Poster #2 - Role of bilingualism in executive function development throughout early childhood: Evidence from ECLS-K:2011

• In Event: Poster Session 13

Abstract

Executive function (EF) skills regulate and orchestrate cognition, emotion, and behavior, and have been found to be essential for childhood development, such as school readiness (Blair, 2002), socioemotional competencies (Broidy et al., 2003), academic achievement (Bull et al., 2008), and physical health (Riggs et al., 2010).
Existing research on bilingualism and EF has documented contested evidence on a bilingual advantage in EF skills across age groups. For instance, Krizman and colleagues (2016) found that bilingualism strengthens cognitive processing during adolescence; Hartanto and colleagues (2018) concluded that bilingualism can narrow socioeconomic disparities in EF during early childhood. In contrast, Bialystok and colleagues (2010) argued that bilinguals tend to possess a smaller within-language vocabulary than their monolingual peers, which puts them at a disadvantage in learning. Similarly, while Bialystok and colleagues (2004) presented evidence that bilinguals continue to outperform monolinguals in EF tasks into older age, Arizmendi and colleagues (2018) failed to find a bilingual advantage in EF tasks.
The present study further contributes to the discussion by examining EF skills between monolingual and bilingual children from kindergarten through fifth grade using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011), a nationally representative longitudinal study of children who were in kindergarten in the 2010-2011 school year. Measures include direct assessment of EF skills through the Numbers Reverse (NR) task and the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task and teacher report of children’s self-control, attentional focus, and inhibitory control. Bilingual children are defined as children whose parent reported a language other than English was also used at home during their child’s kindergarten year; monolingual children are those whose parent reported English being the only language used at home.
Using regression analysis (controlling for sex and socioeconomic status) and appropriate weight to account for the complex survey design, the preliminary findings suggest that (1) in terms of direct assessment of EF skills, bilingual children scored lower than their monolingual peers in both the NR and DCCS tasks during the kindergarten year, but they caught up over time outperforming monolingual children in the NR task in third, fourth, and fifth grades (table 1); and (2) according to teacher report, bilingual children in general exhibited greater level of self-control, attentional focus, and inhibitory control over time (table 2). Implications for practices and policies will be discussed once final analyses are completed.
This study fills the gap in existing literature in at least two ways. First, use of nationally representative data allows sufficient power and control over known covariates and the findings are generalizable to a large population, which is often lacking in studies that utilize data collected from smaller samples. Second, the majority of existing research using ECLS-K:2011 data has focused on the earlier grades (e.g., kindergarten, first grade); this study extends this line of research by examining EF among bilingual and monolingual children through the later elementary school years and offers additional insight for tailoring interventions to best meet the needs of monolingual and bilingual children.

Authors

• Yuan Zhang, American Institutes for Research -Virginia
  Presenting Author

• Shannon Russell, American Institutes for Research -Virginia