Open AccessA Simplified Approach to Quantifying a Child's Bilingual Language Experience
Author(s) -
Lauren Calandruccio,
Isabella Beninate,
Jacob Oleson,
Margaret K. Miller,
Lori J. Leibold,
Emily Buss,
Bárbara Rodríguez
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
american journal of audiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.688
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1558-9137
pISSN - 1059-0889
DOI - 10.1044/2021_aja-20-00214
Subject(s) - variance (accounting) , intervention (counseling) , psychology , audiology , neuroscience of multilingualism , linguistics , computer science , developmental psychology , medicine , philosophy , accounting , psychiatry , business , neuroscience
Purpose Bilingual children's linguistic experience can vary markedly from child to child. For appropriate audiological assessment and intervention, audiologists need accurate and efficient ways to describe and understand a bilingual child's dynamic linguistic experience. This report documents an approach for quantitatively capturing a child's language exposure and usage in a time-efficient manner. Method A well-known pediatric bilingual language survey was administered to 83 parents of bilingual children, obtaining information about the child's exposure to (input) and usage of (output) Spanish and English for seventeen 1-hr intervals during a typical weekday and weekend day. Results A factor analysis indicated that capturing linguistic exposure and usage over three grouped-time intervals during a typical weekday and weekend day accounted for ≥ 74% of the total variance of the linguistic information captured with the full-length survey. Conclusions Although further confirmation is required, these results suggest that collecting language exposure and usage data from parents of bilingual children for three grouped-time intervals provides similar information as a comprehensive hour-by-hour approach. A time-efficient method of capturing the dynamic bilingual linguistic experience of a child would benefit pediatric audiologists and speech-language pathologists alike.