The extent to which a language is valued also has an effect on language acquisition in bilingual children. Languages that are deemed more useful or more important will dominate the bilingual mental lexicon while the less valued ones will not be acquired as fully. Studies have shown that children showed slower receptive vocabulary development in what they termed the 'minority' language while the children showed monolingual-like development in the 'majority' language. This has been attributed to the lack of opportunities bilinguals had available for the acquisition and development of their 'minority' language.