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Article published In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 16:2 (2026) ► pp.171–202

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Bilingualism, working memory, and relative clause comprehension in children

ORCiD logo with link | University of YorkYork
ORCiD logo with link | University of Fribourg
ORCiD logo with link | University of KonstanzKonstanz
ORCiD logo with link | University of EdinburghEdinburgh
ORCiD logo with link | University of GenevaGeneva
ORCiD logo with link | University of Fribourg
ORCiD logo with link | University of Fribourg
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of York.

Published online: 17 July 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.24037.sol
Abstract
Bilingualism has sometimes been associated with cognitive boosts, particularly in working memory (WM). However, it remains unclear whether such benefits extend to the comprehension of syntactically complex structures. We investigated this through a gamified character-selection task assessing comprehension of subject-relative clauses and object-relative clauses among monolingual (n = 31) and bilingual (n = 28) French-speaking children, as well as monolingual (n = 45) and bilingual (n = 43) German-speaking children aged 3 to 12. We examined whether comprehension correlated with verbal WM, measured through a nonword repetition task, and interference resolution ability, assessed through a Simon task and an analysis of comprehension errors. The results indicated no bilingual advantage: object-relative clauses were more difficult than subject-relative clauses across all groups and languages. While interference-related errors — misinterpreting object-relative clauses as subject-relative clauses more frequently than vice versa — surfaced in all groups, verbal WM correlated with object-relative comprehension only in French. These findings are discussed in relation to current theories of bilingualism and WM in language comprehension.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.The present study
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Procedure
    • 3.3Gamified syntactic comprehension task
    • 3.4Cognitive and linguistic variables
      • 3.4.1Verbal WM: Nonword repetition
      • 3.4.2Visuospatial WM: Corsi
      • 3.4.3Inhibition: Simon task
      • 3.4.4Q-BEx
    • 3.5Data analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Monolingual vs. bilingual accuracy on SRCs vs. ORCs (RQ1 & RQ2)
    • 4.2Reversal errors for monolingual vs. bilingual children on SRCs vs. ORCs (RQ3 & RQ4)
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Comprehension accuracy (RQ1 & RQ2)
    • 5.2Reversal errors (RQ3 & RQ4)
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Data availability
  • Acknowledgements
  • Conflict of Interest Statement
  • Compliance with Ethical Standards and informed consent
  • Authors’ contributions
  • Notes
  • References
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