CODE-Switiching

“¿Cómo estas?” “I’m good.” Conversational code-switching is related to profiles of expressive and receptive proficiency in Spanish-English bilingual toddlers

Krystal M. Ribot and Erika Hoff Florida Atlantic University, USA

Abstract

Relations between bilingual children’s patterns of conversational code-switching (responding to

one language with another), the balance of their dual language input, and their expressive and

receptive proficiency in two languages were examined in 115 2½-year-old simultaneous Spanish-

English bilinguals in the U.S. Children were more likely to code-switch in response to Spanish

than English. Children’s expressive vocabulary scores were higher in English than in Spanish,

while their English and Spanish receptive language scores were not different. Analyses of

subgroups of children with different but consistent patterns of code-switching confirmed that

children who code-switched to English showed greater English skills, specifically in the

expressive domain. Children who did not code-switch were more balanced bilinguals in both

expressive and receptive skills. Children with other code-switching patterns showed still different

profiles of dual language expressive and receptive proficiency. These findings reveal that some,

but not all, bilingual children show different profiles of expressive and receptive skill in their two

languages and that these proficiency profiles are related to their language choices in conversation.

Keywords

bilingual profiles; code-switching; expressive vocabulary; language choice; language proficiency; receptive language

Parents of bilingual preschool children are often puzzled by what appears to be their

children’s choice to speak only one language in everyday interaction, although they

understand two. Researchers have also described this phenomenon. For example, De

Houwer (2007) cites several accounts of children in bilingual environments who speak only

one language, “even with a parent who speaks another language to them” (p. 411), and

Hurtado and Vega (2004) describe parents and children speaking to each other and

understanding each other even though “the children may be speaking mostly in English, and

the parents mostly in Spanish” (p. 148).

© The Author(s) 2014

Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

Corresponding author: Krystal Marie Ribot, Florida Atlantic University, Davie, FL, USA. [email protected].

HHS Public Access Author manuscript Int J Behav Dev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2015 July 01.

Published in final edited form as: Int J Behav Dev. 2014 July 1; 38(4): 333–341. doi:10.1177/0165025414533225.

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When children respond to one language using another, it is one form of code-switching.

Code-switching is a ubiquitous feature of speech in bilingual communities, and code-

switching by young bilingual children has been well documented (Genesee & Nicoladis,

2007). The question of when and why children code-switch is an active area of

investigation. In this study, we focus on conversational code-switching in very young

bilinguals. We ask first whether 2½-year-old Spanish-English bilingual children show

asymmetries in their conversational code-switching—more frequently switching in one

direction than the other, and we ask what might underlie any asymmetries observed.

Several candidate, but not mutually exclusive, explanations of asymmetries in code-

switching can be found in the literature. One possibility is that asymmetries in language

choice reflect differences between the languages in societal prestige or dominance. In the

U.S., English is the language of the dominant culture and the more prestigious language

(Eilers, Pearson, & Cobo-Lewis, 2006). Greene, Peña, & Bedore (2012) found that

American Spanish-English bilingual 5-year-olds were more likely to switch to English when

being tested in Spanish than they were to switch to Spanish when being tested in English,

regardless of which language was their stronger language. Gutiérrez-Clellen and colleagues

found that the examiner-elicited speech of 5-year-old Spanish-English bilingual children

tested at their preschool Head Start sites more frequently contained code-switched utterances

when elicitation was in Spanish than when it was in English (Gutiérrez-Clellen, Simon-

Cereijido, & Leone, 2009). Gutiérrez-Clellen et al. (2009) suggested the children were

aware that English was the language prescribed by the majority culture in the school

environment.

Another possible explanation of asymmetries in code-switching is that children’s choice of

languages for speaking reflects what they hear in their immediate environments. In Hurtado

and Vega’s (2004) example, the parents who addressed their children in Spanish likely heard

more Spanish than English in their daily lives, while the children who answered their parents

in English likely heard more English than Spanish in theirs. Similarly, Pearson, Fernández,

Lewedeg, and Oller (1997) reported anecdotally that the bilingual children in their study

who received less than 20% of their input in one language were reluctant to interact in that

language, despite demonstrating they had learned at least some vocabulary in that language.

