TY - JOUR A1 - Festman, Julia A1 - Schwieter, John W. T1 - Self-concepts in reading and spelling among mono- and multilingual Children BT - Extending the bilingual advantage JF - Behavioral Sciences N2 - Cognitive representations and beliefs are what comprise an individual’s self-concept. A positive self-concept is related to and influences academic achievement, and the relationship between a domain-specific self-concept and achievement in the same domain is positive and strong. However, insufficient attention has been paid to these issues among multilingual children. More importantly, since instruction strongly contributes to the development of metacognition and executive functions (EFs), and since the bilingual advantage hypothesis holds that the constant management of multiple languages entails benefits for EF, we bring together these important issues in the present study. We examine the relationship between domain-specific self-concepts and standardized assessment of reading and spelling competences against the background of potential differences in self-concept between monolingual and multilingual German children. While between-group comparisons revealed no significant differences for self-concept nor reading competency, monolinguals outperformed multilinguals in spelling. Correlations between domain-specific self-concepts and academic achievement in reading comprehension, reading fluency, and spelling were positive and significant for both groups. Regardless of language background, children’s evaluations of their academic achievement (reading and spelling) were realistic. We argue, on a theoretical basis, that metacognition and EFs could facilitate a bilingual advantage and improve educational outcomes. KW - domain-specific self-concept KW - academic achievement KW - metacognition KW - executive functions KW - multilingual children KW - reading comprehension KW - reading fluency KW - spelling Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/bs9040039 SN - 2076-328X VL - 9 IS - 4 PB - MDPI AG CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Czapka, Sophia A1 - Schwieter, John W. A1 - Festman, Julia T1 - The influence of peripheral emotions on inhibitory control among children JF - Acta psychologica : international journal of psychonomics N2 - In this study, we investigated the cognitive-emotional interplay by measuring the effects of executive competition (Pessoa, 2013), i.e., how inhibitory control is influenced when emotional information is encountered. Sixty-three children (8 to 9 years of age) participated in an inhibition task (central task) accompanied by happy, sad, or neutral emoticons (displayed in the periphery). Typical interference effects were found in the main task for speed and accuracy, but in general, these effects were not additionally modulated by the peripheral emoticons indicating that processing of the main task exhausted the limited capacity such that interference from the task-irrelevant, peripheral information did not show (Pessoa, 2013). Further analyses revealed that the magnitude of interference effects depended on the order of congruency conditions: when incongruent conditions preceded congruent ones, there was greater interference. This effect was smaller in sad conditions, and particularly so at the beginning of the experiment. These findings suggest that the bottom-up perception of task-irrelevant emotional information influenced the top-down process of inhibitory control among children in the sad condition when processing demands were particularly high. We discuss if the salience and valence of the emotional stimuli as well as task demands are the decisive characteristics that modulate the strength of this relation. KW - Executive function KW - Inhibitory control task KW - Cognitive emotional KW - regulation KW - Primary school children Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103507 SN - 0001-6918 SN - 1873-6297 VL - 223 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER -