scholarly journals Efficient Estimation of Children's Language Exposure in Two Bilingual Communities

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Margaret Cychosz ◽  
Anele Villanueva ◽  
Adriana Weisleder
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Random Sampling ◽  
Dual Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Efficient Estimation ◽  
Parental Report ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
Language Exposure ◽  
Bilingual Communities

Purpose The language that children hear early in life is associated with their speech-language outcomes. This line of research relies on naturalistic observations of children's language input, often captured with daylong audio recordings. However, the large quantity of data that daylong recordings generate requires novel analytical tools to feasibly parse thousands of hours of naturalistic speech. This study outlines a new approach to efficiently process and sample from daylong audio recordings made in two bilingual communities, Spanish–English in the United States and Quechua–Spanish in Bolivia, to derive estimates of children's language exposure. Method We employed a general sampling with replacement technique to efficiently estimate two key elements of children's early language environments: (a) proportion of child-directed speech (CDS) and (b) dual language exposure. Proportions estimated from random sampling of 30-s segments were compared to those from annotations over the entire daylong recording (every other segment), as well as parental report of dual language exposure. Results Results showed that approximately 49 min from each recording or just 7% of the overall recording was required to reach a stable proportion of CDS and bilingual exposure. In both speech communities, strong correlations were found between bilingual language estimates made using random sampling and all-day annotation techniques. A strong association was additionally found for CDS estimates in the United States, but this was weaker at the Bolivian site, where CDS was less frequent. Dual language estimates from the audio recordings did not correspond well to estimates derived from parental report collected months apart. Conclusions Daylong recordings offer tremendous insight into children's daily language experiences, but they will not become widely used in developmental research until data processing and annotation time substantially decrease. We show that annotation based on random sampling is a promising approach to efficiently estimate ambient characteristics from daylong recordings that cannot currently be estimated via automated methods.

scholarly journals Efficient estimation of children's language exposure in two bilingual communities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meg Cychosz ◽  
Anele Villanueva ◽  
Adriana Weisleder
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Random Sampling ◽  
Dual Language ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
The United States ◽  
Efficient Estimation ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
Language Exposure

Purpose: The language that children hear early in life predicts their later speech-language outcomes (Hoff 2003; Weisleder & Fernald 2013). This line of research relies on naturalistic observations of children’s language input, often captured with daylong audio recordings. But the large quantity of data that daylong recordings generate requires novel analytical tools to feasibly parse thousands of hours of naturalistic speech. This study outlines a workflow to efficiently process and sample from daylong audio recordings made in two bilingual communities:Spanish-English in the United States and Quechua-Spanish in Bolivia.Method: We employed a general sampling with replacement technique to efficiently estimate two key elements of children’s early language environments: 1) proportion of child-directed speech and 2) dual language exposure. Proportions estimated from random sampling of 30-second segments were compared to those from annotations over the entire daylong recording (every-other-segment), as well as parental report.Results: Results showed that approximately 49 minutes from each recording, or just 7% of the overall recording, were required to reach a stable proportion of child-directed speech and bilingual exposure. In both speech communities, strong correlations were found between bilingual language estimates made using random sampling and all-day annotation techniques. A strong relationship was additionally found for child-directed speech estimates in the United States, but this was weaker at the Bolivian site, where child-directed speech was less frequent. Furthermore, dual language estimates from the daylong audio recordings did not correspond to estimates derived from parental report.Conclusions: Random sampling is a valid method to estimate ambient characteristics from daylong recordings. However, caution should be taken when interpreting estimates of low-frequency categories and practitioners might consider collecting multiple daylong recordings to accurately estimate characteristics of children’s language exposure.

scholarly journals Violence against women: Can "jealousy" mitigate the significance of violence?

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazaré COSTA ◽  
Holga GOMES ◽  
Thaís ALMEIDA ◽  
Renata Silva PINHEIRO ◽  
Calíope ALMEIDA ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
College Students ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Original Study ◽  
Social Rules ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
Male Honor ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Beliefs about love and jealousy can be variables that influence violence against women. The aim of our reproduction of a United States study was to compare our data with those of the original study regarding the acceptance of violence related to jealousy. A total of 264 college students participated in the study. They heard and assessed two audio recordings ("jealousy" and "no jealousy"), but half heard situations in which the husband beat his wife and half situations in which the husband does not beat his wife. After each audio recording, participants answered six questions, among them: "how much the husband loves his wife" and "how long would the relationship last". It was observed that, aggression, in the case of "no jealousy", showed to have a negative meaning both in the United States study and in the present study, which was not observed in the case of "jealousy". It may be concluded that violence against women is a cultural practice in Brazil and that social rules regarding male honor, female submission and jealousy exert influence on this practice.

