This study examines the influence of language environment on language and reading skills and the cross-linguistic contributions to reading outcomes in 132 Spanish-English bilingual children ages 7-12 (52% female; 98% Hispanic). We present three major findings: children's language knowledge is separable into general (e.g., phonological awareness)…

This study investigates the cross-linguistic transfer of literacy skills in Spanish-English, Chinese-English bilingual, and English monolingual children (N = 283, 5-10 years). Research question 1 examines English literacy and asks how phonological and morpho-semantic skills contribute to word reading as a function of children's language…

How do early bilingual experiences influence children's neural architecture for word processing? Dual language acquisition can yield common influences that may be shared across different bilingual groups, as well as language-specific influences stemming from a given language pairing. To investigate these effects, we examined bilingual English…

Bilingualism is a typical linguistic experience, yet relatively little is known about its impact on children's cognitive and brain development. Theories of bilingualism suggest that early dual-language acquisition can improve children's cognitive abilities, specifically those relying on frontal lobe functioning. While behavioral findings present…