Despite an increasingly interconnected world, Spanish-speaking clinicians who aren’t properly trained in Spanish depend on their bilingualism to serve their diverse clients in a broader cultural humility effort. To promote effective clinical work, the service provider must be proficient in the native language and strive to overcome any cultural differences of the client. The main objective of this research was to explore how bilingual Spanish-English clinicians experience and navigate intercultural competency in clinical practice. In semi-structured interviews, six participants openly shared their experiences as professionals in their field. After initial impressions of recorded transcripts, we engaged in inductive and deductive coding. After patterns and significant statements were identified, they were grouped into key themes, centering the participants’ voices while acknowledging the investigator’s interpretations. These turned into superordinate themes that capture deeper meanings. A narrative summary was created using direct quotes from participants describing their connection to each other. These themes were related to existing psychological theories and research while staying true to the unique perspectives of the participants. Preliminary data analysis has been conducted and is still underway. Following a narrative inquiry approach, themes of trust within the dyad, curiosity of culture, and humanistic approaches have come up. This research’s recommendations for practice are meant to inform improvement for training and supervision of bilingual clinicians.

Infants learn by tracking patterns in their environment. This process, known as statistical learning, is especially important for early language development. There is evidence that different children have different statistical learning abilities; however, the factors driving these individual differences remain understudied. Understanding this key aspect of language learning is important, as it sets the stage for positive outcomes later in childhood, such as reading and math achievement. The current study investigates a novel explanation of individual differences in statistical learning: the responsiveness of an infant’s environment. In our task, we manipulate the responsiveness of infants’ environment based on their experience controlling a computer screen using their eye movements prior to a statistical learning task. For half of the infants, the screen responds to their eye-movements (e.g., when they look at an image of a pond, a duck pops out). The other half cannot control the screen. Next, in the statistical learning task, we measure infants’ ability to anticipate an upcoming word as they gain exposure to predictable adjective-noun pairs (e.g., “little birdie” and “silly piggy”). For example, do they learn that when they hear “little”, “birdie” will come next? We predict that participants who have the opportunity to control the screen will outperform those who cannot control the screen in the subsequent statistical learning task. These results would be the first in the field to suggest that infants' opportunities to engage with a responsive environment are one of the factors underlying individual differences in statistical learning ability.

From early in a child's life, parents modify their speech patterns in response to the infant's gender, even before the child begins to speak (Clearfield & Nelson 2006). Early speech patterns depend on the parent's culture, as culture and language are intrinsically bound (Kuchirko et al., 2020). Acculturation refers to how immigrants and their families adapt and adjust their behaviors, beliefs, and values while integrating to a new culture (Cabrera et al., 2006). Research has suggested that traditional gender roles influence individual interactions (Updegraff et al., 2014). In addition, acculturation has shown to decrease traditional gender roles, as a result of exposure to US culture (Updegraff et al., 2014). The purpose of this study is to examine whether Mexican-American parents communicate differently based on their infant’s gender and whether communication patterns relate to their level of acculturation. Seven-to-twelve-month-old infants and their mothers were recorded at an at-home play session. We analyze how mothers speak to their infants.We predict that mothers will verbalize more to their daughters and use more directive language to their sons. Additionally, the strength of gender differences may differ between more acculturated Mexican-American mothers and less acculturated mothers. Findings may help shed light on differential treatment infants receive through their caregivers affecting their language development.

Previous research supports that high-quality adult-child conversations are beneficial to linguistic development (Røe-Indregård et al., 2022). With emphasis on the quality of conversation in addition to frequency, there is a need to analyze communication between parent-child dyads in everyday contexts, such as free play. Moreover, with the rising number of bilingual families in California, it is valuable to assess the conversations of dual language learners (DLLs) (Rivas, 2024). Understanding how DLLs and their parents use language during play can help parents and educators better support bilingual development. This study examines language use of 43 Spanish-English bilingual parent-child dyads (children aged 3–5) during free-play. The participants, recruited from Head Start programs in Northern California, identified as Mexican-American families. Data was collected in-person from 2019 to early 2020. Conversations between dyads during play (with lab-provided toys) were video-recorded, transcribed, and coded for language use (Spanish, English, mixed) and utterance type (Yont et al., 2003). Preliminary analyses show mothers produced more utterances than children and primarily spoke Spanish. Children were more likely to use a balanced mix of Spanish and English. While mothers guided activities and structured the conversation flow, children actively participated by managing mutual attention, engaging in interactions, and expressing preferences in both languages. These findings offer insight into how bilingual children and caregivers collaboratively construct conversations during play. Understanding bilingual parent-child communication may help inform parenting and teaching strategies that support L2 while preserving L1 and improving bilingual communication.