Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children

Ellen Bialystok; Gigi Luk; Kathleen F. Peets; Sujin Yang

doi:10.1017/S1366728909990423

Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children

Ellen Bialystok, Gigi Luk, Kathleen F. Peets, Sujin Yang

Department of Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

575 Scopus citations

Abstract

Studies often report that bilingual participants possess a smaller vocabulary in the language of testing than monolinguals, especially in research with children. However, each study is based on a small sample so it is difficult to determine whether the vocabulary difference is due to sampling error. We report the results of an analysis of 1,738 children between 3 and 10 years old and demonstrate a consistent difference in receptive vocabulary between the two groups. Two preliminary analyses suggest that this difference does not change with different language pairs and is largely confined to words relevant to a home context rather than a school context.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	525-531
Number of pages	7
Journal	Bilingualism
Volume	13
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728909990423
State	Published - Oct 2010

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
* This work was partially supported by grant R01HD052523 from the US National Institutes of Health and by grant A2559 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to the first author. We thank Jessica Cheung and Michael Bonares for their assistance in data compilation.

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abstract = "Studies often report that bilingual participants possess a smaller vocabulary in the language of testing than monolinguals, especially in research with children. However, each study is based on a small sample so it is difficult to determine whether the vocabulary difference is due to sampling error. We report the results of an analysis of 1,738 children between 3 and 10 years old and demonstrate a consistent difference in receptive vocabulary between the two groups. Two preliminary analyses suggest that this difference does not change with different language pairs and is largely confined to words relevant to a home context rather than a school context.",

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Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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