A third possibility is that differences in children’s proficiency in their two languages (i.e.,

their language dominance) contribute to asymmetries in code-switching. Children choose to

speak the language they know better. Some findings do suggest that young bilinguals code-

switch to compensate for gaps in their language knowledge (Greene et al., 2012). In

addition, dominance or proficiency may interact with social prestige in influencing language

choice. Gutiérrez-Clellen et al. (2009) found that while English-dominant bilinguals used

English in their utterances when speaking Spanish more than they used Spanish in English

utterances, Spanish-dominant bilinguals did not produce the opposite pattern.

There is a fourth possible account of code-switching that is suggested by the descriptive

accounts of children’s behavior in conversation. It may be that code-switching reflects

dominance that is specific to expressive language skills. That is, the children’s receptive

abilities allow them to understand what is being said to them in both languages, but their

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expressive skills make it much easier to answer in one language than the other. Several

studies of school-aged bilingual children have documented a receptive-expressive gap, in

which the children’s standard scores on receptive measures exceed their standard scores on

expressive measures in one or both of their languages (Gibson, Oller, Jarmulowicz, &

Ethington, 2012; Gibson, Peña, & Bedore, 2012). The extreme of such a gap between

receptive and expressive abilities is what has been termed passive or receptive bilingualism:

a pattern of bilingual proficiency in which bilinguals understand two languages but are able

to speak only one (Hurtado & Vega, 2004; Valdés, 2001).

One suggestion for why receptive skills might exceed expressive skills in one or both of

bilinguals’ languages is that the diminished input that bilinguals experience in each of their

languages, relative to monolinguals, results in difficulties in lexical access, even when the

lexical knowledge is there (Yan & Nicoladis, 2009, and references therein). The argument is

that understanding words requires only a representation of word meanings, while producing

words also requires a motoric representation, and it takes more experience hearing and/or

using a language to acquire the motoric representation. Relatedly, Bates (1993) has made the

point that a rough representation of word form might be adequate to support comprehension

but not adequate to support production of a word form that is comprehensible to others. The

argument that comprehension somehow is easier or requires less input is consistent with the

well-established finding in monolingual development that comprehension precedes

production (e.g., Bates, Bretherton, & Snyder, 1988; Benedict, 1979; Fenson et al., 1994). It

is also consistent with the finding among children from language minority homes in the U.S.

that the common pattern of transition from heritage language dominance to English

dominance in middle childhood occurs earlier in comprehension than in production (Kohnert

& Bates, 2002).

It has additionally been suggested that the causal link between language choice and language

skill operates in the opposite direction as well. Among pre-kindergarten and kindergarten

bilingual children, Bohman, Bedore, Peña, Mendez-Perez, and Gillam (2010) found that

children’s use of each language was an additional predictor of their language skill beyond

the effects of input, and they hypothesized that using a language “forces the learner to

process the language in a way that only hearing it … does not” (p. 10). If speaking a

language requires more or deeper processing than understanding a language, then language

use may be a source, rather than a consequence, of asymmetries between bilingual children’s

expressive and receptive skills in their two languages.

The literatures that describe conversational code-switching and bilingual profiles of

expressive and receptive skills are small and based on studies of children 5 years and older.

Thus, we do not know when these phenomena emerge or the circumstances that create them.

In the present study, we investigate patterns of bilingual preschool children’s language

choice in conversation and their correlates as one approach to addressing the broader aim of

understanding the heterogeneous nature of early bilingual proficiency (McCardle & Hoff,

2006). Inspired by parents’ anecdotal accounts of conversational intransigence in their

bilingual toddlers, we look for evidence of asymmetries in young bilingual children’s

conversational code-switching and for evidence of a relation between children’s

conversational code-switching behavior and profiles of expressive and receptive dual

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language skills. We ask whether children are more likely to code-switch when addressed in

English or in Spanish, and we ask whether any differences observed in children’s code-

switching in response to English and Spanish correspond to differences in (1) their relative

exposure to English and Spanish, (2) their relative skill in English and Spanish, or (3)

specifically, their relative expressive, but not receptive, skill in each language.

Method

Participants

The participants were 115 2½-year-old Spanish-English bilingual children (53 boys, 62

girls, M age = 30.44 months, SD = 0.38). Participants were selected from a larger study and

met the following criteria: (1) the children had been exposed to Spanish and English from

birth, and the less frequently heard language constituted at least 10% of their input (one

child’s input included 3% exposure to a third language in the home); and (2) the children

were willing and sufficiently proficient to be tested in English and in Spanish. An additional

5 children who met these criteria were excluded because they scored more than three

standard deviations above or below the mean on one of the language measures.

