Poster #244 - The Role of Bilingual Experience and Socioeconomic Background in Inhibitory Control in School-Age Children

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Family Context & Processes

Integrative Statement

Executive function (EF) development during childhood is sensitive to multiple environmental factors, including dual-language exposure and socioeconomic status (SES; Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008; Hackman et al., 2015). Bilingual children often outperform monolingual children on inhibitory control tasks, an advantage that may be due to their experience with dual-language management (Bialystok & Viswanathan, 2009). Family SES is also associated with inhibitory control performance, with children from lower SES families displaying poorer inhibitory control (Arán-Filippetti & Richaud de Minzi, 2012; Mezzacappa, 2004). Previous research has illustrated the importance of childhood SES and bilingualism in EF development and outcomes; however, the interplay between the two is not well understood. This study aimed to examine whether bilingualism acts as a protective factor against the negative impact of low SES in a sample of school-age children completing a computerized inhibitory control task.

Sixty-one monolingual and forty-nine bilingual 6- to 8-year-old children of varying SES backgrounds participated in this study (Mage = 6.92, SD = 0.59). Participants were included in the monolingual group if parents reported that children heard any languages other than English no more than 5 percent of the time. Children were included in the bilingual group if parents reported that children spoke and heard English at least 50 percent of the time and heard any other languages at least 20 percent of the time. SES was measured as a standardized composite score based on combined parental education level, combined parental occupational prestige, and family income-to-needs ratio. To assess inhibitory control, children completed a computerized non-verbal Stroop task in which they were shown two animal images of different sizes (one big, one small) and instructed to select which animal was “bigger in real life.” On congruent trials, the animal that was larger on screen was also larger in real life, whereas on incongruent trials, the animal that was smaller on screen was larger in real life and children had to inhibit their dominant response to select the larger animal image. Stroop effect on accuracy was computed as the difference in mean accuracy between congruent and incongruent trials.

Overall, the monolingual and bilingual groups did not significantly differ on Stroop effect on accuracy, t(105) = .788, p = .433. However, SES was negatively associated with Stroop effect on accuracy, r(107) = -.203, p = .036, such that children of lower SES showed a larger Stroop effect indicating poorer inhibitory control (Fig 1). Moderation analyses revealed that bilingualism did not moderate this association between Stroop effect on accuracy and SES.

Results suggest that family SES matters for inhibitory control regardless of language experience, even in a sample of fairly high SES monolingual and bilingual school-aged children. Bilingualism was neither a drawback nor benefit for inhibitory control in the current study, suggesting that lower SES bilingual children are also vulnerable to EF deficits. Understanding the EF disadvantages of lower SES is crucial to developing and implementing targeted early childhood intervention programs to maximize the educational achievement of low-income children at risk for poorer cognitive outcomes.

Authors

• Diletta Mittone, University of Maryland
  Presenting Author

• Srishti Nayak, Princeton University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amanda Tarullo, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author