The Role of Maternal Language Input and Cultural Orientation in Mexican-American Children’s Spanish-English Language Development

Young children reared in a dual language environment typically experience and learn a heritage and societal language and culture from their caregivers. Given that culture and language use are strongly intertwined, recent research has begun to explore caregiver cultural orientation as a potential influence on children’s dual language development but currently disregards whether cultural orientation influences language development directly and indirectly through caregiver language input. This longitudinal study examines a sample of Mexican-American mothers and their children (N=299) from low-income households to examine 1) how maternal language input at child age 24 months and children’s dual language knowledge at 36 months are associated; and 2) whether maternal language input mediates the link between maternal cultural orientation at child age 9 months and children’s dual language knowledge. Results showed that mothers’ quantitative and qualitative language features were strongly correlated within a language and were positively linked with children’s knowledge in the corresponding language. The path analysis revealed that maternal Anglo cultural orientation indirectly predicted children’s English vocabulary scores mediated by maternal English language input, whereas Spanish language input did not mediate the link between mothers’ Mexican cultural orientation and children’s Spanish knowledge. This study provides novel insights into the cascading effects of infants’ early cultural and language environments on their emerging dual language skills.