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Child Bilingualism and Second Language Learning: Multidisciplinary perspectives
Edited by Fangfang Li, Karen E. Pollock and Robbin Gibb
[Bilingual Processing and Acquisition 10] 2020
► pp. 45–64

Chapter 4
Two solitudes?

Simultaneous bilingual children’s lexical access in experimental tasks

| University of Alberta
| University of Alberta
| University of Alberta
Proficient adult bilinguals likely have one conceptual store encompassing both languages: in experimental tasks, they produce many translation equivalents. In contrast, bilingual preschoolers often produce few translation equivalents on similar tasks, perhaps because they have not yet developed the hierarchical semantic organization to access concepts consistently across languages. We test this possibility in two studies. In Study 1, French-English bilingual children between 4–6 years of age generated examples of animals, clothes, food and drinks in both languages. The results showed 15% conceptual overlap. In Study 2, French-English bilingual children between 7–10 years of age completed a picture-naming task in both languages. The results showed 8% overlap. These results are consistent with hierarchical organization being necessary for producing many translation equivalents.
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Development of hierarchical organization
    • Proficiency
  • Study 1
    • Method
      • Participants
      • Materials
      • Procedures and tasks
        • Semantic verbal fluency task
      • Coding
        • Semantic verbal fluency task
    • Results
    • Discussion of Study 1
  • Study 2
    • Method
      • Participants
      • Materials
      • Procedures and tasks
        • Picture-naming task
      • Coding
    • Results
    • Discussion of Study 2
  • General discussion
  • Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 1 December 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bpa.10.04enn
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