ABSTRACT

Bilingual children’s dominance can predict a variety of language and cognitive outcomes. The purpose of this study was to test the validity of parents’ classifications of 3- to 6-year-old bilingual children’s dominance against relative receptive vocabulary scores. In Study 1, the parents’ classifications of Mandarin-English bilingual children’s dominance corresponded to relative vocabulary scores only for children reported to be very Mandarin dominant. Similar results were obtained in Study 2 with French-English bilinguals and very French dominant children. We argue these results reflect well-known estimation processes and that asking parents to judge each language separately might yield more valid results.

摘要

双语儿童的优势可以预测多种语言和认知结果。本研究的目的是检验父母对 3 至 6 岁双语儿童优势的分类与相对接受词汇分数的有效性。在研究 1 中，父母对普通话-英语双语儿童优势的分类仅对应于被报告为非常普通话占优势的孩子的相对词汇分数。在研究 2 中，对法英双语者和非常法国占主导地位的儿童也获得了类似的结果。我们认为这些结果反映了众所周知的估计过程，并且要求父母分别判断每种语言可能会产生更有效的结果。