Without a competing language, bilingual preschoolers show no preference between English-only and Mandarin-only books during silent reading¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causalr1·q3·i0negligible
Currency · newest study 2019 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q3 i? In Study 2, silent reading of single-language books showed no significant effect of Book Type after controlling for reading-ability differences, F(1, 32) = .19, p = .67, partial η2 = .006; equivalence was not explicitly tested. → Yow 2019
Evidence¶
Yow 2019¶
Yow, W. Q., & Priyashri, S. (2019). Computerized Electronic Features Direct Children's Attention to Print in Single- and Dual-Language e-Books. AERA Open. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858419878126
q3 · i0 · causal · r1
Study 2 null result: an ANCOVA controlling for ReadDiff found a "non-significant effect of Book Type" for silent single-language reading, suggesting the English bias in dual-language books arises from within-page language competition rather than a general language preference.
"A repeated-measures ANCOV A revealed a non- significant effect of Book Type (silent reading English book vs. silent reading Mandarin book) after controlling for ReadDiff, F (1, 32) = .19, p = .67, partial η 2 = .006. This suggests that without a competing language within the same page, children spent comparable amount of time reading text from an English-only book and text from a Mandarin-only book."
Discussion¶
Learner Variables¶
- Reading and Language — predictor: learners who differ on it differ in outcomes
Related Claims¶
- Teaching students in a language they understand benefits both language learning and broader learning — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it
- Multimedia features improved story comprehension in dual-language e-books (marginal trend) but not in single-language e-books — related
- Bilingual preschoolers silently reading dual-language e-books attend more to their dominant language (English) than the nondominant language (Mandarin) — related
- Multimedia enhancing features increase attention to print in single-language e-books in both English and Mandarin — related
- Audio narration with finger-tracking animation directs bilingual preschoolers' attention to the target-language print in dual-language e-books, including the nondominant language — related
- The attention-guiding effect of narration-plus-animation is phase-dependent: target-language attention drops significantly after the animation ends — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
no-language-preference-single-language-silent-reading |
title |
Without a competing language, bilingual preschoolers show no preference between English-only and Mandarin-only books during silent reading |
description |
Without a competing language, bilingual preschoolers show no preference between English-only and Mandarin-only books during silent reading |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2019 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-09-26 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — yow-2019 |
Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.