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ABSTRACT
Environmental sources of variance in the Italian vocabulary and reading skills of bilingual primary school children from immigrant families (or language minority bilingual children (LMBC)) in Italy were investigated, and the LMBC’s skill levels were compared to those of their monolingual classmates. A total of 140 children from the first, third, and fifth grades were administered standardized tests of receptive vocabulary, word reading, and nonword reading skills. LMBC’s exposure to Italian at home and their mothers’ Italian proficiency were reported by mothers. Immigrant mothers’ Italian proficiency was a significant predictor of vocabulary and word reading speed but not of word accuracy or nonword reading. High levels of Italian exposure at home in combination with low levels of maternal Italian proficiency was a negative predictor of vocabulary; high exposure to Italian at home was positively associated with word reading speed and negatively associated with nonword reading speed. LMBC had lower vocabulary scores but did not differ from monolingual children in measures of reading skill. The findings underscore the importance of the quality of language exposure for language development and replicate findings that bilingual children show decoding skills on a par with monolingual children despite smaller vocabularies.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Valentina Persici
Valentina Persici is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Human Sciences at the University of Verona. Her work focuses on language and reading development and rhythm in monolingual and bilingual children with typical and atypical development. Her research combines behavioral and electrophysiological methods and includes the development and implementation of intervention programs to support language development in language minority bilingual children, in children with developmental language disorder, and in children with cochlear implants.
Marinella Majorano
Marinella Majorano is an Associate Professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology in the Department of Human Sciences at the University of Verona. Her research program focuses on the role played by individual and contextual factors (familial, educational, cultural) in the language and communication development of infants and children, with specific reference to typical and atypical development. Her work also explores how the interrelations among these factors affect child literacy development at primary school. Two of her applied research projects were funded by local educational services, while others were funded by four research grants that she received. Her research has been published in several national and international journals. She collaborates continuously with a number of national and international partners.
Tamara Bastianello
Tamara Bastianello has a PhD in Psychology and she currently holds a research scholarship at the University of Verona (Department of Human Sciences). Her work focuses on attention, language, and the influence of individual and environmental factors on typical and atypical development. She is also interested in developing new assessment tools for parents and teachers to support monolingual and bilingual children’s language and literacy skills with the use of innovative technologies. She is co-author of papers on developmental psychology and education.
Erika Hoff
Erika Hoff is Professor of Psychology at Florida Atlantic University. Her research addresses the relations among properties of children’s early environments, their language experience, and their language development. She is the Principal Investigator on an NICHD-funded longitudinal study of Spanish-English bilingual development among children in immigrant families in the United States. She is the author of numerous articles and chapters; she is the author of the textbook, Language Development; and she is the editor of multiple books on early language development, including Research Methods in Child Language: A Practical Guide and, with Peggy McCardle, Childhood Bilingualism: Research on Infancy through School Age.