A Comparative Study of Shifting Ability,Inhibitory Control and Working Memory in Monolingual and Bilingual Children

It is now well documented that the linguistic development of bilingual children is, in many respects, different from that of their monolingual peers. Yet, there is substantial evidence in cognitive psychology that the effect of bilingualism is not merely restricted to the linguistic competence of individuals. Recent literature on bilingualism suggests that certain aspects of children’s cognitive development can be positively affected by the bilingual experience. The aim of the present study was to investigate the potential effects of bilingual experience on young children’s executive processing. A total of 67 preschool children belonging to two groups including 36 Persian–Turkish bilingual children and 31 Persian monolingual children participated in the study. They were matched for their verbal proficiency and then were compared on three executive function tasks including shifting ability, inhibitory control and working memory. Results showed that bilingual children outperformed monolinguals on both shifting and inhibitory control tasks. However, both groups performed similarly on working memory tasks. The findings are interpreted in terms of the enhanced ability of bilingual children in various executive functions processing.     

Independent effects of bilingualism and socioeconomic status on language ability and executive functioning

One hundred and seventy-five children who were 6-years old were assigned to one of four groups that differed in socioeconomic status (SES; working class or middle class) and language background (monolingual or bilingual). The children completed tests of nonverbal intelligence, language tests assessing receptive vocabulary and attention based on picture naming, and two tests of executive functioning. All children performed equivalently on the basic intelligence tests, but performance on the language and executive functioning tasks was influenced by both SES and bilingualism. Middle-class children outperformed working-class children on all measures, and bilingual children obtained lower scores than monolingual children on language tests but higher scores than monolingual children on the executive functioning tasks. There were no interactions with either group factors or task factors. Thus, each of SES and bilingualism contribute significantly and independently to children’s development irrespective of the child’s level on the other factor.     

Language and cognitive shifting: evidence from young monolingual and bilingual children

The relationship between language and cognitive shifting in young children was examined. Specifically, second language experiences from infancy as well as individual differences in monolingual language experience may affect performances on the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task. 54 Japanese-French bilingual children and two groups of Japanese monolingual children participated (ns = 18). One monolingual group was matched to the bilingual group on verbal ability and chronological age (VC monolingual group) and the other group was matched by chronological age but had higher verbal ability (C monolingual group). The results showed that the groups of children who were bilingual and monolingual with higher verbal ability performed the task significantly better than matched monolingual children. Language experiences may affect cognitive set shifting in young children.     

Links between theory of mind and executive function in young children with autism: clues to developmental primacy

There has been much theoretical discussion of a functional link between theory of mind (ToM) and executive function (EF) in autism. This study sought to establish the relationship between ToM and EF in young children with autism (M = 5 years, 6 months) and to examine issues of developmental primacy. Thirty children with autism and 40 typically developing children, matched on age and ability, were assessed on a battery of tasks measuring ToM (1st- and 2nd-order false belief) and components of EF (planning, set shifting, inhibition). A significant correlation emerged between ToM and EF variables in the autism group, independent of age and ability, while ToM and higher order planning ability remained significantly related in the comparison group. Examination of the pattern of ToM-EF impairments in the autism group revealed dissociations in 1 direction only: impaired ToM with intact EF. These findings support the view that EF may be 1 important factor in the advancement of ToM understanding in autism. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Executive function and theory of mind: Predictive relations from ages 2 to 4

Despite robust associations between children's theory of mind (ToM) and executive function (EF) skills, longitudinal studies examining this association remain scarce. In a socially diverse sample of 122 children (seen at ages 2, 3, and 4), this study examined (a) developmental stability of associations between ToM, EF, verbal ability, and social disadvantage; (b) continuity and change in ToM and EF; and (c) predictive relations between ToM and EF. Verbal ability and social disadvantage independently predicted changes in EF (but not ToM). Task scores improved with age and showed stable individual differences. The authors examined predictive relations between ToM and EF using partial correlations (controlling for age and verbal ability) and hierarchical regressions (that also controlled for social disadvantage and initial ToM and EF). The findings provide only partial support for the view that ToM is a prerequisite for EF but stronger support for the proposal that EF facilitates children's performance on ToM tasks.     

Word Mapping and Executive Functioning in Young Monolingual and Bilingual Children

The effect of bilingualism on the cognitive skills of young children was investigated by comparing performance of 162 children who belonged to one of two age groups (approximately 3- and 4.5-year-olds) and one of three language groups on a series of tasks examining executive control and word mapping. The children were monolingual English speakers, monolingual French speakers, or bilinguals who spoke English and one of a large number of other languages. Monolinguals obtained higher scores than bilinguals on a receptive vocabulary test and were more likely to demonstrate the mutual exclusivity constraint, especially at the younger ages. However, bilinguals obtained higher scores than both groups of monolinguals on three tests of executive functioning: Luria's tapping task measuring response inhibition, the opposite worlds task requiring children to assign incongruent labels to a sequence of animal pictures, and reverse categorization in which children needed to reclassify a set of objects into incongruent categories after an initial classification. There were no differences between the groups in the attentional networks flanker task requiring executive control to ignore a misleading cue. This evidence for a bilingual advantage in aspects of executive functioning at an earlier age than previously reported is discussed in terms of the possibility that bilingual language production may not be the only source of these developmental effects.     

