| Purpose: This study was conducted to determine if phonological production proficiency in bilingual Spanish-English preschoolers could be predicted by their language environment, language ability, and phonological production proficiency in their other language.;Method: Participants were 199 Latino children and their families. Children ranged in age from 36--77 months. Children's phonological production ability in English and Spanish was assessed using the Bilingual Phonological Assessment (BiPA; Miccio & Hammer, 2006). Responses were transcribed and analyzed to determine Percentage of Consonants Correct-Revised (PCC-R; Shriberg, Austin, Lewis, McSweeney, & Wilson, 1997), Phonological Mean Length of Utterance (PMLU; Ingram, 2002) and Percent of Whole Word Proximity (PWP; Ingram, 2002). Language abilities were assessed using the Picture Vocabulary and Story Recall subtests of the Woodcock-Munoz Language Survey-Revised (Woodcock, Munoz-Sandoval, Ruef, & Alvaradeo, 2005). Information regarding the children's exposure to and use of English and Spanish was collected by means of a parent survey. Hierarchical regression analyses were employed to determine the degree to which language abilities, exposure to and use of each language, and phonological production proficiency in the other language were able to predict children's phonological production proficiency in English and Spanish.;Results: A large portion of the variance in phonological production proficiency scores in English (R2 = .62 -.69) was predicted by the language the mothers used when speaking to their children, children's English vocabulary scores, and children's phonological production proficiency in Spanish. Similarly, a sizeable portion of the variance in Spanish phonological accuracy (R 2 = .47--.57) was predicted by the language the children used when speaking to their mothers, vocabulary scores in Spanish, and phonological production proficiency in English. Results were similar across the three outcome measures in each language.;Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that language use, vocabulary, and phonological production accuracy in the other language are significant factors in predicting bilingual children's phonological production proficiency in English and Spanish. These results suggest that phonological production ability in one language is highly predictive of ability in the other language, at least when the two languages of the bilingual child share similar phones and phonotactic patterns, as do Spanish and English. Results also suggest that it is important to collect information about bilingual children's home language usage and to assess other oral language abilities, particularly vocabulary, when attempting to determine the presence of a phonological disorder in bilingual Spanish-English speaking children. |
