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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Jan 1.
Published in final edited form as: Int J Biling Educ Biling. 2018 Nov 29;24(8):1178–1192. doi: 10.1080/13670050.2018.1547266

Predictors of Item Accuracy on the Test de Vocabulario en Imagenes Peabody for Spanish-English Speaking Children in the United States

Carla Wood 1, Rachel Hoge 2, Chris Schatschneider 3, Anny Castilla-Earls 4
PMCID: PMC8411841  NIHMSID: NIHMS1512687  PMID: 34483707

Abstract

This study examines the response patterns of 288 Spanish-English dual language learners on a standardized test of receptive Spanish vocabulary. Investigators analyzed responses to 54 items on the Test de Vocabulario en Imagenes (TVIP) (Dunn & Dunn, 2007) focusing on differential accuracy on items influenced by a) cross-linguistic overlap, b) context (home/school), and c) word frequency in Spanish. The response patterns showed cross-linguistic overlap in phonology was a significant predictor of accuracy at the item level. After accounting for item number (expected difficulty level), context of exposure was a significant predictor of the likelihood of obtaining a correct response. Spanish word frequency was not a significant predictor of accuracy. The current findings substantiate the influence of cross-linguistic overlap in phonology and context on Spanish vocabulary recognition by Spanish-English speaking children. Children were more likely to obtain correct responses on lexical items that were associated with the home context. Researchers and practitioners should consider phonological cross-linguistic overlap in addition to context of word exposure and word frequency when designing and utilizing vocabulary assessments for children from linguistic minority backgrounds.

Keywords: assessment, second language learning, dual language learners, cognate, language exposure, word familiarity

Importance of Vocabulary

Vocabulary knowledge is thought to be central to language and literacy achievement (August, Carlo, Dressler, & Snow, 2005; August Shanahan, & Shanahan, 2006; Scarborough, 2002) for monolingual English speakers and students who are dual language learners (DLLs) (Castro, Páez, & Dickinson, 2011; Morgan et al. 2015). Studies support the use of vocabulary assessment in discriminant accuracy of identifying bilinguals who are likely to experience language learning delays and disorders (Peña, Bedore, & Kester, 2015). Language measures that include a vocabulary component have been shown to predict academic difficulties in Spanish-English speaking bilinguals w(Lugo-Neris, Peña, Bedore, & Gillam, 2015). For Spanish-English speaking students, vocabulary knowledge has been shown to be a strong predictor of reading comprehension (Proctor, Carlo, August, & Snow, 2005). Language comprehension in either Spanish or English during the early school years for DLLs is a good predictor of later literacy performance in English (Davison et al., 2011; Hammer, Lawrence, & Miccio, 2007). Further, findings of studies suggest that monitoring vocabulary knowledge is particularly important for students from linguistic minority backgrounds who lag behind in their growth trajectory for oral English language skills and comprehension as they progress in school (Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux, 2011; Wood Jackson, Schatschneider, & Leacox, 2014) because it puts them at greater risk for low literacy achievement in later grades (Kieffer, 2010).

Importance of Measuring Spanish Vocabulary

Although English is the language of instruction in the majority of schools in the United States, assessing bilinguals’ vocabulary skills in both languages is considered the standard recommended practice (Peña & Halle, 2011) and as such, assessment of Spanish knowledge is widely utilized (Bandel, Atkins-Burnett, Castro, Wulsin, & Putnam, 2012; Kohnert, 2010; Paradis, Genesee, & Crago, 2011; Peña, Bedore & Kester, 2016). In a review of research articles involving assessment of DLLs, Bandel et al. (2012) examined the prevalence of assessment in different languages between 2000 and 2010. The majority (75%) of smaller studies (e.g. 50 or fewer participants) and about half (54%) of large-scale studies (e.g. greater than 50 participants) utilized a dual—language approach to assessment. Reportedly, vocabulary was the most frequent area that included assessment in children’s home language, with 50 studies including assessment in more than one language.

For Spanish-English speaking children, vocabulary skills in students’ home language has been identified as a predictor of the growth trajectory for English acquisition. Wood Jackson, Schatschneider, and Leacox, (2014) examined vocabulary growth of 64 children from Spanish-English speaking backgrounds. Their results indicated that children from language minority backgrounds made gains in English but remained behind expectations for monolingual peers from preschool to 2nd grade. In addition, higher initial Spanish performance at school entry predicted greater growth rates in English. Given this finding, measures of Spanish receptive vocabulary at school entry may be beneficial in identifying students who may be expected to gain vocabulary at a typical rate, versus students who may benefit from additional support.

