Early childhood bilingualism leads to advances in executive attention: Dissociating culture and language

Abstract

This study investigated whether early especially efficient utilization of executive functioning in young bilinguals would transcend potential cultural benefits. To dissociate potential cultural effects from bilingualism, four-year-old U.S. Korean–English bilingual children were compared to three monolingual groups – English and Korean monolinguals in the U.S.A. and another Korean monolingual group, in Korea. Overall, bilinguals were most accurate and fastest among all groups. The bilingual advantage was stronger than that of culture in the speed of attention processing, inverse processing efficiency independent of possible speed-accuracy trade-offs, and the network of executive control for conflict resolution. A culture advantage favoring Korean monolinguals from Korea was found in accuracy but at the cost of longer response times.

Identifying a Threshold for the Executive Function Advantage in Bilingual Children

“…A similar global RT advantage was also observed in the flanker task in 8-year-old bilinguals (Engel de Abreu, Cruz-Santos, Tourinho, Martin, & Bialystok, 2012) and in 4-year-old bilinguals compared with three monolingual control groups based on culture (i.e. imposing self-regulation of behavior or not) (Yang, Yang, & Lust, 2011).…”

Data trimming procedure can eliminate bilingual cognitive advantage

“…In addition, there are factors that are closely related to bilingualism or factors that drive the different language experiences, which at the same time are related to general cognitive performances. These include social and economic status (SES) (Morton & Harper, 2007), different cultural backgrounds (Yang, Yang, & Lust, 2011) and immigration status. Last but not least there are factors that affect one's general executive functioning and that probably affect monolingual and bilingual speakers in the same way, such as age, education, exercise, music training, active video game experience and others (for an overview see Valian, 2015).…”

“…Some of the studies reviewed were not included into further analysis because there was not adequate information about either the maximum time allowed or how the data was treated (the 3rd study in Bialystok, Martin, et al, 2005, all studies in Gathercole et al, 2014, Yang et al, 2011, and Mohades et al, 2014. Carlson and Meltzoff (2008) was not included either because they did not report RTs.…”

Omani Young Children’s Language Proficiencies: The Outcomes of a Bilingual Education Program

“…To be more specific, positive effects of early bilingual education on children's development have been documented in their literacy skills such as reading, writing and spelling (Lopez & Tashakkori, 2004;Sun, Zhou, & Zhu, 2013), English (Francis, Lesaux, & August, 2006), math skills (Bialystok et al, 2009;Marian, Shook, & Schroeder, 2013), metalinguistic competence (Lengyel, 2012) and awareness (Barac & Bialystok, 2011;Reder, Marec-Breton, Gombert, & Demont, 2013), focusing (Poulin-Dubois, Blaye, Coutya, & Bialystok, 2011), remembering (Bialystok et al, 2009) , planning (Paradis, Geneese, & Crago, 2011), ability to make decisions (Bialystok et al, 2009), problem-solving skills, speed of attention processing, inverse processing efficiency, independence of possible speed-accuracy trade-offs, network of executive control for conflict resolution (Yang, Yang, & Lust, 2011), attention, control, working memory, abstract and symbolic representation skills (Adesope, Lavin, Thompson, & Underleider, 2010), flexibility and complexity of brain activity (Zelasko & Antunez, 2000), creativity (Leikin, 2013), attitudes towards English (Cepik), sociopragmatic awareness of English that involves request strategies rather than reply strategies (Zhang & Yan, 2012), foreign language accent (Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011;Piske, Mackay, & Flege, 2001), identity development (Zelasko & Antunez, 2000), communication skills in a diverse society, and the ability to free themselves from biases and limited thinking (Keysar, Hayakawa, & An, 2011). There are also other potential benefits for their future, from school readiness to more job opportunities (Zelasko & Antunez, 2000).…”