| Sumario: | This study explores how bilingual (Spanish/English) and monolingual (English) children, between the ages of 4 and 6, perform speech perception and auditory tasks. Understanding these differences is important because speech perception underlies literacy, classroom learning, and everyday communication. Participants included 59 children, divided into monolinguals, proficient bilinguals, and emergent bilinguals. The children were tested using tasks that required them to identify specific words from a group of similar-sounding words. The analysis included how well the children differentiated sounds in three different listening conditions: Quiet, Cafeteria Noise, and Competing Story. The results revealed no significant differences between bilingual and monolingual children's ability to distinguish sounds, regardless of the listening environment. However, descriptive data revealed that performance was higher in the Quiet condition and lowest in the Cafeteria Noise condition. These findings suggest that bilingual children are just as capable as their monolingual peers in processing sounds. The study highlights the importance of understanding how speech perception skills apply in different environments. This is encouraging because it shows that bilingualism does not affect the discrimination of sounds, even in noisy environments, and may instead reflect flexible listening strategies.
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