In addition to predicting delays, assessment of home language is important to determine bilingual language proficiency and in differential diagnosis. Spanish language assessment is important when distinguishing between students who are typically developing and students with language learning disorders. Vocabulary assessment in Spanish has been used as part of a diagnostic battery to support diagnostic classifications (Lugo-Neris et al., 2015). In screening and assessing for language impairment there has been a tendency to misdiagnose bilingual children resulting in both over-identification and underdiagnosis (Bedore & Peña, 2008; Grimm & Schulz, 2014). With this in mind, selection of measurement tools is especially important considering that the use of different measures results in different classifications of bilingual children (Bedore et al., 2012). For example, performance on one measure may be consistent with a language learning disorder while the child’s scores on another measure may be within normal range of expectations for peers of similar backgrounds. Although vocabulary tests are used in combination with other assessment tools in an assessment battery, Spanish vocabulary is one of the factors weighed in drawing conclusion about the age appropriateness of children’s bilingual language development.

Test de Vocabulario en Imagenes Peabody (Dunn, Padilla, Lugo & Dunn, 1986)

The Test de Vocabulario de Imagenes or TVIP (Dunn et al., 1986) is a commonly used tool in the United States for measuring the Spanish receptive vocabulary knowledge of DLLs including state and federally funded research (Bandel et al., 2012; Durán, Roseth, & Hoffman, 2015; Wood, Fitton, Petscher, Rodriguez, Sunderman, Lim, 2018). The simplicity and efficiency of administration is appealing, in that children point to a named picture given a choice of four pictures and continue until six errors occur within any eight consecutive items. As such, there has been frequent use of the TVIP for varied purposes. The TVIP has been widely used in clinical practice and in research as an outcome measure to assess students’ response to intervention (Barnett, Yarosz, Thomas, Jung & Blanco, 2007); a tool to generally assess and describe vocabulary knowledge of children who speak Spanish at home (Leacox & Jackson, 2014; Lugo-Neris, Jackson, & Goldstein, 2010); examine relationships between vocabulary and other literacy skills (Faver, Xu, Eppe, & Lonigan, 2006); to monitor vocabulary development over time (e.g. Hulsey, Aikens, Xue, Tarullo, & West, 2010; Roberts, 2008) and predict vocabulary growth rates in English (Wood Jackson, Schatschneider, & Leacox, 2014). The TVIP has also been used to compare outcomes between instructional conditions for children who are Spanish-English speaking (e.g. Durán, Roseth, & Hoffman, 2010) and examine growth trajectories in transitional bilingual education programs (Durán, Roseth, Hoffman, & Robertshaw 2013).

Despite the frequent use of the TVIP (Dunn et al., 1986), previous studies have highlighted potential concerns in using the TVIP for assessment and differential diagnosis of Spanish-English speaking bilingual students in the United States (Kester & Peña, 2002; Prewitt Diaz, 1988). Among concerns, the normative sample does not share some characteristics of bilinguals in the United States, as the standardization sample for language assessments generally includes only monolingual speakers (Barrueco, López, Ong, & Lozano, 2009; Luk & Christodoulou, 2016). The normative testing was conducted in Mexico and Puerto Rico and as such may not represent typical expectations for children exposed to Spanish at home and English in the community. Along with the concern of representativeness of the normative sample, the items on the TVIP (Dunn et al., 1986) may not be expected to function the same for bilinguals as the monolingual comparison group due to unique aspects of bilingual language acquisition (Fernald, Gruter, Hurtado, & Marchman, 2013; Kester & Peña, 2002).

In a recent study by Hoge, Schatschneider, Wood, Castilla-Earls, and Auza (submitted), results showed differential item function for groups that differed in language background. The comparison groups included monolingual Spanish speaking children from Mexico (n = 58), monolingual Spanish speaking children from Colombia (n = 112), and bilingual Spanish-English speaking children from the United States (n = 224) in Florida (n = 185) or Kansas (n = 39), and bilingual Spanish-English speaking children from Western New York (n = 64). Findings highlighted differential item function for 26 items out of a set of 46 items administered to kindergarten and first grade students. Children who differed in their language exposure and background showed differential likelihood of providing a correct response to individual items. These recent findings support the need to more closely examine influencing factors that contribute to variability in bilinguals’ performance on the receptive vocabulary measure.

Studies have identified numerous factors of bilingual language acquisition that would be expected to influence bilinguals’ performance on language measures including differences related to: a) language exposure and language learning environments (e.g. Hoff, Core, Place, Rumiche, Señor, & Parra, 2012), b) the interplay between languages (e.g. Wood & Peña, 2015), and c) word frequency or familiarity of tested words on the vocabulary measure (e.g. Goriot, van Hout, Broersma, Lobo, McQueen & Unsworth, 2018). In order to shed light on potential relations among unique factors and build theory on sources of influence on vocabulary performance, we will briefly overview the literature on each of these three factors unique to bilingual language acquisition.

