Subtle Increments in Socioeconomic Status and Bilingualism Jointly Affect Children’s Verbal and Nonverbal Performance

Bialystok, Ellen; Shorbagi, Sadek Hefni

doi:10.1080/15248372.2021.1901711

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 88 publications

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“…Other instruments have been created for this purpose and achieve similar results (Marian et al, 2007;Li et al, 2014). In these studies, more experience with bilingualism is associated with both better test performance (Guerrero et al, 2016;Pot et al, 2018;DeLuca et al, 2020;Bialystok and Shorbagi, 2021) and better brain structure (Hervais-Adelman et al, 2018;Del Maschio et al, 2019;DeLuca et al, 2019;Sulpizio et al, 2020). These detailed associations undermine conclusions from binary procedures that classify participants in terms of their response to a simple question about how many languages they speak (Dick et al, 2019;Nichols et al, 2020) and have refined our understanding of the relation between bilingualism and cognition.…”

Section: Where the Holes Arementioning

confidence: 99%

Bilingualism as a Slice of Swiss Cheese

Bialystok

2021

Front. Psychol.

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Section: Where the Holes Arementioning

confidence: 99%

Bilingualism as a Slice of Swiss Cheese

Bialystok

2021

Front. Psychol.

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“…It is important to replicate this kind of study with lower-income samples of Spanish-English bilinguals. In Bialystok and Shorbagi's (2021) study, the sample of bilingual children in the higher SES group outperformed all other children on EF task scores, but a positive relationship between the degree of bilingualism and EF was still significant across the whole sample. This indicates that bilingualism and SES have an influence on EF independent from one another, when other relevant group differences (e.g., verbal ability and age) are taken into account.…”

Section: Implications Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 63%

Degree of bilingualism and executive function in early childhood

Nguyen,

Hutchison,

Norvell

et al. 2023

Lang. cogn.

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This study explores the relationship between executive functioning (EF) and degree of bilingualism in a sample (N = 79) of 5- to 7-year-old monolingual and bilingual children. The bilingual group included children who are fully fluent in two languages (balanced bilinguals) and children who are still learning their second language (dual-language learners (DLLs). In general, findings revealed mixed associations between bilingualism and EF. There were no language group differences for one type of simple inhibitory control (i.e., go or no-go task). However, a bilingual advantage was demonstrated for another type of simple inhibitory control (the Head–Toes–Knees–Shoulders task), for complex inhibitory control (i.e., the Simon effect), and for cognitive flexibility (Dimensional Change Card Sort). Effects were found when DLLs and balanced bilinguals were analyzed separately, and the latter two effects were found when both types of bilinguals were compared to monolinguals. The findings contribute to the growing literature examining a possible bilingual effect in early childhood.

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“…Finally, the present study considered the role of SES as indicated by parent's level of education, a sensitive marker of home environment (De Cat, 2021), even though all children were considered middle class in broad terms. In a previous study with this population, there was a relation between level of parent's education and performance on a set of nonverbal control tasks beyond the effects found for bilingual experience (Bialystok & Shorbagi, 2021). Testing for the role of SES in these studies is important because of the possibility that SES effects are confounded with bilingualism and so conceal actual effects (Morton & Harper, 2007).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Type of bilingualism, task domain, and attention demands impact children’s cognitive performance.

Wagner,

Shorbagi,

Goldreich

et al. 2024

Developmental Psychology

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The present study investigated the relation between continuous measures of two qualitatively different types of bilingual experience and outcome measures that varied in domain (verbal or nonverbal) and processing demands (degree of conflict). Participants were 195 English-speaking children, 7 years old, who were enrolled in French immersion programs. Children were assessed for their degree of "home bilingualism," reflecting language use patterns at home, and "school bilingualism," reflecting progress in learning French. None of the children spoke French at home. Participants completed verbal fluency, n-back, and global-local tasks, with conditions within tasks varying in degree of attentional processing required. Type of bilingual experience affected verbal and nonverbal tasks differently. Home bilingualism was positively associated with performance on attentionally demanding conditions of the n-back and global-local tasks, the two nonverbal tasks, whereas school bilingualism was positively associated with performance on English verbal fluency, the linguistic task. In both cases, results were modulated by the degree of bilingual experience. These results underline the importance of specifying the type and degree of bilingual experience and the details of the outcome tasks to understand the impact of bilingualism on children's development. Public Significance StatementThe possibility that bilingualism impacts children's cognitive development is controversial, but parents must make crucial decisions about their children's linguistic environments despite the absence of clear evidence. However, bilingualism can be achieved in different ways and the outcomes can be measured in different domains. The present study compares the effect of bilingualism achieved through heritage language use at home and language education in school on verbal and nonverbal task performance. The results show specific effects of each form of bilingualism on each type of outcome, underlining the complexity of these relations.

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Subtle Increments in Socioeconomic Status and Bilingualism Jointly Affect Children’s Verbal and Nonverbal Performance

Cited by 14 publications

References 88 publications

Bilingualism as a Slice of Swiss Cheese

Bilingualism as a Slice of Swiss Cheese

Degree of bilingualism and executive function in early childhood

Type of bilingualism, task domain, and attention demands impact children’s cognitive performance.

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