Dónde está la ball? Examining the effect of code switching on bilingual children's word recognition

Abstract

Hearing words in sentences facilitates word recognition in monolingual children. Many children grow up receiving input in multiple languages - including exposure to sentences that 'mix' the languages. We explored Spanish-English bilingual toddlers' (n = 24) ability to identify familiar words in three conditions: (i) single word (ball!); (ii) same-language sentence (Where's the ball?); or (iii) mixed-language sentence (Dónde está la ball?). Children successfully identified words across conditions; however, the advantage linked to hearing words in sentences was present only in the same-language condition. This work hence suggests that language mixing plays an important role on bilingual children's ability to recognize spoken words.