Creciendo juntos: Cultural Pathways in Mexican-Origin Childrens Spanish and English Oral Language Development in Early Childhood

Abstract

This dissertation helps elucidate the cultural pathways linked to Latinx children’s early Spanish and English oral language development and contributes to the field’s understanding of within-group variability in bilingual trajectories through two longitudinal studies focused on the bilingual development of Mexican-origin children and the formative role of mothers’ cultural characteristics. Prior research shows that maintenance of Spanish, the heritage or home language of 75% of U.S. Latinx children and adolescents, is associated with their positive psychosocial development and academic achievement. Furthermore, a solid foundation in oral language skills in early childhood contributes to their literacy and overall academic success. Use of Spanish in the home by parents/caregivers has been studied in relation to Latinx children’s oral language skills in Spanish, yet relatively little is known about the cultural factors that shape these skills in the early years of their development. Although studies examining the language trajectories of young Latinx children in the U.S. have been increasing, longitudinal examinations of their bilingual trajectories, particularly across ages 3-5 years, remain scant. Surprisingly, minimal attention has been paid to the bilingual development of Mexican-origin young children, even though Mexican-heritage individuals constitute the largest Latinx subgroup in the U.S. Using a longitudinal dataset and observation-based measures of the language interactions of 166 Mexican-origin mothers and their young children, the first study analyzes mothers’ involvement with the Mexican culture at child age 3, their cultural socialization practices and Spanish language use with their young children at child age 4, and the direct and indirect associations of these cultural factors with children’s oral language production in Spanish at age 5. Results show that Mexican-origin mothers’ involvement in their heritage culture positively predicts their young children’s oral language production in Spanish, even after controlling for their use of the Spanish language and efforts to socialize their young children to the Mexican culture. Mothers’ use of Spanish serves as one pathway through which their involvement in their heritage culture contributes to their young children’s Spanish language skills. The second study examines the growth trajectories of 130 Mexican-origin children’s and mothers’ Spanish and English productive vocabulary across child ages 3 -5 years and investigates their association with children’s receptive vocabulary knowledge within and across each language at age 5. Results underscore the vital contributions of mothers’ productive vocabulary in supporting young children’s Spanish and English language development and highlight the importance of young children’s own vocabulary production in mother-child interactions. Findings from these two studies add to the surprisingly small but emerging body of research conducted with young Mexican-origin children that examines their bilingual trajectories in the early years and the critical role of mothers’ cultural and linguistic assets in this development.