Is bilingualism related to a cognitive advantage in children? A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Abstract

Bilingual people are often claimed to have an advantage over monolingual people in cognitive processing owing to their ability to learn and use two languages. This advantage is considered to be related to executive function (EF). However, no consensus exists as to whether this advantage is present in the population or under which conditions it prevails. The present meta-analysis examines the bilingual advantage in EF of children aged 18 years and under for different components of inhibition (hot; rewarding stimuli/cold; neutral stimuli), attention, switching, monitoring, working memory, and planning in 143 independent group comparisons comprising 583 EF effect sizes. The bilingual advantage in overall EF was significant, albeit marginal (g = 0.06), and there were indications of publication bias. A moderator analysis showed significant group differences on EF in favor of bilinguals for studies of children from middle-class socioeconomic backgrounds and studies from one specific lab. The EF components of cold inhibition, switching, and monitoring expressed significant bilingual advantages, but monitoring and cold inhibition were affected by publication bias. As for switching, this remained significant after controlling for publication bias. Thus, given the small mean effect size and small-study effects, this meta-analysis gives little support for a bilingual advantage on overall EF. Still, also after the moderator analysis, there was a large heterogeneity of true effects and a large amount of unexplained heterogeneity in the effect sizes. Thus, there might be bilingual advantages (or disadvantages) under conditions that this study is not able to identify through the analysis of 12 moderators.

Measures of bilingual cognition – from infancy to adolescence

“…We also compared the frequency of bilingual vs. monolingual cognitive differences observed within tasks and age groups. Generally speaking, results seem highly variable and a consistent bilingual advantage pattern across the studies did not emerge (see Gunnerud et al, 2020 for a recent meta-analysis on this topic). This is in spite of the fact that the studies we reviewed matched participants on SES and age of acquisition, and recruited bilinguals with approximately equal proficiency in both languages.…”

“…The inconsistency with which information about SES and bilingual language characteristics is reported in studies on bilingualism and cognition has been noted by previous authors (Adesope et al, 2010;Gunnerud et al, 2020;Ladas et al, 2015). SES is known to affect cognitive performance, with higher SES being linked to cognitive benefits (Noble, Norman, & Farah, 2005).…”

“…A second goal of this review is to identify the tasks used to measure these cognitive abilities, including classic tasks (e.g., Simon, Stroop) as well as less common or customized versions of tasks. A final objective is to qualitatively assess the effect of bilingualism on specific cognitive measures in children 1 , which also requires consideration of some confounding factors, specifically socioeconomic status (SES), age of second language acquisition (AoA), and bilingual participants' proficiency in their second language (Gunnerud et al, 2020;Kapa & Colombo, 2013;Luk, De Sa, & Bialystok, 2011;Naeem, Filippi, Periche-Tomas, Papageorgiou, & Bright, 2018).…”

“…A comprehensive search was conducted using the following electronic databases: ERIC, Linguistic and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA), PsycInfo, Web of Science, and PubMed. A manual search of the reference lists of relevant past reviews of the bilingualism literature was also conducted (e.g., Adesope et al, 2010;Gunnerud et al, 2020). The most recent data base search was run on July 15, 2020, and an updated manual search using Google Scholar was conducted March 8, 2021.…”

“…In work on bilingual adults, the cognitive abilities most frequently tested are the components of executive function (EF), which is typically described within the 'classical higher mental processes'. Though definitions vary, executive function is generally considered to encompass a range of cognitive abilities that allow for flexible, goal-directed behaviour and topdown control of responses (Gunnerud et al, 2020;Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki, Howerter & Wager, 2000;Roebers, 2017). These abilities include inhibition, attention, shifting, monitoring, and working memory (WM; or 'updating').…”