The objectives of this study were twofold: (1) Determine the English proficiency of English second-language learners (ELLs) at the end of preschool as referenced to monolingual norms, and in particular, to determine if they showed an asynchronous profile, that is, approached monolingual norms more closely for some linguistic sub-skills than…

This study examined the social functioning of bistrategic youths (i.e., those who employ both aggressive and prosocial behavior) in order to further understand their social competence in peer social networks. Within our sample of 318 fifth-grade participants recruited from an urban school district in the northeastern US, bistrategic preadolescents…

Translation equivalents (TEs) characterize the lexicon of bilinguals from the early stages of acquisition, as reported in studies involving English and other languages in which most cross-language synonyms are dissimilar in phonological form. This research explores the emergence of TEs in Spanish-Catalan bilinguals who are acquiring two languages…

This cross-sectional study investigated the bilingual lexical skills of 175 US school-age children (5 to 18 years old) with Cantonese, Mandarin, or Korean as their heritage language (HL), and English as their dominant language. Primary study goals were to identify potential patterns of development in bilingual lexical skills over the elementary to…

The articles in this special issue provide a complex picture of acquisition in bilinguals in which the factors that contribute to patterns of performance in bilingual children's two languages are myriad and diverse. The processes and contours of development in bilingual children are influenced, not only by the quantity, quality, and contexts…

Growth modeling was applied to monolingual (N = 26) and bilingual (N = 28) word learning from 14 to 36 months. Level and growth rate of vocabulary were lower for Finnish-Russian bilinguals than for Finnish monolinguals. Processing of Finnish speech sounds at 7 but not at 11 months predicted level, but not growth rate of vocabulary in both Finnish…

Previous research indicates that monolingual infants have difficulty learning minimal pairs (i.e., words differing by one phoneme) produced by a speaker uncharacteristic of their language environment and that bilinguals might share this difficulty. To clearly reveal infants' underlying phonological representations, we minimized task demands…

Relations between bilingual children's patterns of conversational code-switching (responding to one language with another), the balance of their dual language input, and their expressive and receptive proficiency in two languages were examined in 115 2½-year-old simultaneous Spanish-English bilinguals in the U.S. Children were more likely to…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a pilot school-based intervention called CEPIDEA, designed to promote prosocial behavior in early adolescence. The study took place in a middle school located in a small city near Rome. The intervention group included 151 students (52.3% males; M[subscript age] = 12.4), and the control group…

We examine the performance of planned missing (PM) designs for correlated latent growth curve models. Using simulated data from a model where latent growth curves are fitted to two constructs over five time points, we apply three kinds of planned missingness. The first is item-level planned missingness using a three-form design at each wave such…

We present a new paradigm that allows simplified testing of multiparameter hypotheses in the presence of incomplete data. The proposed technique is a straight-forward procedure that combines the benefits of two powerful data analytic tools: multiple imputation and nested-model ?2 difference testing. A Monte Carlo simulation study was conducted to…

Planned missing data designs allow researchers to increase the amount and quality of data collected in a single study. Unfortunately, the effect of planned missing data designs on power is not straightforward. Under certain conditions using a planned missing design will increase power, whereas in other situations using a planned missing design…

Planned missing designs are becoming increasingly popular, but because there is no consensus on how to implement them in longitudinal research, we simulated longitudinal data to distinguish between strategies of assigning items to forms and of assigning forms to participants across measurement occasions. Using relative efficiency as the criterion,…

Utilizing planned missing data (PMD) designs (ex. 3-form surveys) enables researchers to ask participants fewer questions during the data collection process. An important question, however, is just how few participants are needed to effectively employ planned missing data designs in research studies. This article explores this question by using…

We examine longitudinal extensions of the two-method measurement design, which uses planned missingness to optimize cost-efficiency and validity of hard-to-measure constructs. These designs use a combination of two measures: a "gold standard" that is highly valid but expensive to administer, and an inexpensive (e.g., survey-based)…