A path to the bilingual advantage
- Matching participants (as suggested by Hope, 2015) may be one promising option for research on a potential bilingual advantage in executive functions (EF). In this study we first compared performances in three EF-tasks of a naturally heterogeneous sample of monolingual (n = 69, age = 9.0 y) and multilingual children (n = 57, age = 9.3 y). Secondly, we meticulously matched participants pairwise to obtain two highly homogeneous groups to rerun our analysis and investigate a potential bilingual advantage. The initally disadvantaged multilinguals (regarding socioeconomic status and German lexicon size) performed worse in updating and response inhibition, but similarly in interference inhibition. This indicates that superior EF compensate for the detrimental effects of the background variables. After matching children pairwise on age, gender, intelligence, socioeconomic status and German lexicon size, performances became similar except for interference inhibition. Here, an advantage for multilinguals in the form of globally reducedMatching participants (as suggested by Hope, 2015) may be one promising option for research on a potential bilingual advantage in executive functions (EF). In this study we first compared performances in three EF-tasks of a naturally heterogeneous sample of monolingual (n = 69, age = 9.0 y) and multilingual children (n = 57, age = 9.3 y). Secondly, we meticulously matched participants pairwise to obtain two highly homogeneous groups to rerun our analysis and investigate a potential bilingual advantage. The initally disadvantaged multilinguals (regarding socioeconomic status and German lexicon size) performed worse in updating and response inhibition, but similarly in interference inhibition. This indicates that superior EF compensate for the detrimental effects of the background variables. After matching children pairwise on age, gender, intelligence, socioeconomic status and German lexicon size, performances became similar except for interference inhibition. Here, an advantage for multilinguals in the form of globally reduced reaction times emerged, indicating a bilingual executive processing advantage.…
Author details: | Sophia CzapkaORCiDGND, Christiane Wotschack, Annegret KlassertORCiDGND, Julia FestmanORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728919000166 |
ISSN: | 1366-7289 |
ISSN: | 1469-1841 |
Title of parent work (English): | Bilingualism : language and cognition |
Subtitle (English): | pairwise matching of individuals |
Publisher: | Cambridge Univ. Press |
Place of publishing: | Cambridge |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2019/04/10 |
Publication year: | 2020 |
Release date: | 2023/02/02 |
Tag: | background variables; bilingualism; executive functions; interference inhibition; lexicon size; matching; pairwise; primary school children |
Volume: | 23 |
Issue: | 2 |
Article number: | PII S1366728919000166 |
Number of pages: | 11 |
First page: | 344 |
Last Page: | 354 |
Funding institution: | Land Brandenburg, Germany; Diversity and Inclusion at University of; Potsdam |
Organizational units: | Zentrale und wissenschaftliche Einrichtungen / Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Kognitive Studien |
Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik | |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Hybrid Open-Access |
License (German): | CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |