Cultural differences in the content of child talk: evaluative lexis of English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual 30-month-olds.
Martha Shiro, Erika Hoff, Krystal M Ribot
PMID 32200778WHAT IT FOUND
When overall vocabulary was held constant, bilingual and monolingual children used similar amounts of words about thoughts, wants, and feelings.
Bilingual children used fewer words about wanting in English and Spanish than monolingual children did.
Key findings
01Bilingual and monolingual children were similar in overall size and use of words about thoughts, wants, and feelings in English.
02Monolingual children used more words about wanting than bilingual children did in English and Spanish conversations.
03Bilingual children switched languages more often for words about thoughts, wants, and feelings than for other words.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study did not test clinical outcomes, so it cannot guide diagnosis or treatment. The study was cross-sectional and descriptive, so it cannot show why the groups differed. The sample was children with normal hearing and no communicative delay, so it says little about children with suspected language disorder. The article gives different participant counts in different sections. The words were counted without their conversational context, so exact meanings were not resolved. The activity setting was toy play and book reading, so other contexts may produce different talk. The families were from South Florida, so results may not apply to all bilingual families.
Declared interests
The supplied text does not include a conflict-of-interest statement. The publication type lists NIH extramural research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that bilingual children have weaker words about thoughts, wants, and feelings. The study found similar overall evaluative language after adjusting for overall vocabulary, and the difference was mainly in wanting words.