The gap in academic achievement between English learners (ELs) and their monolingual peers is of increasing concern in the United States. Despite efforts to identify effective strategies to support ELs’ development and reduce this achievement gap, there are critical holes in the research base that preclude advances in EL education. Importantly, few studies have examined how ELs recognize English words, which is a necessary and foundational component of vocabulary, language, and literacy development. The purpose of the present research was to examine how ELs recognize words they hear in English and to explore the relationship between their recognition and their language and literacy skills. A sample of 31 Spanish-English speaking and 35 English-speaking monolingual preschoolers and kindergarteners were recruited to participate. To assess children’s recognition, their eye movements were tracked while they viewed four-picture arrays presented on a computer screen, following typical visual world paradigm procedures. The children listened to a target word presented in English and were instructed to click on the image that best represented that word. The four-picture arrays included a target image, a strategic competitor, and two unrelated images. The strategic competitors either represented English cohort competitors, Spanish cohort competitors, or semantic competitors. All participating children completed all three conditions and were administered a battery of language and literacy assessments. Children’s tracked eye movements were then examined by the type of image looked at and assessed in relation to their language and literacy skills. Results revealed that both monolingual and Spanish-English speaking participants appeared to activate their English phonological and semantic knowledge during spoken word recognition. No evidence of activation of Spanish phonological knowledge was obtained. Children with stronger English scores tended to decrease their looks to non-target images more quickly than children with lower English scores. These results suggest that there are significant differences between how bilingual children and bilingual adults recognize spoken words. Further, the findings indicate that strategies to support children’s identification of spoken words may be warranted to facilitate clearer and faster word recognition among children with weaker English skills. Most importantly, this work provides clear evidence that more research focused specifically on bilingual children is needed. Neither research targeting bilingual adults nor monolingual children generalizes clearly to bilingual children. Therefore, research explicitly including bilingual children is needed to have implications for this growing population. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Communication Science and Disorders in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2018. / February 20, 2018. / Bilingualism, Child, Education, English Learning, Eye tracking, Spoken word recognition / Includes bibliographical references. / Carla L. Wood, Professor Directing Dissertation; Christopher Schatschneider, University Representative; Hugh Catts, Committee Member; Juliann J. Woods, Committee Member; Arielle Borovsky, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_654720 |
| Contributors | Fitton, Lisa (author), Wood, Carla (professor directing dissertation), Schatschneider, Christopher (university representative), Catts, Hugh W., 1949- (committee member), Cripe, Juliann J. Woods, 1952- (committee member), Borovsky, Arielle (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Communication and Information (degree granting college), School of Communication Science and Disorders (degree granting departmentdgg) |
| Publisher | Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text, doctoral thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (96 pages), computer, application/pdf |
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