Early skills that predict English reading ability: A longitudinal study of bilingual children from 5 to 10 years.

Despite substantial research, the contribution of oral language skills acquired in Spanish to Spanish-English bilingual children's acquisition of English reading skill is unclear. The current study addressed this question with data on the oral language and pre-literacy skills of 101 Spanish-English bilingual learners at 5 years of age and their English word reading (i.e., decoding) and reading comprehension skills at 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 years. Separate multilevel models using English language, Spanish language, and pre-literacy skills as predictors of these outcomes identified English phonological awareness, Spanish phonological awareness, and concepts of print knowledge as positive predictors of word reading. A final model including all these significant predictors found only Spanish phonological awareness and concept of print to be significant predictors. Significant predictors of reading comprehension in separate models were English vocabulary, Spanish phonological awareness, and concepts about print. In the final model, only English vocabulary and Spanish phonological awareness predicted English reading comprehension. These findings provide evidence that phonological awareness is a language-general skill that supports reading across languages, consistent with the common underlying proficiency model of bilingual reading development. The finding that only English vocabulary predicts English reading comprehension suggests that vocabulary knowledge is not part of a common underlying proficiency but is language specific in its value to reading ability.

Filling lexical gaps and more: code-switching for the power of expression by young bilinguals.

In this preregistered, longitudinal study of early code-switching, 34 US-born, Spanish-English bilingual children were recorded with a bilingual family member at 2;6 and 3;6, in Spanish-designated and English-designated interactions. Children's Spanish and English expressive vocabulary and their exposure to code-switching were measured through direct assessment and caregiver report. The children code-switched most frequently at speaker changes; within-turn and within-utterance codeswitching were rare. By 3;6, switches to English were significantly more frequent than switches to Spanish. At both ages, Spanish proficiency was a negative predictor of the frequency of switching to English, but children's degree of English dominance uniquely explained additional variance. Thus, children appear to code-switch not merely to fill gaps in their weaker language but to maximize their expressive power. Neither individual differences in exposure to code-switching nor in the interlocutors' language proficiency were consistently related to the children's rate of code-switching.

Majority language skill, not measures of bilingualism, predicts executive attention in bilingual children.

Evidence is mixed regarding whether and why bilingual children might be advantaged in the development of executive functions. Five preregistered hypotheses regarding sources of a bilingual advantage were tested with data from 102 Spanish-English bilingual children and 25 English monolingual children who were administered a test of executive attention, the flanker task, at 7, 8, and 9 years of age. Measures of the children's early and concurrent bilingual exposure and their concurrent English and Spanish skill were available from a larger longitudinal study in which these children participated. Tests of the preregistered hypotheses yielded null findings: The bilingual children's executive attention abilities were unrelated to their amount of early exposure to mixed input, to balance in their early dual language exposure, to balance in their concurrent exposure, to their degree of bilingualism, or to their combined Spanish + English vocabulary score. English vocabulary score was a positive significant correlate of executive attention among the bilingual children, but those bilingual children above the group median in English vocabulary did not outperform the monolingual children when the comparison was adjusted for nonverbal IQ. These findings suggest that a language learning ability may explain the association between bilingualism and executive function. Because the best statistical approach to testing for effects on differences is a matter of dispute, all analyses were conducted with both a difference score and a residual gain score as the outcome variable. The central findings, but not all findings, were the same with both approaches.

Profiles of Minority-Majority Language Proficiency in 5-Year-Olds.

Children from language minority homes reach school age with variable dual language skills. Cluster analysis identified four bilingual profiles among 126 U.S.-born, 5-year-old Spanish-English bilinguals. The profiles differed on two dimensions: language balance and total language knowledge. Balance varied primarily as a function of indicators of the relative quantity and the quality of their language exposure (amount of home exposure and maternal education in each language). Total language knowledge varied primarily as a function of indicators of children's language learning ability (phonological memory and nonverbal intelligence). English dominance was more prevalent than balanced bilingualism; there was no Spanish dominant profile, despite average Spanish dominance in home language use. There was no evidence of a tradeoff between English and Spanish skills.