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

To investigate how children organise their vocabularies, we can analysethe errors they make when unable to retrieve a word. Analysis ofnaming errors has not been sufficiently explored in the first language (L1) of bilingual children. We employed a picture naming task toinvestigate the types of errors made by 142 bilingual and 119monolingual children aged 3-7 years. Children named actions andobjects in their L1 (Polish). We categorised children’s naming errors intofour categories: semantic errors, non-semantic errors, omissions, andlanguage-switch errors. We compared the proportions of responses ineach error category between the groups, and investigated how input ineach language, child’s age, and naming accuracy contributed to theseproportions among bilinguals. Although bilinguals made more namingerrors and displayed a higher proportion of omissions thanmonolinguals, the proportion of semantic errors was the same in bothgroups. Regression analyses indicated that naming accuracy predictedthe proportion of semantic errors, while the child’s age and input in L2predicted the proportion of omissions. These results suggest that youngbilinguals can rely on the available L1 semantic connections in theirmental lexicon similarly to monolinguals and indicate possible factorsbehind the error patterns.