can bilinguals "replace" monolinguals in experimental data collection?

[Erika Hoff]

I think the question of subject selection is tied to the question of
generalization. If it is clear who your subjects are, say children whose
primary language is English and have a raw vocabulary score on some
standardized test with a particular range, then you run those subjects and
you know something about verbs in that group--which as has been pointed out
is a large group. Depending on the task, it might also be important to look
for differences associated with what the other language is.

I do think it is important to assess their English knowledge in some way
because whatever age you pick, the children English knowledge will vary a
great deal depending on how much exposure to English they have. Also, with
children that old, much of their exposure may be outside the home and the
parents may not provide good estimates.

Erika Hoff

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 10:41 PM, Susannah Kirby <suki at ibiblio.org> wrote:

> Dear Info-Childes community,
>
> I have a research conundrum, and I'm hoping you can assess one possible
> solution to it that I've come up with.
>
> I have been investing verb-learning in monolingual children, but in my
> current location (Vancouver, BC), monolingual children are nearly impossible
> to find!  On the other hand, bilingual kids are extremely easy to recruit.
>
> I'm wondering how methodologically unsound it would be to allow bilingual
> children to participate (not mixed in with monolinguals, but as their own
> participant group), and then to recruit slightly older children. So for
> instance, my target age range for monolinguals is 3-4 years old; for
> bilinguals, I might use 4-5 (or even 5-6) year olds. I would also ask for
> parents to estimate what percentage of the day the kids hear English input,
> and shoot for, say, a 50%+ range.
>
> Is this solution too problematic to even try? I can see reasons why it
> might or might not work, but I'm almost at the end of my rope, in terms of
> my recruitment problems.
>
> Thanks in advance for any insight and suggestions you can offer!
>
> Best,
> Susannah Kirby
> SFU Linguistics
>
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-- 
Erika Hoff, Professor
Department of Psychology
Florida Atlantic University
3200 College Ave.
Davie, FL 33314

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