Mazes in Typically Developing Bilingual Children

Abstract

Mazes are defined as a series of words, initial parts of words, or unattached fragments of an utterance that do not contribute meaning to the ongoing flow of language. Maze production is considered as an important variable to investigate and identify problems underlying formulation of speech and language and is influenced by the speaker's linguistic knowledge. The present study focused on comparison of types and percentage of maze words over total words produced by typically developing monolingual (functionally) Kannada and Kannada-English bilingual children in the age range of 6 to 8 years. The Kannada-English bilingual group obtained higher mean percentage scores when compared to the monolingual group. Within-group comparison reported overall mazes to be higher for Kannada monolinguals in the Kannada monolingual context. However, bilingual children demonstrated a higher percentage of mazes in the English context.