All families were residents of South Florida, in the U.S., and all children were born in the

U.S. All children were full term and healthy at birth, with normal hearing. All children were

screened for evidence of communicative delay at 30 months. Participants were recruited

through advertisements in local magazines and at programs for parents with young children,

as well as through word of mouth. Consistent with the heterogeneity of the U.S. bilingual

population, parents’ language backgrounds varied: 79.1% of mothers and 70.4% of fathers

considered themselves bilingual in English and Spanish. Characteristics of the sample are

further described in Tables 1 and 2.

Procedure and instruments

The children’s primary caregivers were interviewed, and the children’s English and Spanish

skills were assessed in three sessions. The first session included the caregiver interview,

conducted by a fully bilingual researcher in the language of the caregiver’s choice. The

caregivers included 103 mothers, 6 fathers, 1 grandmother, 1 other caregiver, and in 4 cases

both parents were interviewed together. The second and third sessions included

administration of assessments in English and in Spanish to the child, with the order of

languages counterbalanced across participants.

Measure of children’s conversational code-switching—Two questions asked of the children’s primary caregiver in interview were the basis of estimating children’s tendency to

code-switch when responding to English and Spanish. One was “If (child’s name) is

addressed in English, does he/she respond in English?” The options were Always;

Sometimes; No, responds in Spanish; Not usually, mixes. The second was the same question

asked about the child’s responses when addressed in Spanish. Due to the low frequency of

responses across the categories of Sometimes; No, responds in [the other language]; and Not

usually, mixes; these latter three responses were combined yielding two categories of

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response: for English, Always responds in English and Does not always respond in English;

and for Spanish, Always responds in Spanish and Does not always respond in Spanish.

Measure of language input—In the context of an extensive interview about language use in the home, primary caregivers were asked to estimate the percent of their child’s

language exposure that was in English and in Spanish. Where children lived in two

households, estimates for each were obtained and combined taking account of the balance of

time the child spent in each household. Previous research suggests such measures are

reliable and are strongly related to diary-based measures of home language use (Hoff &

Rumiche, 2012).

Measures of children’s productive vocabulary—The Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (EOWPVT) Spanish-English Bilingual Edition (Brownell, 2001) was

administered to assess the children’s expressive vocabulary in English and in Spanish. The

test is designed for use with children from two years through adulthood. The standard

administration procedure for the Spanish-English bilingual version is to allow the child to

provide a label in either language, but we modified this procedure to allow only English

labels in the English assessment and only Spanish labels in the Spanish assessment in order

to obtain separate assessments of the children’s English and Spanish vocabularies, as have

others (Anthony, Solari, Williams, Schoger, & Zhang, 2009). We also modified the

procedure to not require achieving a basal because we found that many of the children from

bilingual environments missed items within the first eight items, but were able to continue

successfully beyond those first items (Hoff & Rumiche, 2012). Thus, raw scores on the

EOWPVT were the total number of pictures the child labeled correctly starting from the

beginning of test until he or she missed six consecutive items.

Measures of children’s receptive language—The auditory language comprehension subscales of the English (Zimmerman, Steiner, & Pond, 2002a) and Spanish (Zimmerman,

Steiner, & Pond, 2002b) Preschool Language Scale—Fourth Edition (PLS-4) were also

administered. The PLS-4 is a widely used instrument that assesses language skills in

children from birth to 6 years and 11 months. The test, individually administered by trained

examiners, includes a picture book and series of toys with which the experimenter presents

tasks that assess skills in the areas of semantics, morphology, syntax, integrative language

skills, and preliteracy skills. Raw scores potentially range from 0 to 62 in the English

version and from 0 to 61 in the Spanish counterpart. Each additional task is more difficult

than the previous one, and administration is stopped once the child makes seven consecutive

mistakes.