The Role of Bilingualism in Creative Performance on Divergent Thinking and Invented Alien Creatures Tests

This study continues the effort to investigate the possible influence of bilingualism on an individual's creative potential. The performances of Farsi‐English bilinguals living in the UAE and Farsi monolinguals living in Iran were compared on the Culture Fair Intelligence Test battery and two creativity tests: divergent thinking test (the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults) and structured imagination test (Invented Alien Creatures task). The findings of the divergent thinking test revealed that bilingualism facilitates the innovative capacity, the ability to extract novel and unique ideas, but not the generative capacity, the ability to generate and process a large number of unrelated ideas. The findings of the test of structured imagination demonstrated that bilingualism strengthens an ability to violate a standard set of category properties. In addition, the study hints at the construct validity of these two tests of creative functioning. However, the study acknowledges its rather exploratory character as the bilingual and monolingual groups might differ in a number of uncontrolled sociocultural factors that could potentially mediate the effect of bilingualism.     

Syntactic awareness in young monolingual and bilingual (Urdu–English) children

In two experiments, bilingual (Urdu and English) 5- and 6-year-old children outperformed their monolingual (English) peers when asked to detect grammatically incorrect sentences on a syntactic awareness test. This result occurred when children were tested in English (Experiment 1) and when they were tested in English or in Urdu (Experiment 2). Bilingual children aged 3 and 4 were better at detecting grammatically incorrect sentences than their monolingual peers, but only when tested in Urdu. However, no significant differences appeared in monolingual and bilingual children's ability to detect grammatically correct sentences, suggesting that both grammatically correct and incorrect sentences should be used to obtain an accurate measure of syntactic awareness. The issue of whether it is bilingualism or the properties of a language that affect syntactic awareness is considered.     

Monolingual and bilingual children's social preferences for monolingual and bilingual speakers

Past research has shown that young monolingual children exhibit language‐based social biases: they prefer native language to foreign language speakers. The current research investigated how children's language preferences are influenced by their own bilingualism and by a speaker's bilingualism. Monolingual and bilingual 4‐ to 6‐year‐olds heard pairs of adults (a monolingual and a bilingual, or two monolinguals) and chose the person with whom they wanted to be friends. Whether they were from a largely monolingual or a largely bilingual community, monolingual children preferred monolingual to bilingual speakers, and native language to foreign language speakers. In contrast, bilingual children showed similar affiliation with monolingual and bilingual speakers, as well as for monolingual speakers using their dominant versus non‐dominant language. Exploratory analyses showed that individual bilinguals displayed idiosyncratic patterns of preference. These results reveal that language‐based preferences emerge from a complex interaction of factors, including preference for in‐group members, avoidance of out‐group members, and characteristics of the child as they relate to the status of the languages within the community. Moreover, these results have implications for bilingual children's social acceptance by their peers.     

Developmental associations between bilingual experience and inhibitory control trajectories in Head Start children

Children from lower socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds tend to be at‐risk for executive function (EF) impairments by the time they are in preschool, placing them at an early disadvantage for academic success. The present study examined the potentially protective role of bilingual experience on the development of inhibitory control (IC) in 1146 Head Start preschoolers who were followed for an 18‐month period during the transition to kindergarten as part of the longitudinal Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) 2009 study. Using three waves of data, we predicted individual variation in developmental trajectories of IC for three groups that differed in bilingual experience—English monolinguals, Spanish‐English bilinguals, and a group of children who transitioned from being Spanish monolingual to Spanish‐English bilinguals during the course of the study. Compared to their English monolingual peers, bilingual children from Spanish‐speaking homes showed higher IC performance at Head Start entry, as well as steeper IC growth over time. Children who were Spanish monolingual at the beginning of Head Start showed the lowest IC performance at baseline. However, their rate of IC growth exceeded that of children who remained English monolingual and did not differ from that of their peers who entered Head Start being bilingual. These results suggest that acquiring bilingualism and continued bilingual experience are associated with more rapid IC development during the transition from preschool to kindergarten in children from lower SES backgrounds.     

Executive Functions and Theory-of-Mind Among Deaf Children: Different Routes to Understanding Other Minds?