Language Exposure

Spanish-English speaking children in the United States have unique language input that differs than monolinguals (Hoff et al., 2012). Given this, performance on a vocabulary assessment may be different for bilinguals compared to monolinguals, because bilinguals receive language learning input divided across languages (Peña et al., 2016). For example, the quantity of Spanish exposure may vary substantially between individual children’s daily routine at home and school day (De Houwer, 2007; Hoff et al., 2012). Differences in the opportunity to learn certain words through exposure is influenced by differences in socioeconomic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds which warrants considerations in examining differences in performance for both monolinguals and bilinguals (Bandel et al., 2012). Findings of multiple studies support a relationship between exposure and vocabulary size for each of children’s languages (Gathercole & Thomas, 2009; Patterson, 1998; Place & Hoff, 2011; Scheele, Leseman & May, 2010). Research on the role of exposure supports the expectation that bilinguals who are exposed to more Spanish in their daily lives show larger vocabulary knowledge in Spanish than English, while children who receive more language exposure in English tend to show stronger English vocabulary skills than vocabulary knowledge in Spanish (Fernald, Gruter, Hurtado & Marchman, 2013). Further, findings of a study by De Houwer. (2007) demonstrated that variation in quantity and pattern of parental language input (e.g. both parents spoke both languages or one parent was monolingual) related to children’s home language use. Additionally, Dixon, Zhao, Quiroz, and Shin (2012) reported that parents’ language use was a statistically significant predictor of vocabulary among kindergarteners (n = 282) in Singapore in their heritage or home language, when controlling for other predictors including age, mother’s education, family income, and the language of television viewing.

Given the role of exposure, performance on a vocabulary assessment such as the TVIP, would be expected to be influenced by exposure to the word which is often mediated by the context in which the word would be likely to occur such as home or school. For example, a home-based word such as a utensil used to cook dinner (e.g. spatula) may be recognized in only the home language through experiences with family members. In contrast, a school based word (e.g. synonym) may be associated with academic language in English through instruction with the classroom teacher. This notion of language specificity in the role of context is supported by the findings of Bialystok, Luk, Peets and Yang (2010) who examined performance of dual language learners (n = 966) on a receptive vocabulary assessment in English by specific categories of home and school items and compared their performance to monolingual English speakers (n = 772). The findings suggested that children from diverse linguistic backgrounds scored lower in English on home category items (such as food and household items) but scored similarly to monolingual English speakers on items related to a school context (e.g. instruments, shapes, and words related to science and professions).

The influence of context relative to likelihood of exposure on vocabulary performance is theoretically based on the hypothesis that bilinguals’ vocabulary knowledge is distributed across two languages and as such, they show uneven distribution of knowledge across languages (Cobo-Lewis, Eilers, Pearson, & Umbel, 2002; Langdon & Wiig, 2009). Dual language learners may have doublets for some words but not others. Given this, DLLs may show a less robust knowledge and understanding of words in each specific language because they are splitting and converging exposures to words and communicative interactions between two languages within or between specific contexts and/or communication partners (Bialystok et al., 2010; Oller, Pearson, & Cabo-Lewis, 2007).

Interplay between languages

The interplay between first and second languages may facilitate word recognition or impede it, depending on the individual item (Hernandez, Bates & Avila, 1994). One example of the influence of the one language on another is seen in the role of cognates (Kelley & Kohnert, 2012). Cross-linguistic cognates refer to words that are phonetically similar in two languages and share the same meaning (e.g. penguin in English is similar to pinguino in Spanish). Similarly, other translation equivalents that are not cognates share the same meaning; however, the form is not phonetically similar across languages (apple-manzana). The interplay between languages facilitate children’s performance on an item due to transfer of knowledge from one language to another (Kelley & Kohnert, 2012). Research findings have documented supportive effects of cognates on word recognition, word identification, and the transfer of lexical understanding from one language to another (Leacox, Wood, Sunderman & Schatschneider, 2016; Kelley & Kohnert, 2012). In a seminal study conducted by Nagy and his colleagues (1993), students who had better performance on a vocabulary test in their primary language were more likely to show conceptual understanding of the word meaning in the second language and identify the cognates efficiently. In more recent studies, Pérez, Peña and Bedore (2010), reported a cognate advantage on word recognition in young Spanish-English speaking bilinguals’ test performance. Similarly, the authors Kelley and Kohnert (2012) reported Spanish-speaking school age English learner students (ELs) demonstrated higher vocabulary performance for items that were classified as cognates as compared to non-cognates of comparable difficulty. Additionally, in Leacox et al. (2016), Spanish-speaking ELs (n = 31) demonstrated higher naming accuracy on phonologically similar cognates. These findings suggest that students used their knowledge of vocabulary in one language to support the word recognition and understanding with a cross-linguistic advantage, supporting the notion that cross-linguistic overlap should be considered as an influencing factor in vocabulary assessment of dual language learners.

