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Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Effects on Verbal Working Memory and Vocabulary: Testing Language Minority Children with an Immigrant Background
Engel de Abreu, Pascale; Baldassi, Martin; Puglisi, Marina et al.
20149th Conference of the International Test Commission
 

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Keywords :
fair assessment; linguisitic minorities; working memory; multilingualism
Abstract :
[en] The study explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language minority children. Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first- and second-language vocabulary (comprehension and production), executive-loaded working memory (counting recall and backward digit recall), and verbal short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition). Cross-linguistic task performance was compared within individuals. The language minority children were also compared with multilingual language majority children from Luxembourg and Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Brazil without an immigrant background matched on age, sex, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal reasoning. Results showed that (a) verbal working memory measures involving numerical memoranda were relatively independent of test language and cultural status; (b) language status had an impact on the repetition of high- but not on low-wordlike L2 nonwords; (c) large cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects emerged for productive vocabulary; (d) cross-cultural effects were less pronounced for vocabulary comprehension with no differences between groups if only L1-words relevant to the home context were considered. The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed.
Research center :
University of Luxembourg: FLSHASE
Disciplines :
Theoretical & cognitive psychology
Author, co-author :
Engel de Abreu, Pascale  ;  University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education (FLSHASE) > Education, Culture, Cognition and Society (ECCS)
Baldassi, Martin
Puglisi, Marina
Befi-Lopes, Debora
Language :
English
Title :
Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Effects on Verbal Working Memory and Vocabulary: Testing Language Minority Children with an Immigrant Background
Publication date :
03 July 2014
Event name :
9th Conference of the International Test Commission
Event organizer :
ITC
Event place :
San Sebastian, Spain
Event date :
02.07.2014 to 05.07.2014
By request :
Yes
Audience :
International
Funders :
FNR - Fonds National de la Recherche [LU]
Commentary :
Invited symposium on: "Considerations and Guidelines on the Fair Assessment of Linguistically Diverse Populations"
Available on ORBilu :
since 08 August 2014

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