Bilingualism, Language, and Variability Effects on Word-Learning

Research has shown that children can discover relationships between words and meanings in ambiguous scenarios by aggregating co-occurring statistics over time – a process termed cross-situational word learning (XSWL). In the present study, we examined whether length of bilingual experience and language ability would contribute to XSWL performance under low and high variability conditions in a group of Spanish-English bilingual school-aged children. Results revealed graded effects of bilingualism and language ability on XSWL performance under conditions of increased variability. In a high variability condition, word-learning performance significantly decreased as children’s length of bilingual experience and language skills decreased. Input variability did not influence word-learning performance for children with greater levels of bilingual experience. However, for children with higher levels of language ability, input variability improved word-learning performance. Together, the results suggest that variation in the learner and variation in the input interact and modulate mechanisms of lexical learning in children.