The influence of cognates on vocabulary performance is theoretically based on the Cummins’ (1994) Common Underlying Proficiency model, which hypothesizes that dual language learners (DLLs) leverage knowledge in one language to support their understanding of words in the other language. This linguistic interdependence hypothesis generally refers to the interplay between languages in DLLs as an advantage or positive support for language comprehension due to the two-way transfer across languages; however, conversely the interplay between languages in DLLs could impede performance due to confusion created by the transfer or interference between languages. False cognates may exemplify potential interference (e.g. Friel & Kennison, 2001; Lalor & Kirsner, 2001). Bilingual children could be confused by a word that has a similar form to a word in their second language but does not share the same meaning, such as false cognates, also known as false friends (Brenders, van Hell, & Dijkstra, 2011). An example of a false cognate is soap in English which has a different meaning than sopa in Spanish.

Some studies have found that children did not perform significantly better between cognate and non-cognate vocabulary items (Umbel, Pearson, Fernández, & Oller, 1992; Umbel & Oller, 1994). In early studies, authors reported that cognate status did not show a significant effect on bilingual children’s accuracy on the TVIP when measured in first grade (Umbel et al., 1992) or in older elementary school grades (Umbel & Oller, 1994). These studies reported that bilingual students performed similarly on the English-Spanish cognate pairs compared to other non-cognate items on the TVIP (Dunn et al., 1986). Given the mixed findings in the literature, cognate status of words (regardless of whether cognates facilitate or inhibit vocabulary performance) warrants further consideration in assessments as a potential influence on English learner’s performance.

Word Frequency/Familiarity.

Among other potential influencing factors on children’s performance is the lexical familiarity of word frequency of items. This potential factor is grounded in previous research suggesting that children’s early vocabulary development is largely comprised of common items that are familiar and present in children’s early environments (Berko Gleason & Bernstein Ratner, 2017) and words that are socially and intellectually meaningful to children (Anglin, 1995). A contributing factor in the frequency or low familiarity of specific items on the TVIP may be the age of the test as well. In other words, the year of publication of the TVIP (1986) may be associated with inappropriate word selection given changes in word frequency and familiarity over time. Differences in word frequency due to differences in language experience and exposure or cultural differences may affect experienced item difficulty (Peña, 2007; Stansfield, 2003).

Research Aims

This study was motivated by the importance of assessing DLLs’ vocabulary knowledge and the need to broaden our understanding of vocabulary performance for DLLs, recognizing that multiple factors may influence the underlying domain of vocabulary related to the unique language learning experiences of DLLs and the interplay between languages in DLLs. This study aimed to explore underlying constructs of vocabulary knowledge of Spanish-speaking children learning English. Theoretically guided by potential factors believed to influence bilinguals’ word knowledge, the current study aimed to examine potential variables that predict performance to better understand DLLs’ performance on TVIP items and build theory through examining predictors of performance. The primary research aim was to examine predictors that influence dual language learners’ performance on the TVIP measure. Specifically, we aimed to examine the relationship between a) cross-linguistic overlap, b) context (home and school), and c) word frequency in relation to the likelihood of correct responses on the TVIP measure for Spanish speaking dual language learners in the United States. Secondly, we aimed to test if those factors were predictors when we controlled for item expected difficulty level represented by item order number. It was hypothesized that each of the unique factors (context, cross-linguistic overlap, and Spanish word frequency rating) exerts an effect on receptive vocabulary performance of DLLs as measured by the TVIP.

Methods

This study used existent data from two previous studies that included young children of 5 or 6 years old who spoke Spanish as Spanish-English dual language learners.

Participants

All children in this study spoke English as a second language and at least one family member spoke Spanish in the home. DLLs involved in this study were from Florida (n = 185), Kansas (n =39), and Western New York (n = 64). The participant pool was comprised of 142 girls and 146 boys. They were enrolled in kindergarten (n = 175) or first grade (n = 113). The children who participated in this study were part of a larger study approved by a human subjects review committee (HSC # 2017.20529). Descriptive information on family demographic information is provided in Table 1 for the 279 participants who completed a questionnaire or a phone interview. The largest percentage of families who participated indicated they had low education levels. They reported that middle school or some high school was the highest grade completed. There were 5% of families with higher education. The majority of fathers worked in positions of unskilled labor. Similarly, mothers largely worked in unskilled labor positions or did not work outside the home.

Table 1.

