Language-Specific & Conceptual Vocabulary in Bilingual Children and Their Primary Caregivers Christina J. Ausick Cardon Children’s Medical Center Margarita Kaushanskaya University of Wisconsin-Madison

Introduction What we know… The influences on MONOLINGUAL children’s vocabulary development Potential factors that influence BILINGUAL children’s vocabulary development, but these are conflicting.

Goals of this project: 1. Explore the relationship between primary caregivers language abilities and children’s vocabulary performance in monolingual and bilingual groups. 2. Compare monolingual and bilingual children’s performance on language- specific and conceptual vocabulary measures.

Participants/Demographics MonolingualsBilinguals Sample Size11 (5 males, 6 females)10 (4 males, 6 females) Chronological Age6.32 (0.97)6.33 (0.93) Performance on K-BIT * (7.46)18.00 (5.64) Primary Caregivers Sample Size11 (1 male, 10 females)10 (2 males, 8 females) Primary Caregivers’ Years of Education19.36 (4.39)13.8 (3.58) Primary Caregivers’ Chronological Age39.98 (5.48)29.46 (4.03) Primary Caregivers’ K-BIT * (9.04)91.1 (17.49)

Vocabulary Measures Expressive Vocabulary Measures  English: Woodcock-Johnson III: Picture Vocabulary  Spanish: Bater í a III Woodcock- Mu ñ oz: Vocabulario Sobre Dibujos Receptive Vocabulary Measures  English: PPVT-III (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III)  Spanish: TVIP (Test de Vocabulario en Imagenes Peabody) Total Conceptual Vocabulary Score: Only for bilingual children and their caregivers, includes English and Spanish expressive and receptive vocabulary measures.

WJ- III Picture Vocabulary Subtest; form used for Total Conceptual Vocabulary

Results: Monolingual vs. Bilingual English Vocabulary Performance

Results: Bilinguals’ Vocabulary Performance in English (Caregivers vs. Children)

Results: Bilinguals’ Vocabulary Performance in Spanish (Caregivers vs. Children)

Results: Monolingual Children vs. Primary Caregivers

Discussion: Vocabulary Performance Monolingual Children scored higher on English vocabulary measures compared to Bilingual Children Conceptual scoring increases Bilinguals’ scores, but does not eliminate the performance gap.  Larger gap for receptive vocabulary  Conceptual vocabulary calculation method

Discussion: Input Quality Primary Caregiver’s Vocabulary Performance vs. their Child’s Vocabulary Performance  Monolingual group’s correlations were not significant.  Bilingual group’s correlations were significant for English vocabulary measures, but not for Spanish vocabulary measures.

Acknowledgements A big “Thank You” goes out to:  Julie Washington  Susan Ellis Weismer  Vanessa Montoya  Stephanie Van Hecke  Marissa Stern  and, Ann Rogers Funding NIH XXXX

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