Variability, accuracy, and cross-linguistic transfer in bilingual children speaking Jamaican Creole and English.
Annika J Canta, Sandy Abu El Adas, Karla N Washington and 1 others
PMID 35672935WHAT IT FOUND
Bilingual Jamaican Creole and English speaking children produced speech sounds more consistently when they were more accurate.
The study found no evidence that higher variability helps children learn new speech sounds. Many apparent errors in English were actually normal transfers from their other language.
Key findings
01Children who produced more accurate consonants (higher PCC-R scores) also produced more consistent speech, contradicting the hypothesis that variability aids learning.
02For 12 of the 20 participants, a majority of productions marked as errors in English were identified as possible cases of transfer from Jamaican Creole.
03Reclassifying these transfer instances as correct did not change the finding that accuracy and consistency were positively associated.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Small sample size (20 children) limits generalizability to all bilingual populations. The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot track developmental changes over time where variability-accuracy tradeoffs might occur. Transcribers were American English speakers, which may have influenced how Jamaican Creole features were identified, despite training. Only English productions were analyzed, not both languages simultaneously.
Declared interests
The authors report no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the lack of a variability-accuracy tradeoff in this study as proof that variability is never beneficial for speech learning. The authors note that cross-sectional data cannot capture the temporary variability spikes that may precede developmental transitions, which are better observed longitudinally.