Wat is de relatie tussen het verbaal werkgeheugen en de Nederlandse receptieve woordenschat bij kinderen tussen de 5 en 6 jaar en wordt deze relatie gemodereerd door meertaligheid?

Abstract

Language growth of bilingual children develops slower than that of monolingual children. Because of that, bilingual children start with language impairments at primary school. The receptive vocabulary and the verbal working memory are important factors for further school performances of children. In the current research, the following question was examined: ‘What is the relationship between verbal working memory and Dutch receptive vocabulary of children aged between 5 and 6, and is this relationship moderated by multilingualism?’ The relationship between verbal working memory and Dutch receptive vocabulary was investigated for mono- and bilingual children individually. In the current research participated 53 monolingual children and 80 bilingual children between the age of 5 and 6 (n = 133). The Diagnostic Test of Bilingualism (DTT) was used to measure the Dutch receptive vocabulary and the Listening Recall measured the verbal working memory. An ANCOVA analysis with interaction effect found no moderation effect of multilingualism on the relationship between verbal working memory and Dutch receptive vocabulary. The simple regression analysis detected that verbal working memory was a significant predictor of the Dutch receptive vocabulary of bilingual children. No significant relationship was found for monolingual children. The results are difficult to generalize to the current population because of the small sample size and the fact that this research did not control for intelligence. Further research to the relationship between verbal working memory and receptive vocabulary with a larger sample size or a longitudinal study with interventions for an experimental group is recommended, as the effect of this relationship may result in better school performances of mono- and bilingual children.