Lexical Access in the Second Year: A Cross linguistic Study of Monolingual and Bilingual Vocabulary Development
Previous research documents a significant increase in vocabulary size and speed of word recognition in monolinguals throughout the 2 nd year of life. Moreover, there is a relation between these measures across English and Spanish speaking monolinguals, such that children with larger vocabularies demonstrate faster word recognition than children with smaller vocabularies (Hurtado, Marchman, Fernald, 2007; Fernald, Perfors, Marchman, 2006) What's more, this relation becomes more robust from 18 to 24 months (Fernald, Marchman, Weisleder, 2013) However, few studies have examined the development of speed in word processing in young bilinguals and whether improvements in word processing are related to vocabulary growth in both languages (Marchman, Fernald, Hurtado, 2011) The present investigation compares the developmental changes in spoken word processing and vocabulary growth between monolingual English, Spanish, and bilingual English Spanish learners during the 2 nd year.