The bilingual advantage in 10-12-year-olds: An international study of language, culture, and cognitive control.

• In Event: 3-143 - The bilingual advantage meets big data: Results of three large-sample studies in children

Integrative Statement

A prevailing view among child psychologists is that bilingual children show an advantage in cognitive control relative their monolingual counterparts. Critics however charge that available evidence is equivocal, insofar as it is based on comparisons of small samples that are confounded on potentially important socio-cultural factors. In one seminal study for example, 30 Chinese-English bilingual children showed an advantage in cognitive control relative to 30 English monolingual children (Bialystok, 1999). Proponents of the bilingual advantage hypothesis attributed the group difference to an effect of language status; critics charge that the group difference in language status was confounded with differences in culture (Chinese/collectivist versus Canadian/individualist) and immigration status (Chinese immigrants versus Canadian non-immigrants), two factors that have been associated with differences in higher-order cognition early in development (Fuligini, 1997; Sabbagh et al., 2006).

Therefore, we are conducting a large international study of 10- to 12-year-old children with the goal of disentangling the effects of language status and culture on cognitive control early in development. To date, close to 700 monolingual and bilingual children from countries with either strong collectivist values (China and Lebanon) or strong individualist values (Canada) have participated. All children have been recruited and measured in their home country to ensure they are not immigrants or children of recent immigrants.

Participants are measured individually by trained research assistants. As part of a 45-minute protocol, children are administered a standard measure of cognitive control called the size congruency task. Each trial presents two numbers that differ in numerical and physical size and participants select the numerically larger number by means of a button press. On congruent trials, the numerically larger number is also the physically larger; on incongruent trials, the numerically larger number is the physically smaller. In addition, children are administered measures of cultural values, daily language use, socio-economic status, attitudes toward academic achievement, and non-verbal intelligence.

As expected, we observe a robust effect of stimulus congruency, such that responses are faster and more accurate for congruent as compared to incongruent trials. We also observe a robust sequential congruency effect, such that the effect of stimulus congruency is larger following congruent trials than it is following incongruent trials. Neither of these effects, however, interact with language status, indicating that monolingual and bilingual children exhibit comparable conventional and sequential congruency effects. As we progress with data collection from Canada, we will be able to compare cognitive control of children from collectivist and individualist cultures and compare the magnitude of these differences with differences related to monolingual and bilingual language status.

In conclusion, early results from our international project suggest that even with a sample of close to 700 children, we are unable to detect an effect of language status on measures of cognitive control in 10- to 12-year-old children.

Authors

• J Bruce Morton, University of Western Ontario
  Presenting Author

• Leyla Akoury Dirani, American University of Beirut
  Non-Presenting Author

• Junsheng Liu, East China Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Samantha Goldsmith, University of Western Ontario
  Non-Presenting Author