Exploration of Attentional and Executive Abilities in French-Speaking Children Immersed in Dutch Since 1, 2, 3, and 6 Years

Abstract

Advantages in diverse aspects of cognitive functioning have been reported in early bilinguals (Bialystok, 2011) as well as in children frequenting an early bilingual immersion school program (Nicolay and Poncelet, 2015). However, during the last decade, some studies failed to replicate these advantages. Currently, the presence of cognitive benefits in children frequenting an immersion program remains debated. The lack of consistency between the studies could come from the fact that time spent by children within the immersion program is variable from one study to the other and that studies used different tasks to assess the same cognitive function. The main aim of the present study was to determine how time spent in immersion affects the emergence of cognitive advantages along the primary schooling. We compared 196 immersed Dutch-speaking children since they were 5 years old and 195 non-immersed French-speaking children, from different grades of the primary schooling (i.e., at 6, 7, 8, and 12 years old) by using the same attentional and executive tasks as those used in previous studies having shown a bilingual advantage. Furthermore, these groups were matched on a set of variables known to influence cognitive functioning. After 1, 2, and 3 years of enrolment in this program, performances of immersed compared to non-immersed children did not differ for any task. However, after 6 years, immersed children outperformed non-immersed children on the cognitive flexibility and the working memory tasks. These results show that, in French-speaking children immersed in Dutch, cognitive advantages could depend on the length of time spent in immersion since they are not present at the beginning (after 1, 2, and 3 years) but seem to emerge at the end of it (after 6 years). In contrast, in previous studies conducted in English immersion, advantages appear at the beginning of the primary schooling but are absent at the end of it. Furthermore, these results suggest that the emergence of cognitive advantages may vary depending on the second language learned. The results are discussed in terms of linguistic characteristics and status of the languages at stake.

Early bilingual immersion school program and cognitive development in French-speaking children: Effect of the second language learned (English vs. Dutch) and exposition duration (2 vs. 5 years)

“…In recent years, cognitive advantages have been reported for children attending a bilingual immersion program [for e.g., 1 – 4 ]. Recently, some researchers [ 5 ] evaluated French-speaking children learning Dutch at the beginning and at the end of CLIL schooling on alerting, selective auditory attention, divided attention, cognitive flexibility, and working memory tasks. These authors found no advantages on any tasks at the beginning of the schooling (first, second, and third grades), but did find advantages in cognitive flexibility and working memory tasks at the end of schooling (sixth grade).…”

“…These differences (or similarities) could induce differences in the EF outcomes. Learning English or Dutch for French-speaking children could have a different influence on cognition in that they differ in their linguistic characteristics (i.e., lexical similarity, orthography transparency and word order) but also in their extra scholar exposition, as well as in the opportunities to use them ([ 5 , 14 ]).…”

“…An advantage could be observed in the first stages of CLIL because these skills could be solicited as children are in a continuous readiness state to process an L2 and on the search of (visual) cues that could help them to understand the discourse. As advantages were found in English [ 1 , 2 ] in third grade but not in sixth grade [ 6 ] and no advantage was found in Dutch in sixth grade [ 5 ], we would determine if an advantage could be found in fifth grade in one (or both) of the two language groups with increased CLIL experience.…”

“…Concerning cognitive flexibility, an advantage on this function was expected as the children are frequently in situations in which they are required to switch from one language to another in the CLIL context. We hypothesized that children immersed in English could show an earlier EF advantage [ 1 , 2 ] than those immersed in Dutch [ 5 , 8 ] in comparison with non-immersed children, perhaps because of the higher similarity in this pair of languages (French-English). In previous studies, in English immersed children, an advantage was found from third grade [ 1 – 3 , 29 ] but not in sixth grade [ 6 ].…”

“…The present study could address whether an advantage could still be present in fifth grade. In a previous study, in Dutch immersed children, an advantage was found in sixth grade but not before (first, second and third grade) [ 5 ]. Therefore, it would be important to determine when during the primary schooling, between third grade and sixth grade, advantages in cognitive flexibility emerge.…”