Reported Language Use and Linguistic Background of Participants

n % of Respondents
Primary Language of Child
English 11 4%
Primarily English, some Spanish 9 3%
English and Spanish Equally 98 35%
Primarily Spanish, some English 22 8%
Spanish 139 50%
Families’ Country of Origin
Mexico 151 54%
Puerto Rico 29 10%
Guatemala 31 11%
El Salvador 22 8%
Cuba 13 5%
Honduras 11 4%
United States 3 1%
Other 19 7%
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Note. Percentages are based on 279 participants who provided demographic information. There are nine participants with missing data.

Measures

Test de Vocabulario en Imagenes Peabody (TVIP)

(Dunn, Lugo, Padilla, & Dunn, 1986). The TVIP is an untimed measure of receptive Spanish vocabulary designed to take 1–15 minutes. It was normed through a sample of 1,219 children in Mexico and 1,488 children in Puerto Rico for use with individuals 2 to 17 years old. The test booklet provides an array of four black and white pictures for each vocabulary item (125 total pages). The examiner asks the child to point to the picture that matches the spoken word from a four-picture array. Examiners score children’s responses for accuracy assigning a dichotomous score of one or zero. The items on the test form are ordered in a continuous linear array that is intended to become increasingly difficult with higher numbered items. Following the administrative guidelines, the examiner begins on a predetermined item based on the child’s age. If a basal is not achieved in the first eight items the examiner works backwards to achieve a basal. A basal is established (eight consecutive items correct) and the child continues until the ceiling is reached by obtaining six or more errors on eight consecutive items.

Procedures

The test was administered by research assistants who had received training on administration procedures. Research assistants were comprised of graduate and undergraduate students enrolled in a speech-language pathology training program. Researchers were required to practice administration and demonstrate competency prior to data collection. Each participant’s protocol was scored according to the published scoring guidelines with a blinded second scoring to check accuracy. Item-level responses were entered in a database and then double-scored to check for accuracy.

Items on the TVIP were then coded for item a) cross-linguistic overlap, b) word frequency (in Spanish), and c) context (home/school context). First, cognate status was determined based on the established procedures used in an earlier study of the PPVT-III (Kelley & Kohnert, 2012). Each item on the TVIP was translated to English and subsequently scored using the COSP (Cross-linguistic Overlap Scale for Phonology; Kohnert, Windsor & Miller, 2004). Following the procedures of the COSP, translation equivalents were scored on four different features for a maximum score of 10. Features included initial sound (0–3 points); number of syllables (0–2 points); consonant similarities (0–3 points) and vowel similarities (0–2 points). This established procedure was also employed in an effort to be consistent with previous studies (e.g. Kelley & Kohnert, 2012) to allow for comparison. We used the COSP total score as a continuous variable. A few of the TVIP items were excluded from cognate consideration in previous studies due to variations in potential translation equivalents (e.g. sofa vs couch which was also consistent with procedures of similar studies in the previous literature (Kelley & Kohnert, 2012). Of the 54 possible items on the TVIP to include in the current study, seven were excluded (13%) from COSP scoring due to variations in potential translation equivalents. These were primarily verbs which would not be equivalent in conjugation in English. Although the COSP score was considered as a continuous variable for all analyses in the current project, to describe the distribution of overlap in the dataset we examined the percentage of items at each degree of overlap. The items were fairly evenly split in terms of high and low degrees of overlap with 51% of 47 items obtaining a COSP score of 6 or greater and 49% of items overlapping to a lesser degree, scoring 5 or less on the COSP scale.

Investigators identified item familiarity and home/school context. Item familiarity was determined through the use of the SUBTLEX-ESP word form database to derive frequency values (Cuetos, Glez-Nosti, Barbón, & Brysbaert, 2011). Word frequency is intended to index or quantify the regularity, frequency, or likelihood that a child would be exposed to a specific word. The SUBTLEX-ESP word frequency values are derived by reporting the number of times the word occurs in contemporary movies and TV per every 1 million words from a corpus of over 41 million words (Cuetos et al., 2011). For the items on the TVIP, words occurring more frequently in Spanish such as hora (hour in English) and par (pair in English) have a high word familiarity index (482.34 and 212.84 respectively). In contrast, less frequently occurring words such as barandal (banister in English) and carrete (reel or spool in English) have a low word familiarity index (0.26 and 0.99 respectively). The average word frequency for Spanish across the items was 50.97.

Finally, the primary context of each tested word was identified as home or school based on the categorization system of Bialystok et al. (2010). Home words were comprised of food and household items, culture-specific items, and words that were unlikely to occur in the classroom. In contrast, school-based words included professions, animals or plants, shapes, musical instruments, and words that were likely to occur in school experiences. Using this categorizing system described by Bialystok et al. (2010), the investigators identified 30 words that were primarily used in the school context (e.g. whale, agriculture, human) and 13 words that were thought to be more related to the home environment (e.g. pet, neck, furniture). The context was indiscernible for some words (n = 11) that did not seem exclusive to either context (e.g. pair, pick, and empty). The eleven indiscernible words were not assigned to either category.