Grammatical change in borderlands Spanish: A variationist analysis of copula variation and progressive expansion in a South Texas bilingual enclave community

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Phillip M. Carter ◽  
Tonya E. Wolford
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
South Texas ◽  
Grammatical Change ◽  
Bilingual Communities

Abstract This study investigates variation in the grammatical system of Spanish in the speech of three generations of Mexican Americans living in a community in South Texas, United States, characterized by high levels of bilingualism and long-term, sustained contact between languages. Two variables are studied using quantitative methods: (1) the extension of the copula verb estar into domains traditionally confined to ser and (2) the expansion of progressive forms at the expense of the simple present. The data reported here suggest changes-in-progress that appear to be accelerated by the linguistic and sociocultural conditions of the community including, especially, lack of access to formal education in Spanish. The sociolinguistic patterning for these variables is compared to patterning for the same variables reported in the literature in both monolingual communities in Spain and Latin America and bilingual communities in the United States.

¿Mejor o peor español? Actitudes lingüísticas de universitarios hispanohablantes en Estados Unidos

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Montes-Alcalá
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
College Educated ◽  
Linguistic Attitudes

AbstractThe present study aims to explore the linguistic attitudes towards the different regional varieties of Spanish in a group of college-educated native speakers of Spanish. A survey was conducted among participants from diverse Spanishspeaking countries who lived in the United States. The main goals of the study were, in the first place, to determine whether these individuals were able to spontaneously attribute more (or less) prestige to a specific Spanish variety over others. Second, I attempted to analyze the rationale - whether explicit or implicit - behind their choice of a certain variety as more (or less) prestigious. Finally, I examined the extent to which their linguistic attitudes were motivated (or not) by any sort of ethno-linguistic loyalty towards their own speech communities. The results of the study substantiate previous research carried out in this field, but also reveal unforeseen findings, especially in regards to the less prestigious varieties.

Language exposure outside the home becomes more English-dominant from 30 to 60 months for children from Spanish-speaking homes in the United States

2020 ◽  
pp. 136700692095187
Author(s):  
Stephanie N Welsh ◽  
Erika Hoff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Extracurricular Activities ◽  
Maternal Education ◽  
General Pattern ◽  
The United States ◽  
South Florida ◽  
Family Characteristics ◽  
Home Language ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Language Exposure

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to document the out-of-home exposure to English and Spanish experienced by children from Spanish-speaking homes in the United States during the preschool years. Methodology: Primary caregivers of 149 children from Spanish-speaking homes in South Florida reported on their children’s language exposure. Data and analysis: Descriptive statistics and paired-samples t-tests described and compared children’s exposure to English and Spanish outside the home. Multi-level modeling described trajectories of change and the influence of family characteristics on English and Spanish out-of-home exposure. Findings: Children heard more English than Spanish outside of their homes. Grandparents were the primary out-of-home source of exposure to Spanish. Language exposure in preschool and extracurricular activities was primarily English. From 30 to 60 months, English exposure increased, while Spanish exposure decreased. Within this general pattern, there was variability in children’s out-of-home language exposure as a function of parents’ language backgrounds and maternal education. Originality: Studies of bilingual children’s language exposure have focused on home language use. The present study shows that out-of-home experiences are a significant source of exposure to societal language (SL) for children from language minority homes. Implications: For children in immigrant families, the home and family members outside the home are the primary sources of heritage language exposure. Out-of-home language experience is SL-dominant and increasingly so as children get older, although the degree to which this is the case differs depending on parental characteristics.

A Dual Language Revolution in the United States?

2015 ◽  
pp. 447-460
Author(s):  
Deborah K. Palmer ◽  
Christian E. Zuñiga ◽  
Kathryn Henderson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Dual Language ◽  
The United States

Language choice and accommodation

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-98
Author(s):  
Ryan M. Bessett ◽  
Joseph V. Casillas ◽  
Marta Ramírez Martínez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
San Ysidro ◽  
Casual Speech

Abstract The present study investigates language choice in two bilingual speech communities in the United States: Nogales, AZ and San Ysidro, CA. Ethnically distinct fieldworkers approached members of these two communities under the guise of being lost tourists in order to engage in casual speech encounters. It was found that language choice varied between the two communities, with participants of the San Ysidro community more likely to engage in codeswitching. Ethnicity was also found to be a significant predictor of language choice, with more codeswitching taking place with the fieldworker of a Hispanic phenotype. Potential explanations and factors for future research are discussed.

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