Distinct profiles of bilingual reference production

Reference production is a complex task that requires keeping track of discourse referents and selecting discourse-appropriate referring expressions (REs). Whether an RE is appropriate depends on the status of the referent in discourse. The use of REs by bilingual children is subject to individual variation and it has been suggested that distinct cognitive profiles may underly reference production. Although first attempts at examining correlations between reference production and cognitive abilities have been made, as of yet no clear profiles of bilingual reference production have been identified. In this project, we aim to identify distinct profiles of bilingual reference and link these to children’s language background and cognitive abilities.To this end, we tested 37 Italian-Greek near-balanced bilingual children (Mage=9;4) from Athens (Greece), who have Italian as their heritage language. The children performed a narrative retelling in both Greek and Italian, as well as vocabulary and cognitive tasks.