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Article published In:
Processing in Bilingual Children
Edited by Chantal van Dijk, Jasmijn E. Bosch and Sharon Unsworth
[Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 14:4] 2024
► pp. 512–543

Prediction during spoken language processing in monolingual and multilingual children

Investigating the role of literacy

 | University of Amsterdam | University of Milan-Bicocca
 | University of Milan-Bicocca
Listeners use linguistic cues to anticipate upcoming words, but not all do so to the same extent. While we know that monolingual children use prediction during spoken language processing from a young age and that adult L2 speakers may sometimes be slower, very few studies have focused on bilingual or multilingual children. Moreover, previous research suggests that literacy boosts anticipation in spoken language processing, but this has not been tested yet in bi/multilinguals. We investigated linguistic prediction and its relation to reading and vocabulary skills in 38 eight- to twelve-year-old bilingual and multilingual children who speak different heritage languages and Italian as the majority language, in comparison to 32 age-matched monolingual Italian children. Using a visual world eye tracking method, we tested children’s ability to anticipate nouns based on morphosyntactic cues (gender- and number-marked articles) in Italian. The results show efficient prediction in both groups, although monolinguals were faster than bi/multilinguals. While we found a positive relation between predictive language processing and reading in monolingual children, there were no reliable effects in bilingual and multilingual children. Future work is required to better understand the relation between prediction and literacy in this population.
Keywords: prediction, language processing, literacy, multilingual children, morphosyntactic cues
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Prediction in bilingual children
    • 1.2Effects of literacy
    • 1.3Gender and number in Italian
    • 1.4Research questions and hypotheses
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Materials and procedure
      • 2.2.1Literacy-related skills
      • 2.2.2Eye tracking
    • 2.3Analysis
      • 2.3.1Literacy-related skills
      • 2.3.2Eye tracking
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Literacy-related skills
    • 3.2Eye tracking
      • 3.2.1Monolinguals vs multilinguals
      • 3.2.2The effect of reading
      • 3.2.3The effect of vocabulary knowledge
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Predictive processing in multilingual and monolingual children
    • 4.2The relation between prediction and literacy
    • 4.3Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Data availability statement
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 11 December 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.22099.bos
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