Data analysis

We asked whether bilingual children at this age show asymmetries in conversational code-

switching, consistently switching languages when addressed in one of their languages but

not when addressed in the other. We then asked what might underlie this pattern in language

choice. We pursued these questions in two sets of analyses: The first set of analyses asked if

there was an average asymmetry in the conversational code-switching behavior of the full

sample and whether any such asymmetry in language choice had parallels in asymmetries in

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the children’s English and Spanish input, in their overall English and Spanish proficiency, or

specifically in their English or Spanish expressive language proficiency. The second set of

analyses identified four categories of children based on their code-switching behavior:

children who switched to English when addressed in Spanish, but not vice versa; children

who switched to Spanish when addressed in English, but not vice versa; children who did

not code-switch in responding; and children who code-switched in both directions. We then

compared these four groups in terms of their input, their overall English and Spanish

proficiency, and specifically in their English and Spanish expressive and receptive

proficiency.

In all analyses, when language skill is the dependent variable, we use raw scores. Standard

scores for the single language administration of the EOWPVT do not exist. Standard scores

for the PLS-4 do exist, but the reference groups used to norm the Spanish and English

version are not necessarily comparable. In contrast, the tests themselves are comparable. For

the EOWPVT, the items presented to be named are the same. For the PLS-4, the items are

not identical but substantially overlap in content. Thus, raw scores provide a reasonable

basis for comparing children’s proficiency in English and Spanish. However, because the

scales of the EOWPVT and PLS-4 are different, the tests do not provide a means of

comparing expressive to receptive skills. Thus, we do not test for a receptive-expressive gap

by directly comparing children’s receptive and expressive scores within a language. Rather,

we ask whether the difference between children’s English and Spanish expressive skills is

greater than the difference between their English and Spanish receptive skills. A gap that

might contribute to conversational code-switching would take the form of a difference in

expressive skill in favor of the language children use when they switch, in combination with

a smaller or no gap between levels of receptive skill in the two languages.

Results

Conversational code-switching, input balance, and dual language expressive and receptive proficiency

Conversational code-switching—The percentage of children described by their caregivers as “Always” and “Not always” responding to English with English and to

Spanish with Spanish are presented in Table 3. A greater percentage of children code-

switched when responding to Spanish than code-switched when responding to English,

t(114) = 2.18, p = .032 (2-tailed), d = .31.

Input balance—On average, the home language exposure of the children in this sample was 46.5% English (SD = 22.68) and 53.6% Spanish (SD = 22.60). Thus, the finding that

more children code-switched to English when addressed in Spanish than vice versa did not

reflect greater average exposure to English at home. However, other data suggest that even

very young children in this community hear more English than Spanish outside the home

(Place & Hoff, 2010), and the English dominance in the larger community may be an

influence. A comparison of the children who sometimes code-switched to English in

response to Spanish to those who always responded to Spanish in Spanish revealed that

those who switched to English heard more English than those who did not, t(113) = 4.50, p

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< .001 (2-tailed), d = .95. Similarly, the children who sometimes code-switched to Spanish

in response to English heard less English and more Spanish at home than those who reliably

responded to English in English, t(113) = 3.93, p < .001 (2-tailed), d = .74. Thus, differences

among children in their code-switching behavior were associated with differences in input

balance. Those means are presented in Table 4.

Receptive and expressive language proficiency—To ask whether the greater frequency of Spanish to English conversational code-switching, compared to English to

Spanish code-switching, was associated with greater English than Spanish proficiency,

either overall or specifically in expressive language skill, the children’s expressive and

receptive language scores in English and Spanish were compared in a 2 (Language: English,

Spanish) × 2 (Measure: Expressive, Receptive) repeated measures ANOVA. The means are

plotted in Figure 1. There was a significant main effect of Language, F(1, 114) = 15.80, p < .

001, η2 = .12; on average, children’s scores on tests of English were higher than their scores

on tests of Spanish. There was a significant main effect of Measure, but this reflects

differences in the scales of the two instruments and indicates nothing about differences in

expressive versus receptive skills. There was also a significant Language × Measure

interaction, F(1, 114) = 116.61, p < .001, η2 = .51. Post-hoc paired-samples t-tests, with a

Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons (Bonferroni alpha = .025), revealed that the

children had significantly higher expressive vocabularies in English (M = 12.42, SD =

11.56) than in Spanish (M = 3.68, SD = 4.95), t(114) = 7.21, p < .001 (2-tailed), d = .98. The

difference between English and Spanish receptive language scores was in the opposite

direction and not significant (Spanish, M = 34.39, SD = 6.98; English, M = 32.77, SD =

7.26), t(114) = 2.10, p = .038 (2-tailed), d = .24.

