# Patterns of language switching and bilingual children’s word learning: An experiment across two communities # In this task we are investigating bilingual toddlers’ learning of cross-language synonyms (i.e., translation equivalents) in immediate translated sentences versus single language sentences. 36-to-60-month-old bilingual toddlers’ word learning will be assessed with an online asynchronous experiment. The design uses repeated measures, with condition (Immediate Translation condition vs. One-Language-At-A-Time condition) as within-subjects factor. Children will be taught and tested on four novel word-object pairings; half of the pairings will occur in immediate translated sentences (i.e., Immediate Translation condition) and half will occur in single language sentences (i.e., One-Language-At-A-Time condition). The experiment will be divided in two blocks, blocked by condition with the block order counterbalanced across participants. This task has been preregistered here: https://osf.io/ad7fz ## Design of the experiment This is an online asynchronous task where participants would complete on a tablet. The task was created using jsPsych (de Leeuw, 2015). The effect of language switching was assessed through two language switching conditions, which were counterbalanced and presented in separate blocks. The immediate-translation condition familiarized toddlers with the novel object labels in one language followed immediately by the corresponding labels in the other language (e.g., “*Look, it’s a **blicket***” in English followed by “*Regarde, c’est une **puismenne***” in French); whereas the one-language-at-a-time condition presented the novel object labels in blocks of languages (e.g., “*Regarde, c’est une **puismenne***” was played only after all the English sentences “*Look, it’s a **blicket***” were presented). There are four different test orders (4 orders per site, so there are 8 versions in total): ##### **English-French** - en_ol: "English first, one-language-at-a-time first" condition - en_it: "English first, immediate-translation first" condition - fr_ol: "French first, one-language-at-a-time first" condition - fr_it: "French first, immediate-translation first" condition ##### **English-Spanish** - en_ol: "English first, one-language-at-a-time first" condition - en_it: "English first, immediate-translation first" condition - fr_ol: "Spanish first, one-language-at-a-time first" condition - fr_it: "Spanish first, immediate-translation first" condition ## A demo of the experiment ## Here is a demo of the experiment testing English-French word-learning performance in the "English first, one-language-at-a-time first" condition. [Click here to play the demo](https://rachelkytsui.github.io/demo_Bilingual-Families-Project_TabletSwitch/) (Note that your browser window will go to fullscreen. Click Esc if you would like to leave fullscreen mode). If you just want to watch a video of how the task works, you can click here for a video of the [full demo](https://osf.io/8t9uz/). If you just want to see how each condition works: - Click here for a short video of the [*one-language-at-a-time* condition](https://osf.io/2y3vr/) - Or click here for a short video of the [*immediate translation* condition](https://osf.io/42fvx/) ## Link to the GitHub repository The scripts to create the task and the stimuli used can all be found on our project's Github page here: https://github.com/Bilingual-Families-Project/TabletSwitch