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Exploring the Genetic and Environmental Etiologies of Phonological Awareness, Morphological Awareness, and Vocabulary Among Chinese–English Bilingual Children: The Moderating Role of Second Language Instruction

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Abstract

This study investigated the associations among bilingual phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and vocabulary by focusing on their genetic and environmental etiologies. It also explored the influence of family socio-economic status (SES) and language exposure amount on the genetic and environmental effects. A twin study was conducted with 349 pairs of Chinese–English bilingual twins (mean age = 7.37 years). Cross-language transfer was found in phonological and morphological awareness but not in vocabulary knowledge. A common genetic overlap was found among these bilingual abilities. We also found a common shared environmental effect that may account for the cross-language transfer in phonological awareness and the associations among English abilities. SES and language exposure were significant environmental influences on bilingual phonological awareness and English vocabulary. More teaching in Chinese was related to a stronger genetic effect on Chinese morphological awareness, whereas more teaching in English was related to a stronger environmental impact on English abilities.

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We used SPSS and OpenMx package in R to process and analyze data.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Collaborative Research Fund (Grant number CUHK8/CRF/13G & C4054-17W), and General Research Fund (Grant number 17614517), Research Grants Council, Hong Kong SAR Government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Curriculum and Instruction, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates

    Qiuzhi Xie

  2. Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China

    Mo Zheng & Catherine McBride

  3. Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China

    Connie Suk-Han Ho & Fiona Li Wai Fong

  4. Department of Language and Cognition, University College London, London, UK

    Simpson W. L. Wong & Bonnie Wing-Yin Chow

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  1. Qiuzhi Xie
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  5. Fiona Li Wai Fong
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  6. Simpson W. L. Wong
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Contributions

QX conducted data analyses, wrote and revise the entire paper. MZ managed data collection and contributed to data analysis, result interpretation, and editing of the manuscript. CS-HH and CM supervised the project and revised the paper. FLWF helped with data collection and drafted the section of Measures. SWLW and BW-YC contributed to the design of the overall project and suggested revisions on this paper.

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Correspondence to Catherine McBride.

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Conflict of interest

Qiuzhi Xie, Mo Zheng, Connie S.-H. Ho, Catherine McBride, Fiona L.W. Fong, Simpson W. L. Wong, and Bonnie Wing-Yin Chow declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Xie, Q., Zheng, M., Ho, C.SH. et al. Exploring the Genetic and Environmental Etiologies of Phonological Awareness, Morphological Awareness, and Vocabulary Among Chinese–English Bilingual Children: The Moderating Role of Second Language Instruction. Behav Genet 52, 108–122 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-021-10096-2

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