Analyses

Analyses focused on items numbered 10–63 on the TVIP in the current study. Items below 10 and above 63 were not included, based on the fact that no item higher than 63 had 5% or more responders with a correct response because it was at or above the ceiling, and some variance in response is necessary for statistical modeling. Similarly, items below 10 were below the basal and had 5% or less of incorrect responses. A cross-classified generalized linear model with a logit link function for binary response (Quené & van den Bergh, 2008) was used to examine the probability of correct responses given item expected difficulty, cross-linguistic overlap, part of speech, and word frequency as model parameters. A cross-classified model allows for modeling both person-level and item-level predictors of performance. This approach was selected in part, based on theoretical appeal, to allow us to investigate constructs of language learning that may be unique predictors of performance to dual language learners.

Results

Descriptives

The participants in this sample demonstrated an average standard score of 84.26 on the TVIP (SD = 16.68). The number of correct responses (raw score) showed a mean of 26.53 (SD = 17.92). The item level database was comprised of the participants’ responses to individual items; however, for the analyses we constrained the set of items to 10–63 based on where there was at least 5% variability in responses (i.e. omitting items below the basal where more than 95% responded correctly and above the ceiling where more than 95% responded incorrectly). To address the first research question exploring the relationship between a) cross-linguistic overlap, b) context (home and school), and c) word frequency in relation to the likelihood of correct responses on the TVIP, we first examined correlations. Table 2 displays the correlations between variables of interest (i.e. COSP, context, word frequency in Spanish). There was a significant positive relationship between item number (i.e. expected difficulty) and each of the three predictors. There was also a significant relationship between cross-linguistic overlap in phonology (COSP), context, Spanish word frequency, and mean accuracy. There was no a significant relationship between context (home/school) and mean accuracy, or Spanish word frequency and mean accuracy.

Table 2.

Correlations between Predictors

1 2 3 4 5
6. Expected Difficulty 1 .36** −.06** −.025* .37**
7. COSP 1 −.41** −.08** −.14**
8. Context 1 −.08** −.01
9. Spanish Word Frequency 1 .02
10. Mean Accuracy on Item 1
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Note. Expected Difficulty refers to item number on the test. COSP refers to score on the Cross-linguistic Overlap Scale for Phonology, (Kohnert, Windsor & Miller, 2004). Context is a dichotomous variable with 0 designated as school and 1 designated as home.

Items in bold indicate significance.

*

p <.05

**

p <.001

Using a cross-classified generalized linear model with logit link function to predict the probability of getting an item correct based upon a set of item characteristics (SPSS, Version 23), students were crossed with items and both students and items were allowed to be random factors. For the conditional model, item level predictors including a) cross-linguistic overlap, b) context (home and school), and c) Spanish word frequency were added to the model along with item number as a measure of expected difficulty level of the item.

The analyses indicated that only cross-linguistic overlap and item number (difficulty level) were significant predictors of students’ accuracy (p <.0001) when each of the three predictors was considered in isolation of each other (Table 3). As expected, the item number expected difficulty predicted the probability of getting an item correct. The cross-linguistic overlap was also a significant predictor of the probability of getting an item correct. Context (home/school) and Spanish word frequency were not significant predictors of the probability of getting an item correct when item number was left uncentered (p = 0.548, p = 0.071 respectively).

Table 3.

Model 1: Probability of Accuracy on Items on the Receptive Spanish Vocabulary Test When Not Controlling for Other Factors

Parameter Logit t p value Odds Ratio
Intercept 0.580 6.45 0.000 1.800
item# 0.070 47.65 0.000 1.074
Intercept 0.500 6.66 0.000 1.650
COSP 0.110 18.11 0.000 1.120
Intercept 0.420 5.59 0.000 1.520
Spanish Word Frequency 0.000 -1.81 0.071 1.000
Intercept 0.350 4.37 0.000 1.420
Context -0.027 -0.60 0.548 0.974
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Note. Item number on the test indicates expected difficulty. COSP refers to score on the Cross-linguistic Overlap Scale for Phonology, (Kohnert, Windsor & Miller, 2004). Context refers to a categorical variable based on whether the item is associated with the home or school context.

Given that item number (expected difficulty level) was correlated with the other predictors (refer to Table 2), we also tested each predictor while controlling for expected difficulty. The items on the TVIP are Rasch-based and ordered in terms of difficulty and expected difficulty level was added to control for the fact that the item properties were not distributed randomly throughout the test. Only when controlling for expected difficulty, context was a significant predictor of students’ accuracy (p = .0001) and cross-linguistic overlap was marginally significant (p = .086). Spanish word frequency was not a significant predictor of accuracy (p = .235) when controlling for item number as expected difficulty level (refer to Table 4).