The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of executive functions (EF) in theory-of-mind (ToM) performance in deaf children and adolescents. Four groups of deaf children aged 7–16 years, with different language backgrounds at home and at school, that is, bilingually instructed native signers, oralist-instructed native signers, and two groups of bilingually instructed late signers from Sweden and Estonia, respectively, were given eight ToM and four EF measures. The bilingually instructed native signers performed at a significantly higher level on the ToM measures than the other groups of deaf children. On the EF measures, there were no significant differences found between any of the groups, with one exception—the Swedish bilingual late signers had a significantly shorter average reaction time on the go-no-go inhibition task than the oralist native signers and the Estonian bilingual late signers. However, the Swedish children's better EF performance was not mirrored in better performance on ToM tasks. Our results indicate that despite all deaf children's good general cognitive abilities, there were still differences in their performance on ToM tasks that need to be explained in other terms. Thus, whatever the cause of late signers' difficulties with ToM, poor EF-skills seem to be of minor importance.     

To what extent does bilingualism affect children's performance on the NEPSY?

Twenty-seven monolingual and 27 bilingual children aged between 6 and 7 years were assessed using the core subtests of the NEPSY, a children's neuropsychological assessment. Bilingual children scored lower than monolingual children in the Language domain and their performance was comparable with the monolingual children in the domains of Attention/Executive Functioning, Sensorimotor, Visuospatial, and Memory. The NEPSY correlates well with measures of academic achievement. It is concluded that the NEPSY is relatively insensitive to cultural factors and appears to be insensitive to bilingualism in the neuropsychological assessment of bilingual children in the United Kingdom.     

Influence of bilingualism on memory generalization during infancy

Very few studies have examined the cognitive advantages of bilingualism during the first two years of development, and a majority of the studies examining bilingualism throughout the lifespan have focused on the relationship between multiple languages and cognitive control. Early experience with multiple language systems may influence domain‐general processes, such as memory, that may increase a bilingual child’s capacity for learning. In the current study, we found that bilingual, but not monolingual, infants were able to generalize across cues at 18 months. This is the first study to show a clear bilingual advantage in memory generalization, with more equal or balanced exposure to each language significantly predicting ability to generalize. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31QsMqYtGGo&feature=plcp     

幼儿执行功能的发展对心理理论发展的影响*

采用追踪研究设计,探讨儿童3至5岁成长过程中,执行功能与心理理论发展间的预测关系。以155名3岁、4岁儿童为被试,采用经典实验任务对儿童的执行功能和心理理论进行间隔1年的追踪测查,并运用分层回归分析检验了二者间的预测关系。结果发现：儿童执行功能、心理理论在3至5岁期间均有显著的发展,且在此期间执行功能、心理理论的个体差异相对稳定;儿童在3岁、4岁时执行功能与心理理论呈显著正相关,但在5岁时二者间相关不显著;儿童3岁时的执行功能能够显著预测3至4岁期间心理理论的发展,而4岁时的执行功能不能预测4至5岁期间心理理论的发展;3至5岁期间,心理理论对执行功能发展始终不具有预测作用。     

The effect of childhood bilingualism on episodic and semantic memory tasks

Kormi-Nouri, Moniri and Nilsson (2003) demonstrated that Swedish-Persian bilingual children recalled at a higher level than Swedish monolingual children, when they were tested using Swedish materials. The present study was designed to examine the bilingual advantage of children who use different languages in their everyday life but have the same cultural background and live in their communities in the same way as monolingual children. In four experiments, 488 monolingual and bilingual children were compared with regard to episodic and semantic memory tasks. In experiments 1 and 2 there were 144 boys and 144 girls in three school groups (aged 9-10 years, 13-14 years and 16-17 years) and in three language groups (Persian monolingual, Turkish-Persian bilingual, and Kurdish-Persian bilingual). In experiments 3 and 4, there were 200 male students in two school groups (aged 9-10 years and 16-17 years) and in two language groups (Persian monolingual and Turkish-Persian bilingual). In the episodic memory task, children learned sentences (experiments 1-3) and words (Experiment 4). Letter and category fluency tests were used as measures of semantic memory. To change cognitive demands in memory tasks, in Experiment 1, the integration of nouns and verbs within sentences was manipulated by the level of association between verb and noun in each sentence. At retrieval, a recognition test was used. In experiments 2 and 3, the organization between sentences was manipulated at encoding in Experiment 2 and at both encoding and retrieval in Experiment 3 through the use of categories among the objects. At retrieval, free recall or cued recall tests were employed. In Experiment 4, the bilingual children were tested with regard to both their first and their second language. In all four experiments, a positive effect of bilingualism was found on episodic and semantic memory tasks; the effect was more pronounced for older than younger children. The bilingual advantage was not affected by changing cognitive demands or by using first/second language in memory tasks. The present findings support the cross-language interactivity hypothesis of bilingual advantage.     

