Unpacking the richness of language experience as a predictor of bilingual children’s language proficiency

Unsworth, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0946-2362, Gusnanto, A., Kašćelan, D., Prévost, P., Serratrice, L. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5141-6186, Tuller, L. and De Cat, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0044-0527 (2025) Unpacking the richness of language experience as a predictor of bilingual children’s language proficiency. Journal of Child Language. ISSN 1469-7602 doi: 10.1017/s0305000925100305

Abstract/Summary

The richness of bilingual children’s language experience is typically expressed as a composite score using parental questionnaire data. This study unpacks the concept of input richness by examining one such composite score (Q-BEx) to determine whether it reliably predicts children’s language abilities, is no more complex than required, and as user-friendly as possible. Data were collected from 173 bilingual children aged 5 to 8 across three countries (France, Netherlands, UK) with various heritage languages in each. Parents completed the Q-BEx questionnaire and children proficiency tasks in their societal language. We analysed the predictive power of the original score compared to several alternative scoring approaches. Results showed (i) these alternatives were not more informative, (ii) scores including qualitative aspects of richness fared better than those with only quantitative variables, (iii) the latent variables underlying richness were comparable across languages, and (iv) whether parental education was included made little difference.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/127223
Identification Number/DOI	10.1017/s0305000925100305
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Clinical Language Sciences
Publisher	Cambridge University Press (CUP)
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