Individual patterns of code-switching and their correlates in input balance and expressive and receptive proficiency

To further pursue the questions of whether and why some bilingual children systematically

code-switch more in one direction than another, the participants were categorized into four

nonoverlapping groups based on whether they “Always” or “Not always” responded in the

same language when addressed in English and in Spanish. The results are presented in Table

5. Some children always answered in the same language as their conversational partner—but

these were the minority. Some children occasionally switched in both directions, answering

Spanish with English and also answering English with Spanish. Two groups of children

showed clear asymmetries in their conversational code-switching: one group reliably

responded to English with English and also sometimes switched to English when addressed

in Spanish; another group showed the opposite pattern, reliably responding to Spanish with

Spanish and sometimes switching to Spanish when addressed in English. Fifty-five percent

of the children demonstrated a code-switching asymmetry; 63% of these switched to English

when addressed in Spanish while consistently answering English with English.

The relation of code-switching behavior to input balance—We asked whether these four groups with different code-switching patterns differed in the balance of English to

Spanish in their home language exposure. The mean percent of home input that was in

English is presented for each group in Table 6. A one-way ANOVA revealed a significant

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effect of Group on the balance of English to Spanish in children’s home language exposure,

F(3, 111) = 11.74, p < .001, η2 = .24. Post-hoc t-tests using the Bonferroni correction for

multiple comparisons indicated that the children who switched to English when addressed in

Spanish, but not vice versa, experienced more English input at home compared to all other

groups (Bonferroni alpha = .008, all ps < .008). The children who switched to Spanish when

addressed in English, but not vice versa, experienced less English input (and more Spanish)

at home compared to the group with the opposite pattern and compared to the children who

code-switched in both directions (ps < .01). The children with no asymmetry in their code-

switching behavior—those who switched in both directions and those who never switched—

had the most balanced input and were not different from each other in percent of English in

their home language exposure.

The relation of code-switching behavior to expressive and receptive proficiency—To ask whether these groups who differed in code-switching behavior differed in their English and/or Spanish expressive and/or receptive proficiency, a 3-way

mixed ANOVA was conducted, with code-switching Group as the between-subjects variable

and Language and Measure as within-subject variables. There was a significant main effect

of Group, F(3, 111) = 4.31, p = .006, η2 = .10. There was a significant main effect of

Language, F(1, 111) = 8.80, p = .004, η2 = .07; on average the children’s total English

scores summed across the two measures were higher than their total Spanish scores. There

was a significant main effect of Measure, F(1, 111) =2636.20, p < .001, η2 =.96, indicating

only that the scales of the two tests were different. In addition, all interaction effects were

significant. There was a significant Group × Language interaction, F(3,111) = 17.15, p < .

001, η2 = .32; that is, across the measures of expressive and receptive skills combined, the

children who responded to Spanish with English had higher English than Spanish scores,

and the children who responded to English with Spanish had higher Spanish than English

scores. The groups who switched in both directions and who never code-switched in

conversation had more nearly balanced English and Spanish skills. There was a significant

Group × Measure interaction, F(3, 111) = 3.34, p = .022, η2 = .08; as can be seen in Figure

2, the groups with different code-switching patterns differed in expressive skills more than

in receptive skills. There was a significant Language × Measure interaction, F(1, 111) =

87.80, p < .001, η2 = .44; on average, English expressive vocabulary scores substantially

exceeded Spanish expressive vocabulary scores (t[114] = 7.21, p < .001, Bonferroni alpha

= .025), while English and Spanish receptive scores were similar (in fact, they differed

nonsignificantly in the opposite direction).

Of central interest was the significant three-way Group × Language × Measure interaction,

F(3, 111) = 7.39, p < .001, η2 = .17, indicating that the profile of dual language expressive

and receptive skills differed among groups with different patterns of conversational code-

switching behavior. Those data are graphed in Figure 2. This 3-way interaction was further

explored with four two-way ANOVAs, asking separately for each group whether there was

an effect of Language indicating stronger skills in one language than the other and whether

there was a Measure × Language interaction indicating a difference in the gap between

English and Spanish skills depending on whether expressive or receptive skills were

assessed.

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For the group of children who sometimes switched to English in answering Spanish but

reliably answered English with English, there was a significant main effect of Language,

F(1,39) = 79.37, p < .001, η2 = .67, with English scores exceeding Spanish scores; a

significant main effect of Measure, F(1,39) = 974.72, p < .001, η2 = .96; and a significant

Language × Measure interaction, F(1,39) = 80.26, p < .001, η2 = .67. Post-hoc comparisons

revealed that these children’s expressive skills in English were significantly better than their

expressive skills in Spanish (t[39] = 10.48, p < .001, Bonferroni alpha = .006), while there

was no significant difference between their English and Spanish receptive skills. For the

group of children who sometimes answered English with Spanish but not vice versa, there

was a significant main effect of Language (F[1,22] = 4.87, p = .04, η2 = .18), with Spanish

skills exceeding English skills; a significant effect of Measure, F(1,22) = 960.06, p < .001,

η2 = .98; and a significant Language × Measure interaction, F(1,22) = 8.56, p = .008, η2 = .

28. In this group, however, it was receptive skills that differed between languages, not

expressive skills. These children had higher receptive scores in Spanish than in English

(t[22] = -3.99, p = .001, Bonferroni alpha = .006), while not differing in their English and

Spanish expressive vocabulary scores.

Among the children who code-switched in both directions, there was no main effect of

Language, F(1,39) < 1.0; there was a main effect of Measure, F(1,39) = 1302.25, p < .001,

η2 = .97; and there was a significant Language × Measure interaction, F(1,39) = 46.15, p < .

001, η2 = .54. The nature of the interaction was that expressive vocabulary scores were

higher in English than in Spanish (t[39] = 3.40, p = .002), while receptive language skills

differed nonsignificantly in opposite direction. Last, the children who never code-switched

showed a pattern of skills similar to those of the children who switched in both directions.

There was no main effect of Language, F(1,11) < 1.0 and a significant main of effect of

Measure, F(1,11) = 239.12, p < .001, η2 = .96. There was also a significant Language ×

Measure interaction (F[1,11] = 7.88, p < .001, η2 = .42), reflecting nonsignificantly higher

English than Spanish expressive vocabulary scores and nonsignificantly higher Spanish than

English receptive language scores.

Discussion

The aim of the present study was to investigate a phenomenon that occurs in bilingual

households, which has frequently been described in anecdote, but which has not previously

been the subject of systematic study. The phenomenon is that in which children appear to

understand two languages but tend to speak in only one of them, even when addressed in the

other. We explored this phenomenon among 2½-year-old children living in Spanish-English

bilingual homes in South Florida, in the United States, asking whether such patterns of

language use could be observed and whether children’s choice to speak one language over

the other coincided with differences between the languages in their prevalence in the

children’s input and/or in the children’s expressive or receptive skills.

Do children show asymmetries in conversational code-switching?

We found evidence of conversational code-switching (i.e., answering one language with

another) that occurred more in one direction than the other. Spanish elicited code-switching

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from more children than English did. Some children code-switched in both directions, but

among those children who only switched in one direction, nearly twice as many switched to

English when addressed in Spanish as vice versa. This finding is consistent with other

studies of Spanish-English bilingual children which find that children more frequently

choose to speak English than Spanish (Oller & Eilers, 2002) and more frequently code-

switch to English than to Spanish (Greene et al., 2012; Gutiérrez-Clellen et al., 2009).

Do code-switching asymmetries reflect input?

Some evidence from the present study suggests code-switching involves choosing to use the

language that is dominant in input. Although language input in the children’s homes was, on

average, fairly balanced, these children lived in the U.S. Other data from this population

suggest that even very young children—even in the bilingual community of South Florida—

hear more English than Spanish outside the home (Place & Hoff, 2010). Furthermore, the

two groups of children with different but consistent patterns of conversational code-

switching did differ in input; each group was more exposed to the language they more

frequently chose to use. The children who showed no asymmetry in code-switching had

more balanced input.

Do code-switching patterns reflect a difference in expressive and receptive proficiency?

In the sample as a whole, expressive vocabulary scores were higher in English than in

Spanish, while receptive language scores did not differ, consistent with the average pattern

of more frequent code-switching to English. The present study is the first, to our knowledge,

to document a profile of skills in preschool dual language learners in which the children

show comparable levels of receptive skill in two languages while showing different levels of

expressive skill, with stronger expressive skills in the language they seem to prefer to speak.