Table 4.

Model 2: Probability of Accuracy on Items on the Receptive Spanish Vocabulary Test When Controlling for Item Difficulty Level

Parameter Logit t p value Odds Ratio
Intercept 0.560 6.31 0.000 1.760
Item # 0.070 41.97 0.000 1.072
COSP 0.012 1.70 0.086 1.012
Intercept 0.536 5.97 0.000 1.71
Item # 0.068 39.64 0.000 1.071
Spanish Word Frequency 0.000 −1.19 0.235 1.000
Intercept 0.733 7.57 0.000 2.080
Item # 0.070 41.29 0.000 1.072
Context −0.229 −4.56 0.000 0.795
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Note. Item number on the test indicates expected difficulty. COSP refers to score on the Cross-linguistic Overlap Scale for Phonology, (Kohnert, Windsor & Miller, 2004). Context refers to a categorical variable based on whether the item is associated with the home or school context.

To address the second research aim, to test if those factors were predictors when we controlled for item expected difficulty level, we tested one predictor at a time and controlled for other predictors (e.g. item expected difficulty, cross-linguistic overlap, context, and word frequency) by centering them at their mean (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). In this model (Table 5), context (home/school) was a significant predictor of accuracy. Based on estimated marginal means when the other variables were centered at their mean, school items were 57% likely to be accurately recognized in Spanish, and home items showed a 64% likelihood of being correctly recognized in Spanish. In other words, after controlling for the other predictors (i.e. COSP, item number, and Spanish word frequency) home based items showed a higher probability of a correct response. Neither cross-linguistic overlap nor Spanish word frequency were significant predictors when controlling for expected difficulty (item number). The resulting final model parameters are presented in Table 5.

Table 5.

Final Model: Probability of Accuracy on Items on the Receptive Spanish Vocabulary Test When Controlling for Other Predictors

Parameter Logit T p value Odds Ratio Probability
Intercept 0.737 7.18 0.000 2.090 0.676
item# 0.067 33.88 0.000 2.235 0.691
COSP 0.006 0.66 0.509 2.102 0.678
Spanish Word Frequency 0.208 −0.78 0.434 2.573 0.720
Context −0.293 −4.59 0.000 1.559 0.609
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Note. Item number on the test indicates expected difficulty. COSP refers to score on the Cross-linguistic Overlap Scale for Phonology, (Kohnert, Windsor & Miller, 2004). Context refers to a categorical variable based on whether the item is associated with the home or school context.

Discussion

Key Findings

The current findings substantiate the influential role of cross-linguistic overlap in phonology and environmental context on vocabulary recognition by Spanish-English speaking dual language learners. Cross-linguistic overlap in phonology was a significant predictor of accuracy at the item level. After accounting for item number (expected difficulty level), context of exposure was a significant predictor of children’s likelihood of providing a correct response. Children were more likely to provide correct responses on lexical items presented in Spanish that were associated with the home context. Spanish word frequency was not a significant predictor of children’s accuracy on the Spanish receptive vocabulary test.

The finding that cross-linguistic overlap was a significant predictor of accuracy was consistent with our predictions. This finding substantiates a body of literature implicating the influence of the interplay between languages on bilinguals’ vocabulary responses. This finding further substantiate the need to take into account both languages of bilingual students when selecting assessments and interpreting performance data. The current finding also substantiates the importance of considering cross-linguistic overlap between languages when designing assessments for bilingual students in the United States.

The fact that context (home and school) was a significant predictor of accuracy when expected difficulty level was controlled for was not surprising. In a previous study (Bialystok et al., 2010) the authors reported a significant difference in performance between home and school based vocabulary on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test IV (Dunn & Dunn, 2007) for students from language minority backgrounds. However, other studies have not been able to replicate this finding (e.g. Wood & Peña, 2015). It was hypothesized that words learned in the home environment would be expected to show higher accuracy in the students’ home language (i.e. Spanish in the current study). We offer three plausible explanations for the lack of a significant effect of context without controlling for other variables in the current finding a) indiscernibility of context for lexical item, b) community-wide use of both English and Spanish across contexts, and c) suppression effects of other variables.

The first plausible explanation is that the designation of home and school context may be oversimplified into two categorical variables. Alternatively, the occurrence of items within contexts may be better represented on a continuum of contextual frequency. It seems reasonable to believe that home and school contexts are not mutually exclusive for a number of the words with occurrences likely to occur in both contexts. To adjust for this, we omitted a context assignment on eleven words with indiscernible contexts (e.g. pair, pick); however, there may be additional words that we assigned to a context that actually occur across contexts in children’s environments.

