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"Longitudinal Evidence for Simultaneous Bilingual Language Development with Shifting Language Dominance, and How to Explain It"

6/16/2020

 
Professor Elizabeth Peña publishes an article with colleagues in Language Learning exploring how incremental learning and L1 (first language) use can offset competitive language unlearning. The title of the article is "Longitudinal Evidence for Simultaneous Bilingual Language Development with Shifting Language Dominance, and How to Explain It." Co-authors are Gary M. Oppenheim (Bangor University, Rice University), Zenzi Griffin (University of Texas at Austin), and Lisa M. Bedore (Temple University) 

​Peña is a certified Speech-Language Pathologist and a Fellow of the American Speech Language Hearing Association. In the UCI School of Education, she serves as Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Diversity and directs the Human Abilities in Bilingual Language Acquisition (HABLA) Lab. Peña's research interests include bilingualism, language impairment, and test development and treatment.
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Abstract
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Theories of how language works have shifted from rule-like competence accounts to more skill-like incremental learning accounts. Under these, people acquire language incrementally, through practice, and may even lose it incrementally as they acquire competing mappings. Incremental learning implies that (1) a bilingual’s abilities in their languages should depend on how much they practice each (not merely age of acquisition), and (2) using a L2 more could cause a bilingual to gradually “unlearn” their L1. Using timed picture naming and vocabulary measures, we tracked 139 children for several years as they transitioned from mostly-Spanish homes to mostly-English schools. Following their increased English use, many became more proficient in English than Spanish around the third grade, demonstrating continual learning. But their Spanish also improved, showing that L1-attrition is not inevitable. Incremental learning explains both co-improvement and L1-attrition as consequences of experience-driven learning: improvement from continuing L1 use can offset competitive unlearning.

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