinct profiles, 2 of which were socially competent and 1 of which was vulnerable. Findings revealed profile differences in social competence and a significant relationship between bilingualism and social–emotional development. In Study 2, the authors determined which profiles were associated with later academic achievement and growth of English proficiency. Findings indicated a significant relationship of early social–emotional development to later academic success and English acquisition, highlighting the role of bilingualism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The intriguing role of spanish language vocabulary knowledge in predicting English reading comprehension.

This study explored a holistic model of English reading comprehension among a sample of 135 Spanish-English bilingual Latina and Latino 4th-grade students This model took into account Spanish language reading skills and language of initial literacy instruction. Controlling for language of instruction, English decoding skill, and English oral language proficiency, the authors explored the effects of Spanish language alphabetic knowledge, fluency, vocabulary knowledge, and listening comprehension on English reading comprehension. Results revealed a significant main effect for Spanish vocabulary knowledge and an interaction between Spanish vocabulary and English fluency, such that faster English readers benefited more from Spanish vocabulary knowledge than their less fluent counterparts. This study demonstrates the existence of literary skills transfer from the 1st to the 2nd language, as well as limits on such transfer. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic and syntactic forces in noun phrase production.

Three experiments investigated semantic and syntactic effects in the production of phrases in Dutch. Bilingual participants were presented with English nouns and were asked to produce an adjective + noun phrase in Dutch including the translation of the noun. In 2 experiments, the authors blocked items by either semantic category or grammatical gender. Participants performed the task slower when the target nouns were of the same semantic category than when they were from different categories and faster when the target nouns had the same gender than when they had different genders. In a final experiment, both manipulations were crossed. The authors replicated the results of the first 2 experiments, and no interaction was found. These findings suggest a feedforward flow of activation between lexico-semantic and lexico-syntactic information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

English speakers attend more strongly than Spanish speakers to manner of motion when classifying novel objects and events.

Three experiments provide evidence that the conceptualization of moving objects and events is influenced by one's native language, consistent with linguistic relativity theory. Monolingual English speakers and bilingual Spanish/English speakers tested in an English-speaking context performed better than monolingual Spanish speakers and bilingual Spanish/English speakers tested in a Spanish-speaking context at sorting novel, animated objects and events into categories on the basis of manner of motion, an attribute that is prominently marked in English but not in Spanish. In contrast, English and Spanish speakers performed similarly at classifying on the basis of path, an attribute that is prominently marked in both languages. Similar results were obtained regardless of whether categories were labeled by novel words or numbered, suggesting that an English-speaking tendency to focus on manner of motion is a general phenomenon and not limited to word learning. Effects of age of acquisition of English were also observed on the performance of bilinguals, with early bilinguals performing similarly in the 2 language contexts and later bilinguals showing greater contextual variation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Wallace E. Lambert (1922–2009).

On August 23, 2009, psychology lost an innovative researcher with the passing, at 86, of Wallace E. Lambert. A professor of psychology at McGill University from 1954 until 1990, Wallace (“Wally”) Lambert was among the founders of psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. His highly productive career included contributions to social and cross-cultural psychology (intergroup attitudes, child-rearing values, and psychological consequences of living in multicultural societies), language education (the French immersion program), and bilingualism (measurement of language dominance, attitudes and motivation in second-language learning, and social, cognitive, and neuropsychological consequences of bilingualism). Indeed, because of the scope and influence of his work, Wally Lambert is widely considered the father of the psychological study of bilingualism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive control and lexical access in younger and older bilinguals.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 35(3) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (see record 2009-05251-016). An incorrect figure was printed due to an error in the production process. The correct version of Figure 1b is provided in the correction.] Ninety-six participants, who were younger (20 years) or older (68 years) adults and either monolingual or bilingual, completed tasks assessing working memory, lexical retrieval, and executive control. Younger participants performed most of the tasks better than older participants, confirming the effect of aging on these processes. The effect of language group was different for each type of task: Monolinguals and bilinguals performed similarly on working memory tasks, monolinguals performed better on lexical retrieval tasks, and bilinguals performed better on executive control tasks, with some evidence for larger language group differences in older participants on the executive control tasks. These results replicate findings from individual studies obtained using only 1 type of task and different participants. The confirmation of this pattern in the same participants is discussed in terms of a suggested explanation of how the need to manage 2 language systems leads to these different outcomes for cognitive and linguistic functions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Perception of Second Language Sounds in Early Bilinguals: New Evidence From an Implicit Measure.

