Category-generation performance of bilingual children: the influence of condition, category, and language.
Research suggests that young children use a script-based slot-filler strategy to develop categories. Children are reported to develop a taxonomic strategy by about age 8. The purpose of this study was to examine how bilingual (Spanish-English) children used taxonomic versus slot-filler strategies in a category-generation task presented in each language. Results indicated that although younger bilingual children (M age = 5;1) generated approximately equal numbers of items in both conditions, older bilingual children (M age = 6;5) were beginning to demonstrate a taxonomic bias. Furthermore, although bilingual children tended to generate similar numbers of items in each language under the different conditions, comparisons between the two languages indicated that a large proportion (68.40%) of items was unique to either language.
Peña
Elizabeth D
ED
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Texas at Austin, 78712, USA. lizp@mail.utexas.edu
Bedore
Lisa M
LM
Zlatic-Giunta
Rebecca
R
D002648:Child; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D012660:Semantics; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014825:Vocabulary