Analyses of the subgroups of children with different, but consistent, patterns revealed other

profiles of bilingual expressive and receptive skills that were masked by the average English

expressive dominance. Among the subgroup of children who only switched to English and

never switched to Spanish, the profile seen in the sample as a whole was present and more

exaggerated. The gap between their English and Spanish expressive skills was large (more

than 1.5 standard deviations), while their receptive language scores did not differ. In

addition, their absolute level of Spanish expressive vocabulary was extremely low. This

group of children showed a profile that could be described as passive bilingualism—able to

understand two languages but able to speak only one. The subgroup who showed the

opposite asymmetry—who switched to Spanish when addressed in English but not vice

versa—did not show a complementary pattern of skills. To the contrary, they did not differ

in English and Spanish expressive scores, and they had higher Spanish than English

receptive scores. Thus, these children’s language choice cannot be attributed to a limited

expressive proficiency in one of their languages. The factors underlying this pattern of

language use need further investigation. The two subgroups of children who showed no

asymmetry in their conversational code-switching—either never code-switching or code-

switching in both directions—showed less extreme profile effects.

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Although the focus of this study was not on explaining the expressive-receptive gap, the

findings of this study may have something to contribute to that growing literature. Currently,

studies of the expressive-receptive gap in bilinguals report inconsistent findings regarding

which of a bilingual’s two languages shows the gap and under what circumstances a gap will

appear (Gibson, Oller et al., 2012; Gibson, Peña et al., 2012). The relative amount of

language exposure, whether the language is the minority or community language, and

whether the language is the children’s first or second language, have all been proposed as

relevant factors. The present data suggest, first, that the expressive-receptive gap is

characteristic of some bilinguals and not others. In addition, the present data suggest that the

language that will show a gap between expressive and receptive skills is likely to be the

language that is the minority language, the less frequently heard language, and, in particular,

the less frequently used language.

Limitations

The focus of the present study was on input and proficiency as potential factors contributing

to why bilingual children would choose to speak in one of their two languages. Other

unmeasured factors are also likely to have an influence. The degree to which parents model

code-switching in their own speech and the degree to which parents accept children’s code-

switched responses have been found to influence children’s code-switching behavior

(Comeau, Genesee, & Lapaquette, 2003; Lanza, 1992). Also, the ability of the children’s

interlocutors to understand both languages has been shown to influence even very young

children’s language choice (Nicoladis & Genesee, 1996), and it is likely that in these

children’s environments, many of the Spanish speakers they interacted with also understood

English while fewer of the English speakers understood Spanish. It should be pointed out,

however, that the conversational code-switching that parents reported in these children, and

the anecdotes in the literature, include children code-switching to their interlocutors’ less

dominant language.

Another limitation of this study is that the measures of proficiency employed do not allow

direct comparison of children’s expressive and receptive skills in the same language. For

this, it would be necessary to compare expressive and receptive skills directly using

comparable instruments or to compare both to a common norm or a monolingual

comparison group. Thus, we cannot directly ask whether there is a “gap” between children’s

expressive and receptive skills in either language, although we infer it when there is a

difference in expressive skills in the presence of no difference in receptive skills. There are

other instruments that are more nearly comparable than those employed in the present study

(which was not designed explicitly for the present purpose), but the issue of the cross-

linguistic equivalency of measures is a difficult one for bilingual research (Gibson, Oller et

al., 2012; Hoff, 2013; Hoff & Rumiche, 2012).

Finally, this study was limited by the use of a measure of children’s conversational code-

switching that was obtained by care-giver report. We could only characterize children’s

behavior in very broad terms. Recordings of conversation that would allow calculation of

the frequency of conversational code-switching in both directions would allow other

investigations of correlates of code-switching. We would predict, for example, that the

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group of children who switch in both directions and who show larger English and Spanish

expressive vocabularies would more frequently switch in the direction of using English.

Conclusions

Despite these limitations, the present study makes several contributions to the literature on

early bilingual development. The present findings are the first evidence that at this very

early stage of bilingual development and in the circumstance of dual language exposure

from birth, bilingual children show patterns of dual language competency that cannot be

fully described in terms of overall proficiency in each language. Rather, there are profiles of

language proficiency, as has also been found for older bilingual children (Oller,

Jarmulowicz, Pearson & Cobo-Lewis, 2010). Children may indeed understand a language in

which they have limited expressive proficiency. The degree to which the observed profile of

expressive and receptive competency reflects differential effects of language input and/or

language use on acquisition in those domains needs to be addressed in future research.

