Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Effects on Verbal Working Memory and Vocabulary: Testing Language-Minority Children with an Immigrant Background

• Published in: Journal of speech, language, and hearing research language, and hearing research, 2013-04, Vol.56 (2), p.630-642
• Main Authors: Engel de Abreu, Pascale M. J, Baldassi, Martine, Puglisi, Marina L, Befi-Lopes, Debora M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bilingualism; Brain; Brazil; Child; Children & youth; Children of minorities; Cognition - physiology; Contrastive Linguistics; Cross Cultural Studies; Cross-Cultural Comparison; Culture Fair Tests; Education; Elementary School Students; Emigrants and Immigrants; Evaluation; Expressive One Word Picture Vocabulary Test; Female; Foreign Countries; French; German; Humans; Immigrants; Indo European Languages; Language; Language Impairments; Language instruction; Language Minorities; Language Processing; Language Tests; Linguistic Borrowing; Long Term Memory; Longitudinal Studies; Luxembourg; Male; Memorization; Memory; Memory, Short-Term - physiology; Mental Recall - physiology; Minority Groups; Multilingualism; Native Language; Neurolinguistics; Neurology; Portuguese; Psycholinguistics; Questionnaires; Raven Progressive Matrices; Second Language Learning; Short Term Memory; Standardized Tests; Verbal Ability; Verbal Learning - physiology; Vocabulary; Vocabulary Development; Vocabulary Skills
• ISSN: 1092-4388; 1558-9102
• DOI: 10.1044/1092-4388(2012/12-0079)

Purpose: In this study, the authors explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language-minority children. Method: Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first (L1)- and second-language (L2) vocabulary (comprehension and production), executive-loaded working memory (counting recall and backward digit recall), and verbal short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition). Cross-linguistic task performance was compared within individuals. The language-minority children were also compared with multilingual language-majority children from Luxembourg and Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Brazil without an immigrant background matched on age, sex, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal reasoning. Results: Results showed that (a) verbal working memory measures involving numerical memoranda were relatively independent of test language and cultural status; (b) language status had an impact on the repetition of high- but not on low-wordlike L2 nonwords; (c) large cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects emerged for productive vocabulary; (d) cross-cultural effects were less pronounced for vocabulary comprehension with no differences between groups if only L1 words relevant to the home context were considered. Conclusion: The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language-minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed. (Contains 3 tables, 1 figure, and 3 footnotes.)