CCS Guide To Research & Program Evaluation

March 2025

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Determinants of Existential Interpretation in Typical and Atypical Child Spanish

Investigating the Bilingual Mind: The Role of Inhibition and Lexical Ability as Predictors of Implicature Generation in Bilingual Children

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This is a study on Pragmatic abilities in Bilingual Spanish/English-speaking children

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What is pragmatics?

• The discipline that studies language in context.

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• As an ability, it is the ability to effectively and adequately use language depending on the context.

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The algunos “some” scalar implicature

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• There are four kids in a given context.

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This is logically or “truth-conditionally” correct when all the kids under consideration crossed the street. If all the kids did, then it is also true that some kids did.

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Nevertheless, the utterance is pragmatically infelicitous since the quantifier algunos produces an inference/scalar implicature rendering the ”some, but not all” effect.

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• Previous work (Grinstead et al. 2022a and Grinstead et al. 2022b) shows in monolingual child Spanish, that inhibition and vocabulary size significantly predict monolingual children’s implicature interpretations.

Pragmatics, vocabulary and Executive Function

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• While there is controversy in this domain, bilingual children are said to have higher inhibition abilities but lower single-language lexical abilities than monolingual children.

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• Following Grosjean (1985), I do not think that bilingual research should be oriented towards only helping us understand monolinguals.

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• Rather, following the Continuity Hypothesis (MacNamara 1982; Pinker 1984; Hyams 1986), I think that bilingual linguistic and cognitive development constitute internally coherent systems and that studying them may tell us something general about cognition that cannot be gleaned from only studying monolingual adults.

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Cognitive centering

Can bilingual development tell us something about implicature generation that only studying monolinguals cannot?

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Monolingual and bilingual children

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Cognitive models of multilingualism

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• Later Deconstuctivist Translanguaging work (García & Otheguy 2014; Otheguy et al. 2015, 2018) claims that languages are mainly social and political entities.

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• All resources used by one language are shared by all – Unitary Model.

• I, too, assume that languages are social and political entities, but also that they are mentally real, and have both shared and discrete resources among them, following MacSwan (2017, 2022)

Research Questions

1. Do bilingual children generate algunos implicatures?

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• Given bilingual children’s putatively distinct cognitive profile, vis-à-vis lexicon and inhibition, might we expect different relationships between these predictors and the outcome variable of implicature interpretations?

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• If lexicon is predictive of implicature interpretations in bilingual children, is a bilingual lexical measure or a monolingual lexical measure, or both, predictive?

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• If the bilingual, shared, lexical measure is predictive, it is consistent with the Unitary or with the Integrated Multilingual model.

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• If only the monolingual, discrete, lexical measure is predictive, it is consistent only with the Integrated Multilingual model, and not with the Unitary model.

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Methodology - Participants

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• 92 typically-developing (by parental questionnaire) bilingual Engl/Spa-speaking children from Latino households ages 5- 8

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• 53 passed all filler items (mean 85.8 months, SD = 11.8 months).

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• Time consistently exposed to English: mean 59.4 months, SD = 15.7 months.

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• Participants were recruited from three elementary schools in Columbus, Ohio. Spanish Immersion Academy, West Broad Elementary School, and Columbus Bilingual Academy North.

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• Mean parental years of education =11.14, SD=3.97

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Methodology- Procedures

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• Language Background Questionnaire, from parents

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• The Alberta Language Environment Questionnaire (ALEQ), from Paradis (2011)

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• Truth-Value Judgment Task of algunos Interpretations in Implicature-consistent and Implicature-inconsistent video contexts.

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• Inhibition measure, Flanker (Eriksen & Eriksen 1974), from the Tablet-Based Cognitive Assessment Tool (TabCAT) of the EXAMINER Battery (Kramer et al. 2014).

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• Expressive Lexical Knowledge Test in Spanish-English for bilingual children: The Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test 4th Edition: Spanish-Bilingual Edition (EOWPVT-4 SBE) by Martin, N. A., & Academic Therapy Publications (2013).

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• Receptive monolingual measure: The Spanish version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes Peabody, TVIP, Spanish version) by Dunn et al. (1986). 

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Logical vs Pragmatically enriched meaning of algunos. 4 of 4

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Findings

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Do bilingual children generate algunos implicatures as monolinguals do? Yes.�

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Findings

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Question 2 – algunos Implicatures, Inhibition and Lexicon

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Findings

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Bilingual vocabulary and Implicatures

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Findings

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Findings

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Child bilingual interpretations of sentences with algunos implicatures suggest that inhibition is not necessary for generating pragmatic implicatures.

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Discussion

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Child bilingual interpretations of sentences with algunos implicatures suggest that inhibition is not necessary for generating pragmatic implicatures.

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Discussion

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{todos, muchos, algunos, unos, pocos...}�{all, many, some, sm, few...}

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{todos, all, muchos, many, algunos, some...}

• As with the research on intra-sentential code-switching (e.g., MacSwan 2017, 2022), our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the multilingual mind may have both language-particular linguistic resources and also resources that are shared among languages.

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• In this case, there appears to be a Quantity Scale in Spanish only that is responsible for implicature interpretations, and not a shared Quantity Scale between English and Spanish.

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• This is consistent with the Integrated Multilingual Model of translanguaging and not with the unitary models of translanguaging.

Residual Questions

• Why does inhibition appear to be important for monolingual children, but not for monolingual adults or for bilingual children, in implicature interpretation?

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• Do other executive functions, such as attention and auditory working memory, start playing a role in implicature interpretation earlier in development for bilingual children than they do in monolingual children?

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• Future work will need to be longitudinal in design to sort this out.

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• Work with adult bilinguals and monolingual child control groups.

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Thank you!

Spanish Immersion Academy

West Broad Elementary School

Columbus Bilingual Academy North

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Contact information

Pedro Antonio Ortiz Ramírez

ortizramirez.1@osu.edu

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Flanker

TVIP

Expressive vocabulary

algunos – 4 de 4 Truth-Value Judgment Task

• Video