In answer to the question with which we began—”Why do bilingual children sometimes

choose to speak in only one of the two languages that they understand?”—the data support

the conclusion that the choice to speak English when addressed in Spanish reflects greater

expressive skills in English than Spanish (in fact, very low Spanish expressive skills),

despite no difference in receptive skills. The children who answer in the same language they

are addressed in have more balanced expressive skills. The unexplained exception to the

pattern is in the group of children who code-switch only to Spanish. They are Spanish

dominant in receptive skills, while showing no difference in expressive skills. Ultimately,

more fine-grained measures of code-switching behavior and consideration of variables

outside those in the present study may be needed to shed light on the factors underlying the

multiple patterns of dual language use and multiple profiles of expressive and receptive dual

language proficiency uncovered in the present study.

Acknowledgments

Funding

This research was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [grant numbers HD060718 & HD068421].

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Figure 1. Mean expressive vocabulary and receptive language raw scores in English and Spanish (N =

115).

Note. ***p < .001, with Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons. Error bars represent

1 SE of the mean.

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Figure 2. Mean expressive vocabulary and receptive language raw scores in English and Spanish for

four groups differing in code-switching patterns

Note. ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05, with Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons.

Error bars represent 1 SE of the mean.

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Table 1

Child characteristics.

Percentage

Birth order

Only child 36.5%

First born 8.7%

Later born 54.8%

Ethnicity

African American 0.9%

Hispanic White 88.7%

Hispanic African 4.3%

European American 4.3%

Other 1.7%

Parents’ language backgrounds

2 native Spanish or native bilingual parents 57.4%

1 native Spanish, 1 native English parent 34.8%

Other 7.0%

Note. N = 115. For parents’ language backgrounds, the category “Other” includes three participants with two parents native in English; four participants with one parent native in Spanish, one parent native in another language other than English or Spanish; and one participant with one native Spanish-English bilingual parent, one parent native in English and another language other than Spanish.

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Table 2

Parent characteristics.

Mothers Fathers

Native languages

English 16.5% 23.5%

Spanish 75.7% 63.5%

Bilingual 7.0% 8.7%

Other 0.9% 4.3%

Native country

U.S. 27.8% 40.0%

Colombia 20.9% 11.3%

Peru 9.6% 5.2%

Venezuela 7.8% 4.3%

Cuba 5.2% 7.8%

Dominican Republic 4.3% 6.1%

Argentina 4.3% 7.0%

Puerto Rico 2.6% 1.7%

Other 17.5% 16.6%

Level of education

Less than high school 1.7% 0.9%

High school degree 16.5% 25.2%

2-year degree 28.7% 27.0%

4-year degree 33.0% 33.0%

Advanced/graduate degree 20.0% 13.0%

Note. N = 115.

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Table 3

Percentage of children who “Always” and “Not always” respond in the language of their interlocutor when

addressed in English and Spanish.

Language addressed to child

Language of child’s response

“Always” same “Not always” same

English 45.2% 54.8%

Spanish 30.4% 69.6%

Note. N = 115.

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Table 4

Means (and standard deviations) for percentage of English input for children who “Always” and “Not always”

respond in the language of their interlocutor when addressed in English and Spanish.

Language addressed to child

Language of child’s response

“Always” same “Not always” same

English 55% (21%) 39% (21%)

Spanish 33% (18%) 52% (22%)

Note. N = 115.

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Table 5

Cross-tabulation of participants based on patterns of language use when addressed in English and Spanish.

Addressed in Spanish, responds in Spanish

“Always” “Not always” Total

Addressed in English, responds in English “Always” 12 (10%) 40 (35%) 52

“Not always” 23 (20%) 40 (35%) 63

Total 35 80 115

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Table 6

Means (and standard deviations) for percentage of English input for children in each code-switching group.

Code-switching group

“Only Switch to English” (n = 40)

“Only Switch to Spanish” (n = 23)

“Never Switch” (n = 12) “Switch to English and

Spanish” (n = 40)

English input 59% (20%) 29% (15%) 41% (21%) 45% (22%)

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