Secondly, it is also plausible that the influence of context is more apparent or amplified in bilinguals from specific linguistic backgrounds that are less overlapping. The participants in the current study were Spanish-English speakers; however, in the study by Bialystock and colleagues, the participants were from various linguistic backgrounds (Bialystok et al., 2010). This explanation assumes that students from other linguistic backgrounds may be more likely to have compartmentalized exposure to their first language only at home and conversely, exposed to English more exclusively at school. In other words, the home and school difference may not to be generalizable to Spanish and English given the community-wide use of Spanish in the locations where the study took place. Although the school instruction was provided in English only, in the United States there is well recognized occurrence of mixing of Spanish and English (i.e. Spanglish) given frequent contact between the languages across environments which would support the notion that home and school context were not completely compartmentalized linguistically for the participants in this study.

The third and final plausible explanation is that context may not have initially been detectable as a predictor due to suppression effects of other variables (e.g. order of items/ expected difficulty). This seems likely given that the home and school items were not evenly distributed across the order of expected difficulty. Instead, higher numbered items were more likely to be school-based words. For example, for the items in the upper half of expected difficulty (i.e. items 37–54), 74% were considered to be related to the school context. The finding that the role of context was only detectable when the other variables were held constant at their mean supports the assumption that the influences on dual language learners’ word recognition are multi-faceted and interplay or suppression exists between multiple predictors.

The finding that Spanish word frequency was not a significant predictor of accuracy was surprising. We hypothesized that word frequency would predict students’ accuracy of word recognition. In previous studies, word frequency is generally reported to be a moderator of item difficulty on English receptive vocabulary tests (Goriot et al., 2018; Wood & Peña, 2015). In other words, rare words are thought to be more difficult for students to recognize. We hypothesized that word frequency would hold true as a predictor of accuracy in the current study as well. One possible explanation for this finding is that students’ rate of exposure or experience with Spanish words in the United States is multifaceted, with additional influencing factors than number of times the Spanish word appears in literature. This explanation proposes that the index of Spanish word frequency does not serve as good proxy for quantifying frequency of occurrence of Spanish words in the United States for Spanish-English speaking students. Although this commonly used index may be a proper basis for quantifying Spanish word frequency for monolinguals in Spanish speaking countries, the word frequency index may not reflect the frequency of linguistic exposure to that item relative to the unique linguistic environment of Spanish-English speaking students in the United States.

Limitations

The findings should be interpreted in light of the fact that the degree of phonological overlap in translation equivalents and home/school contextually based items were not evenly distributed across items on the Spanish receptive vocabulary test. The uneven distribution of cognates and contexts is a notable limitation in the current study examining the effects of these predictors. Some items intended to be early developing and more common or familiar had zero overlap with English and occur in school contexts, while other items designed to be difficult or less familiar had a high degree of phonological overlap with English and/or were found in home contexts. In an attempt to control for this, we included item-level expected difficulty as a predictor in the model. Despite controlling for this effect, we recognize as a limitation the fact that we were unable to sample the effect systematically across different words of varied difficulty level, context (home/school), and Spanish word frequency level.

Other recognized limitations relate to the current sample. The children in the current study represent a narrow age range (students in kindergarten and first grade). It would be interesting to explore the interplay between languages at different ages. It may be that cognate status, lexical frequency, and context have a stronger influence at different ages. Additionally, we only observed the predictors in the current sample of DLLs without directly comparing the influence of the predictors on a monolingual comparison group. Including a monolingual Spanish speaking comparison group in future studies would be beneficial to provide further information about possible effects caused by cross-linguistic overlap in the sample of DLLs.

Implications

Despite limitations, these findings have implications for the selection of measures to describe Spanish receptive vocabulary in Spanish-English speaking children in the United States. Although this study aimed to gain a more nuanced understanding of potential influencing factors on bilinguals’ responses to items on the TVIP, the intent was not to promote reliance on any measure designed for monolinguals but to further the broader goal of gaining knowledge about assessment considerations for assessing semantic knowledge of bilinguals. The results substantiate the need to consider cross-linguistic overlap in addition to context of word exposure when designing vocabulary assessments for children from linguistic minority backgrounds and/or utilizing vocabulary assessments in research and clinical practice. Recognizing potential item level linguistic bias, teachers and educational specialists may give additional consideration to employing the recommendation to triangulate the appraisal of DLLs’ language skills across multiple sources or measures and use caution when interpreting vocabulary assessments, including tests normed on speakers of the students’ native language.

Acknowledgements

The authors are especially grateful to partnering schools, participating families, and support from research assistants. The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A130460 to Florida State University and support by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R15DC013670 granted to Anny Castilla-Earls. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education or National Institutes of Health.

Contributor Information

Carla Wood, Florida State University.

Rachel Hoge, Florida State University.

Chris Schatschneider, Florida State University.

Anny Castilla-Earls, University of Houston.

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