Previous studies have suggested that nonnative (L2) linguistic sounds are accommodated to native language (L1) phonemic categories. However, this conclusion may be compromised by the use of explicit discrimination tests. The present study provides an implicit measure of L2 phoneme discrimination in early bilinguals (Catalan and Spanish). Participants classified the 1st syllable of disyllabic stimuli embedded in lists where the 2nd, task-irrelevant, syllable could contain a Catalan contrastive variation (/ε/-/e/) or no variation. Catalan dominants responded more slowly in lists where the 2nd syllable could vary from trial to trial, suggesting an indirect effect of the /ε/-/e/ discrimination. Spanish dominants did not suffer this interference, performing indistinguishably from Spanish monolinguals. The present findings provide implicit evidence that even proficient bilinguals categorize L2 sounds according to their L1 representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Decomposition of repetition priming processes in word translation.

Translation in fluent bilinguals requires comprehension of a stimulus word and subsequent production, or retrieval and articulation, of the response word. Four repetition-priming experiments with Spanish–English bilinguals (N = 274) decomposed these processes using selective facilitation to evaluate their unique priming contributions and factorial combination to evaluate the degree of process overlap or dependence. In Experiment 1, symmetric priming between semantic classification and translation tasks indicated that bilinguals do not covertly translate words during semantic classification. In Experiments 2 and 3, semantic classification of words and word-cued picture drawing facilitated word-comprehension processes of translation, and picture naming facilitated word-production processes. These effects were independent, consistent with a sequential model and with the conclusion that neither semantic classification nor word-cued picture drawing elicits covert translation. Experiment 4 showed that 2 tasks involving word-retrieval processes—written word translation and picture naming—had subadditive effects on later translation. Incomplete transfer from written translation to spoken translation indicated that preparation for articulation also benefited from repetition in the less-fluent language. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Bilingualité et bilinguisme.

Reviews the book, Bilingualité et bilinguisme by J. F. Hamers and M. Blanc (see record 1989-97510-000). Hamers and Blanc have made a substantial contribution to the research literature on bilingualism. The book represents an extremely ambitious undertaking both in its scope of subject and its interdisciplinary orientation. The research reviewed crosses cultural boundaries as well as discipline boundaries, an approach which permits further insights into the language acquisition process because of the links between ethnic identity, minority-majority, and first and second language acquisition processes. The problem with the book is that bilingualism is not a unitary subject for research any more than lingualism is, but rather is a vast array of topics as diverse as psychology itself. Consequently, though vast in scope, the book of necessity does not always adequately preface the individual topics. It assumes that the reader has substantial theoretical background (often of an interdisciplinary nature) to realize the implications of the empirical questions being addressed and the research summarized. In addition, because the discussions of the individual studies are brief and assume a familiarity with the methodology on the part of the reader, the audience is further delimited. Thus the book is best used as a reference text for upper level undergraduate or graduate courses in the social sciences or education. The book is also particularly useful to language planners and those social scientists interested in reducing national and international tensions through fostering understanding and tolerance between rival ethnic and linguistic factions. What is most impressive about the book is that not only did Hamers and Blanc accept the challenge of approaching the multidisciplinary study of bilingualism, but also they have succeeded in delivering an admirable state-of-the-art account of this far-ranging field from the perspective of the neurosciences, the social sciences, and education. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)