Differences in iq and Memory of Monolingual/Bilingual Children who Suffered a tbi

Bilingualism in the United States 
The United States is an ever-growing country full of multicultural individuals and 
communities. Mindt et al. (2008) reports that one-third of the U.S. population is part of a 
racial/ethnic minority group. Furthermore, it is expected that racial/ethnic minority 
groups will climb to about one-half of the U.S. population in 2050 (U.S. Census Bureau, 
2002).
As people from other countries continue to come to the U.S. in hopes of finding 
and fulfilling the American dream, this country’s bilingual population continues to 
increase. Whether an individual learns a second language because they recently 
immigrated to the U.S. and need to communicate in a new country, or if an individual has 
monolingual parents that speak a language other than English, bilingualism is constantly 
increasing within the United States.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2007) at the time of the 2000 U.S. Census, 
18% of individuals in the U.S. spoke a language other than English at home. More than 
25% of the population in seven states speaks a language other than English at home. In 
California, 39% of the state’s population reports speaking another language at home 
(U.S. Census Bureau, 2007). It is expected that a greater portion of U.S. residents will 

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speak a non-English language by the time the 2010 U.S. Census is completed (U.S. 
Census Bureau, 2007). Of these non-English languages, Spanish is the most common 
language spoken in the United States, with 28 million U.S. residents speaking it (U.S. 
Census Bureau, 2007).
Latinos are an important group to study because, as of 2006, they continue to be 
the largest ethnic/racial minority group in the United States. Latinos comprise 15% of 
the U.S. population, which equates to 44.3 million Hispanics living in the U.S. (Owens, 
2006). Between 2000 and 2006, Hispanics accounted for more than one half of the 
nation’s population growth and their growth rate of 24.3% was more than triple that of 
the U.S. growth rate of 6.1% (Owens, 2006). As of 2006, in California alone there were 
13,074,156 Hispanics living in the state (Owens, 2006). Between 2000 and 2006 in 
California alone, there was a 2 million-person increase in the Hispanic population 
(Owens, 2006). In 2005, it was shown that the U.S. had the third largest Latino 
population in the world following Mexico and Colombia (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007). 
Seventy-eight percent of the U.S. Latino population (ages 5 and older) reports speaking 
Spanish in the home (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000). These statistics speak to the large 
prevalence of bilingualism, particularly Spanish-English bilingualism, in the United 
States and within California, specifically.