Taxonomic development in bilingual children (Lam & Sheng, 2020)

<b>Purpose: </b>Taxonomic awareness is central to vocabulary development and assessment. While taxonomic development appears largely unaffected by environmental factors, the impact of divided language input on distinct levels of the taxonomic hierarchy is unclear. The influence of scoring method on tasks that target distinct levels of the taxonomic hierarchy is unexamined.<b>Method: </b>Twenty-seven English-speaking monolingual children, 46 Mandarin–English bilingual children, and 33 Spanish–English bilingual children, ages 4–7 years, participated. We measured superordinate awareness with a category association task, coordinate awareness with a contrast association task, and vocabulary size with a picture-naming task. All bilinguals completed the tasks in both languages to generate single-language (English) scores and conceptual scores.<b>Results:</b> Single-language scoring indicated that bilingual children named fewer pictures and produced fewer superordinate-level responses in English than monolinguals. All language groups demonstrated comparable coordinate awareness. Importantly, conceptual scoring removed the bilingual disadvantage in both naming and category association tasks and revealed a bilingual advantage in coordinate awareness. Finally, the Mandarin–English and Spanish–English bilingual children performed comparably in all analyses despite differences in heritage language features and sociocultural support for bilingual development.<b>Conclusion: </b>Depending on task demand and scoring method, bilingual children exhibited slower, comparable, and faster development in taxonomic knowledge in comparison to monolingual controls. This study highlights the nuanced effect of bilingualism on different levels of the taxonomic hierarchy and the impact of scoring methods on measuring vocabulary depth. <br><b>Supplemental Material S1. </b>Stimuli used in the category association task (Table S1) and stimuli used in the contrast association task (Table S2). <br>Lam, B. P. W., &amp; Sheng, L. (2020). Taxonomic development in young bilingual children: Task matters, and so does scoring method. <i>American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 29</i>(3), 1162-1177. https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_AJSLP-19-00143<br><b>Publisher Note: </b>This article is part of the Forum: Innovations in Clinical Practice for Dual Language Learners, Part 2.

**研究目的：** 类属认知能力（taxonomic awareness）是词汇发展与评估的核心。尽管现有研究显示，类属认知发展基本不受环境因素影响，但分散式语言输入对分类层级（taxonomic hierarchy）不同水平的作用尚不明确，且针对分类层级不同水平的任务，计分方式的影响也尚未得到考察。
**研究方法：** 本研究招募了4~7岁的儿童被试，其中英语单语儿童27名、汉英双语儿童46名、西英双语儿童33名。本研究采用类别关联任务测量上位类属认知（superordinate awareness）能力，采用对比关联任务测量同位类属认知（coordinate awareness）能力，采用图片命名任务评估词汇量大小。所有双语被试均完成两种语言版本的任务，以获取单语（英语）得分与概念得分。
**研究结果：** 单语计分方式显示，双语儿童在英语图片命名任务中命名的图片数量更少，且在上位类属关联任务中的正确反应数也少于单语儿童；但所有语言组被试的同位类属认知能力无显著差异。值得注意的是，采用概念计分方式则消除了双语儿童在命名任务与类别关联任务中的劣势，且展现出双语儿童在同位类属认知任务中的优势。此外，尽管汉英与西英双语儿童的母语特征及双语发展的社会文化支持存在差异，但两类双语儿童在所有分析中均表现出相当的水平。
**研究结论：** 与单语对照组儿童相比，双语儿童的类属知识发展速度会因任务要求与计分方式的不同，分别表现为更慢、相当或更快。本研究揭示了双语经验对分类层级不同水平的类属认知发展存在精细化影响，同时也凸显了计分方式对词汇深度测量的重要作用。
**补充材料S1：** 类别关联任务所用刺激材料（表S1）与对比关联任务所用刺激材料（表S2）。
Lam, B. P. W., & Sheng, L. (2020). Taxonomic development in young bilingual children: Task matters, and so does scoring method. *American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology*, 29(3), 1162-1177. https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_AJSLP-19-00143
**出版者注：** 本文属于“双语言学习者临床实践创新”论坛专栏第二部分。