Depth of vocabulary knowledge in dominant bilingual children with different language profiles: The impact of vocabulary size and verbal working memory

Abstract

The current study investigated the depth of vocabulary knowledge (VK) through word definitions, examining the effect of word characteristics, breadth of VK, and verbal working memory (VWM). Forty children (11-12 years old) participated (12 Greek-Albanian children Greek-dominant, 14 Turkish-Greek children Turkish-dominant, and 14 monolinguals). An expressive vocabulary task (breadth of VK), a word definition task (depth of VK) in Greek, and a VWM task were administered. The results revealed that monolinguals had larger vocabulary than bilinguals in Greek. Greek-Albanian children had also larger vocabulary than Turkish-Greek bilinguals. In the VWM task, monolinguals had better abilities than Turkish-Greek bilinguals. Controlling for vocabulary and VWM, few differences emerged in definitional skills. In simple concrete nouns and compound verbs, Greek-Albanian children gave more formal definitions than monolingual children, exhibiting a bilingual advantage. Finally, breadth and depth of VK correlated with VWM only in Greek-Albanian and monolingual children, indicating the impact of vocabulary on VWM performance.

Keywords

• breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge
• definitional abilities
• dominant bilinguals
• expressive vocabulary
• verbal working memory