Cristina Manteca Gacho, M.As
Doctoral Student
Pediatric Auditory Experience and Brain (PAEB) Laboratory
Communication Sciences and Disorders
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Word Inferencing in Sequential Bilinguals in Realistic Learning Environments
Learning in noisy environments can be challenging, particularly for individuals listening in their second language. This challenge may negatively impact language learning for bilingual students. In this study, we propose to investigate whether background noise limits the ability of Spanish-English bilingual middle schoolers to infer the meaning of novel words from context compared to their monolingual peers. Based on power analyses, we plan to recruit 42 middle school students (21 monolingual English speakers and 21 bilinguals) to address our research question. We hypothesize that bilingual students will show a significantly poorer ability to infer the meaning of novel words in the presence of background noise compared to their monolingual peers. However, we expect no such difference in quiet conditions.