Generative naming in Vietnamese-English bilingual speakers

This study examined generative naming in Vietnamese-English bilingual adults with three specific objectives: 1) to compare the total number of items generated by Vietnamese-English bilingual speakers in each language in the categories of food, clothes, and animals, 2) to examine the relationship between language proficiency and the participants' performance on the generative naming tasks, and 3) to evaluate the effect of language proficiency levels on the total number of overlapped items named in each category and across categories. Thirty Vietnamese-English bilingual adult speakers named as many items as possible in Vietnamese and English in three categories (food, clothes, and animals) given 60 seconds per category. Results indicated that the participants generated significantly more items in English than in Vietnamese for all categories. Findings suggested that the language used affected the performance in the category of clothes, but not in the categories of food and animals. No category effects on the total number of items generated in English and Vietnamese were found, suggesting that the participants named a similar number of items across all categories in each language. Data analysis did not reveal significant correlations between language proficiency ratings and participants' performances on category fluency tasks. Future studies may consider using more sensitive language proficiency measures for bilingual speakers.