Effects of Auditory Distraction on the Early Lexical-Semantic Retrieval Skills of Young Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners

The present study investigated the effects of an auditory distraction on the lexical semantic retrieval skills of ten monolingual English speaking children and ten Spanish-English speaking children between 3 and 5 years of age. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Fourth Edition (PPVT-4: Dunn & Dunn, 2006) was used to establish English proficiency between groups. In addition, participants were administered a picture-word verification task. The task was presented in English for the monolingual children and in both Spanish and English for the Early sequential language learners (ESLLs). An auditory distraction of four-speaker babble was presented on random trials. Participant responses were recorded for both response time and accuracy. Similarities in bilingual and monolingual performance on tasks of lexical-semantic retrieval were observed. No differences between monolingual and bilingual performance by response time was elicited, however differences in group accuracy of response were found to be significant. Results of the study suggest that the bilingual advantage of attention may not be present as early as 3 to 5 years of age given the children's limited language proficiency. In addition, said advantage may be attributable to specific cognitive tasks and may not be present during tasks of lexical-semantic retrieval.