Word-Pair Discrimination And Imitation Abilities Of Preschool Spanish - Speaking Children

Abstract

Auditory abilities, measured by wordpair discrimination and single word imitation, of economically disadvantaged native-Spanish-speaking preschool children were investigated in two languages, Spanish and English. In order to provide age-related comparative information, a group of nondisadvantaged, native-English speakers were evaluated on the same tasks. In spite of the dual problems of economic disadvantage and second language learning, these children were not significantly different from their advantaged English-speaking peers in total performance on the four tasks. In addition, the Spanish speakers made less errors in their native language than did the English speakers. Thus, previously hypothesized negative effects of poverty or of linguistic interference do not appear to be depressing auditory performance. A descriptive analysis of errors indicates directions for educational programs in the area of auditory training for preschool bilingual programs.