Language-minority children's sensitivity to the semantic relations between words.

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to examine automatic language processing among Spanish-speaking language-minority children. A sample of 73 children (mean age = 90.4 months) completed two measures of semantic priming: an auditory lexical decision task and a looking-while-listening task. It was hypothesized that within- and cross-language semantic priming effects would occur but that translation priming effects would not occur. Results from vocabulary assessments indicated that language-minority children in this study were more proficient in English than they were in Spanish. Limited evidence for semantic priming effects within English and from English to Spanish emerged. In addition, substantial evidence for translation priming from Spanish to English and from English to Spanish emerged. Give

SUBMITTER: Goodrich JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5750065 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature