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Early Bilingualism Through the Looking Glass: Latino Preschool Children's Language and Self-Regulation Skills

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2017

Gigliana Melzi ,
Adina R. Schick  and
Kelly Escobar
Gigliana Melzi
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Psychology, New York Universitygigliana.melzi@nyu.edu
Adina R. Schick
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Psychology, New York Universityadina.schick@nyu.edu
Kelly Escobar
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Psychology, New York Universitykelly.escobar@nyu.edu
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Abstract

During the early years, children's language skills are developing rapidly. For bilingual children, the development of both languages is highly sensitive to environmental input. Thus, capturing bilingualism in the early years poses a great challenge for researchers, especially those interested in examining how bilingualism might relate to other developmental areas, such as self-regulation. Traditionally, child development researchers have operationalized bilingualism as a categorical variable, most often relying on the use of self-reported data. In the present study, we compared various ways of capturing childhood bilingualism and demonstrated how these different measures privileged divergent aspects of children's bilingual experience, as well as how they were differentially related to children's self-regulation skills.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics , Volume 37 , September 2017 , pp. 93 - 109
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2017 

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