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Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual adults*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2011

ELLEN BIALYSTOK  and
GIGI LUK
ELLEN BIALYSTOK*
Affiliation:
York University
GIGI LUK
Affiliation:
Harvard Graduate School of Education
*
Address for correspondence: Ellen Bialystok, Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canadaellenb@yorku.ca
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Abstract

English receptive vocabulary scores from 797 monolingual and 808 bilingual participants between the ages of 17 and 89 years old were aggregated from 20 studies to compare standard scores across language groups. The distribution of scores was unimodal for both groups but the mean score was significantly different, with monolinguals obtaining higher standard scores than bilinguals. Consistent with previous research, older adults had higher vocabulary scores than younger adults. The results are discussed in terms of the implications for theoretical conceptions of linguistic processing and clinical diagnosis in bilingual populations.

Keywords

receptive vocabularyadult bilingualslinguistic performance
Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 397 - 401
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

This work was partially supported by grant A2559 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and grant MOP57842 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to EB. We are grateful to all the past and present members of the Bialystok lab who collected the data and contributed the results to this analysis.

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