Searching for words: picture naming errors and contributing factors in bilingual and monolingual children aged 3–7 years

Abstract

To investigate how children organise their vocabularies, we can analyse the errors they make when unable to retrieve a word. Analysis of naming errors has not been sufficiently explored in the first language (L1) of bilingual children. We employed a picture naming task to investigate the types of errors made by 142 bilingual and 119 monolingual children aged 3–7 years. Children named actions and objects in their L1 (Polish). We categorised children’s naming errors into four categories: semantic errors, non-semantic errors, omissions, and language-switch errors. We compared the proportions of responses in each error category between the groups, and investigated how input in each language, child’s age, and naming accuracy contributed to these proportions among bilinguals. Although bilinguals made more naming errors and displayed a higher proportion of omissions than monolinguals, the proportion of semantic errors was the same in both groups. Regression analyses indicated that naming accuracy predicted the proportion of semantic errors, while the child’s age and input in L2 predicted the proportion of omissions. These results suggest that young bilinguals can rely on the available L1 semantic connections in their mental lexicon similarly to monolinguals and indicate possible factors behind the error patterns.