Reading is one of the most important skills learned in early childhood. Unfortunately, bilingual learners in the US often fail to meet national standards in reading achievement (Hemphill, 2011). This proposal seeks to understand how bilingualism affects child literacy to advance science and inform individualized approaches to reading instruction and precision treatment of dyslexia for the growing numbers of young US bilinguals. The parent grants? primary objective is to explain the effects of bilingualism on children?s neural architecture for learning to read. The candidate complements this objective by targeting the mechanisms by which parental cultural socialization influences bilinguals? dual language proficiency. Parental cultural socialization is a mechanism through which parents transmit information about heritage language and traditions (Hughes et. al, 2006). The candidate?s project thus advances the Unified Theory of Development (Sameroff, 2010) suggesting that social, cognitive, and biological factors jointly influence child development. Critically, by informing the parent grant on how bilingual children?s socio-cultural environment influences their dual language proficiency, the trainee?s research offers a theory-based improvement in parent grant?s precision in determining the sources of variation in bilingual children?s language proficiency and its impact on learning to read in English. The candidate will use behavioral and functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) neuroimaging language and literacy measures of the parent grant, testing 50 Spanish-English bilinguals ages 6?9. To achieve her objectives, the candidate will complement the parent grants? measures by asking the parents to complete parental cultural socialization questionnaires. The candidate?s Aim is to determine the impact of parental cultural socialization on bilingual children?s literacy. This compliments the parental grant and will provide rich information to inform theory, education, and clinical approaches for bilingual and minority language learners. The candidate?s overarching training goal is to gain expertise in studying the role of socio-cultural and neuro- cognitive diversity, as well as the minority status, on children?s academic success. The mentorship plan that includes (1) multicultural context of the parent grant (Latino & Asian bilinguals), (2) interdisciplinary mentorship team of experts in psychology, bilingualism, neuroscience, and biostatistics and (3) select classes/workshops will offer the candidate a unique training opportunity to become a skilled expert who can effectively bridge theory and methods across disciplines and cultural contexts to understand how social, cognitive, and biological factors jointly influence academic success in young minority learners.
The percent of bilingual learners in the US is expected to rise to 25% by 2030; Spanish is the second most common language in the US, followed by Chinese. The aims of this proposal are to identify cognitive mechanisms that support bilingual reading acquisition in Spanish- and Chinese-English bilinguals, to help optimize bilingual children's chances at successful reading acquisition, as well as early identification and targeted remediation of bilingual children at risk for reading impairments.