Mental playmates: Siblings,executive functioning and theory of mind

This study assessed the theory of mind (ToM) and executive functioning (EF) abilities of 124 typically developing preschool children aged 3 to 5 years in relation to whether or not they had a child‐aged sibling (i.e. a child aged 1 to 12 years) at home with whom to play and converse. On a ToM battery that included tests of false belief, appearance‐reality (AR) and pretend representation, children who had at least 1 child‐aged sibling scored significantly higher than both only children and those whose only siblings were infants or adults. The numbers of child‐aged siblings in preschoolers' families positively predicted their scores on both a ToM battery (4 tasks) and an EF battery (2 tasks), and these associations remained significant with language ability partialled out. Results of a hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that independent contributions to individual differences in ToM were made by language ability, EF skill and having a child‐aged sibling. However, even though some conditions for mediation were met, there was no statistically reliable evidence that EF skills mediated the advantage of presence of child‐aged siblings for ToM performance. While consistent with the theory that distinctively childish interaction among siblings accelerates the growth of both ToM and EF capacities, alternative evidence and alternative theoretical interpretations for the findings were also considered.     

Reading,syntactic, orthographic,and working memory skills of bilingual Arabic-English speaking Canadian children

This study assessed the reading, language, and memory skills of 56 bilingual Arab-Canadian children age's 9-14. English was their main instructional language, and Arabic was the language spoken at home. All children attended a Heritage Language Program in Toronto where they were taught to read and write Arabic. The children were administered word and pseudo-word reading, language, and working memory tests in English and Arabic. The majority of the children showed at least adequate proficiency in both languages. There was a significant relationship between the acquisition of word and pseudo-word reading working memory, and syntactic awareness skills in the two languages. The poor readers in Arabic had lower scores on all linguistic tasks, except the visual task. There were no significant differences between bilingual English Arabic children and monolingual English-speaking children on the reading, language, and memory tasks. However, bilingual English Arabic children who had reading problems in English had higher scores on English pseudo-word reading and spelling tasks than monolingual English-speaking children with reading disabilities, probably because of positive transfer from the regular nature of Arabic orthography. In this case, bilingualism does not appear to have negative consequences for the development of language reading skills in both languages—Arabic and English—despite the different nature of the two orthographies.     

Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: evidence from the Simon task

Previous work has shown that bilingualism is associated with more effective controlled processing in children; the assumption is that the constant management of 2 competing languages enhances executive functions (E. Bialystok, 2001). The present research attempted to determine whether this bilingual advantage persists for adults and whether bilingualism attenuates the negative effects of aging on cognitive control in older adults. Three studies are reported that compared the performance of monolingual and bilingual middle-aged and older adults on the Simon task. Bilingualism was associated with smaller Simon effect costs for both age groups; bilingual participants also responded more rapidly to conditions that placed greater demands on working memory. In all cases the bilingual advantage was greater for older participants. It appears, therefore, that controlled processing is carried out more effectively by bilinguals and that bilingualism helps to offset age-related losses in certain executive processes.     

Effects of early bilingualism on learning phonological regularities in a new language

Drawing on structural sensitivity theory, the current study investigated monolingual and bilingual children's ability to learn how phonemes combine to form acceptable syllables in a new language. A total of 186 monolingual and bilingual kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders in Taiwan participated in the study. Bilingual children, regardless of whether they actively used a second language at home or simply had exposure to it, showed an advantage over their monolingual peers in learning the phonological patterns in the new language. The study provides empirical support for structural sensitivity theory and calls for the need to reconceptualize the effects of early bilingualism.     

Bilingual children who stutter: Convergence,gaps and directions for research

PurposeThe aim of this systematic review is to examine the early interactions between bilingualism and stuttering to synthesize knowledge that could inform diagnosis and treatment for bilingual children who stutter.MethodScopus, Science Direct, PubMed, ERIC Ebsco, and Google Scholar were searched with no limits placed on the year of publication. Search terms consisted of: (“stuttering” [MeSH] OR “stutter”) AND (“child” [MeSH] OR “children”) AND (“multilingualism” [MeSH] OR “bilingualism”). Inclusion criteria were children who stutter, bilinguals who stutter, empirical research articles, and published in peer review journals. Exclusion criteria were studies that reported on only adults, only monolinguals, or were not published in English.ResultsA total of 50 articles met the criteria. There was convergence with monolingual studies reporting sexually dimorphic and familial trends in the prevalence of stuttering and rates of recovery. Findings surrounding language proficiency, cross-linguistic stuttering severity, and development were ambivalent. Results point to the difficulty in identifying stuttering in bilingual children, and the need for culturally competent research and interpretations.ConclusionCurrent findings offer a fragmented view of bilingual development and echoes a recurring theme, i.e., the current understanding of bilingualism and stuttering is limited and more research is warranted.