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Children's likelihood to perform adult-like in word association test: Effects of bilingualism and distributional properties of word relationships

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2022

Boji P. W. Lam Open the ORCID record for Boji P. W. Lam [Opens in a new window] ,
Li Sheng  and
Xian Zhang
Boji P. W. Lam*
Affiliation:
Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, The University of North Texas, Denton, TX USA
Li Sheng
Affiliation:
Research Centre for Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience & Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China
Xian Zhang
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, The University of North Texas, Denton, TX USA
*
Address for correspondence:Boji P. W. LamDepartment of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology,The University of North Texas907 W Sycamore St, Denton, TX 76201pakwingjacky.lam@unt.edu
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Abstract

Little is known about the effects of bilingualism and distributional properties of word relationships on children's development of semantic convergence, operationalized as children's ability to produce word associates that mirror adults’ responses in a word association task. Forty-five Mandarin–English bilingual, 32 Spanish–English bilingual, and 28 English-speaking monolingual children, aged 4 to 7, produced three associates to each of 15 single-word cues in English. Children's productions were compared against adult responses to the same cues in the “Small World of Words” Norm. Three scoring methods comparing similarities of children's responses to adults’ showed consistent bilingual disadvantages in producing adult-like responses. Follow-up analyses targeted the three most predominant responses adults produced for each cue and addressed factors predicting children's likelihood to produce these responses. Results showed additional effects of cue-associate relationships measured by co-occurrence and semantic relatedness. The findings highlight the multi-faceted nature of knowledge development of word relationship and semantic convergence.

Keywords

Semantic convergenceword associationSpanish–English bilingual childrenChinese-English bilingual childrenthe “Small World of Words”
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , January 2023 , pp. 216 - 230
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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