Disfluency Characteristics in Preschool Bilingual Children

Lee, Soo-bok; Sim, Hyun Sub; Shin, Moon-Ja

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2007;12(2): 296-316.

Soo-bok Lee^` , Hyun Sub Sim^` , and Moon-Ja Shin^`

이수복(Soo-bok Lee)| 심현섭(Hyun Sub Sim)| 신문자(Moon-Ja Shin)

ABSTRACT

Background & Purpose
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the characteristics of disfluency between Korean-English bilingual and Korean monolingual children.
Methods
Twenty-eight children (14 bilinguals, 14 monolinguals with the same chronological age[CA]) participated in this study. The experimental tasks consisted of play situation and task situation. Statistical methods of one-way ANOVA and repeated two-way ANOVA were adopted to test differences between the bilinguals and the monolinguals, and Mann-Whitney was adopted to test differences between the Korean-dominant and the English-dominant bilinguals.
Results
Firstly, the scores of total disfluency and normal disfluency of the bilinguals were significantly higher than those of the monolinguals. The most frequent type of disfluencies was interjection in both groups. All showed higher score in the task situation than the play situation. Secondly, the bilinguals showed more disfluencies in their non-dominant language. Thirdly, lower CA, younger exposure age to the second language, and lower scores of expressive language test had negative effects on the occurrence rate of disfluency.
Discussion & Conclusion
Bilingual and monolingual children were quantitatively and qualitatively different each other in scores and types of disfluency. The disfluency observed in non-dominant language of the bilinguals indicates that language ability influences on their disfluencies and that language proficiency of bilingual is an important factor in dysfluent speech.