Characterizing Bilingual Toddlers' Vocabulary

Abstract

Bilingual children’s vocabulary remains difficult to assess due to the multiple factors that must be considered and lack of norms typically available. One issue in characterizing bilingual vocabulary is how to count translation equivalents (TEs), which refer to labels in each language that refer to the same concept. This study investigated a new potential vocabulary measure that modifies how much weight to give to TEs when counting vocabulary depending on the child’s age. We extended this new measure with Spanish-English bilingual toddlers and compare the weights with the original dataset with which the measure was initially developed. Looking at the vocabulary scores, our sample of monolingual and bilingual children did not differ on the new measure. Although there were no statistically significant differences in vocabulary, there were subtle numerical differences at certain age bands. When analyzing the scores further, higher weights were given to older bilingual children. Given what is known about bilingual language development, we probed the measure’s theoretical assumptions. Considering the divisive evidence for whether learning TEs creates different challenges at different ages, we suggest that more work is required for the development of future measures vocabulary that aim to predict, characterize, or assess bilingual vocabulary.