In:Bilingualism, Executive Function, and Beyond: Questions and insights
Edited by Irina A. Sekerina, Lauren Spradlin and Virginia Valian
[Studies in Bilingualism 57] 2019
► pp. 265–279
Chapter 17Executive control in bilingual children
Factors that influence the outcomes
Published online: 12 June 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.57.17mar
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.57.17mar
Abstract
While findings on the bilingual advantage in adults are mixed, the data from children are more consistent but still show variations. A number of factors influence the outcomes, such as individual bilingual characteristics, variations in target functions, and differences in task type. Our goal is to demonstrate that there is a complex relationship among these variables and that the outcomes of executive function (EF) studies depend on the interactions among these factors. Performance on EF is influenced by children’s language proficiency, language use, age, socioeconomic status, and culture. These individual features show different interactions with different executive components. Bilingual and monolingual children differ in some EFs but not in others. Variations in tasks and other measurement issues further increase the differences in the results. We may better understand the nature of the bilingual advantage in children if we combine aspects of developmental science and language processing with hypotheses about bilingualism.
Keywords: executive control, language proficiency, speed of processing
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Participant characteristics and individual differences
- 3.Differences in target functions
- 4.Task types and measurement issues
- 5.Summary
Acknowledgement References
References (43)
Barac, R. & Bialystok, E. (2012). Bilingual effects on cognitive and linguistic development: Role of language, cultural background, and education. Child Development, 83 (2), 413–422.
Bialystok, E. (2010). Global – local and trail-making tasks by monolingual and bilingual children: Beyond inhibition. Developmental Psychology, 46 (1), 93.
Bialystok, E., & Feng, X. (2009). Language proficiency and executive control in proactive interference: evidence from monolingual and bilingual children and adults. Brain and Language, 109, 93–100.
Bialystok, E., Luk, G., Peets, K. F., & Yang, S. (2010). Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13 (4), 525–531.
Bialystok, E., & Viswanathan, M. (2009). Components of executive control with advantages for bilingual children in two cultures. Cognition, 112 (3), 494–500.
Bjorklund, D. F., & Harnishfeger, K. K. (1990). The resources construct in cognitive development: Diverse sources of evidence and a theory of inefficient inhibition. Developmental Review, 10 (1), 48–71.
Blom, E., Küntay, A. C., Messer, M., Verhagen, J., & Leseman, P. (2014). The benefits of being bilingual: Working memory in bilingual Turkish-Dutch children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 128, 105–119.
Bonifacci, P., Giombini, L., Bellocchi, S., & Contento, S. (2011). Speed of processing, anticipation, inhibition and working memory in bilinguals. Developmental Science, 14 (2), 256–269.
Carlson, S. M., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2008). Bilingual experience and executive functioning in young children. Developmental Science, 11 (2), 282–298.
Cepeda, N. J., Blackwell, K. A., & Munakata, Y. (2013). Speed isn’t everything: Complex processing speed measures mask individual differences and developmental changes in executive control. Developmental Science, 16 (2), 269–286.
Crowe, S. F. (1998). The differential contribution of mental tracking, cognitive flexibility, visual search, and motor speed to performance on parts A and B of the Trail Making Test. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 54 (5), 585–591.
De Houwer, A., Bornstein, M. H., & Putnick, D. L. (2013). A bilingual – monolingual comparison of young children’s vocabulary size: Evidence from comprehension and production. Applied Psycholinguistics, 35 (6), 1189–1211.
Dunabeitia, J. A., Hernandez, J. A., Anton, E., Macizo, P., Estevez, A., Fuentes, L. J., & Carreiras, M. (2014). The Inhibitory Advantage in Bilingual Children Revisited Myth or Reality? Experimental Psychology, 61 (3), 234–251.
Dutilh, G., Vandekerckhove, J., Forstmann, B. U., Keuleers, E., Brysbaert, M., & Wagenmakers, E. J. (2012). Testing theories of post-error slowing. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 74 (2), 454–465.
Eichorn, N., Marton, K., Campanelli, L., & Scheuer, J. (2014). Verbal strategies and nonverbal cues in school-age children with and without specific language impairment (SLI). International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 49 (5), 618–630.
Engel de Abreu, P. M. E., Cruz-Santos, A., Tourinho, C. J., Martin, R., & Bialystok, E. (2012). Bilingualism enriches the poor enhanced cognitive control in low-income minority children. Psychological Science, 23 (11), 1364–1371.
Esposito, A. G. Baker-Ward, L., & Mueller, S. T. (2013). Interference suppression vs. response inhibition: An explanation for the absence of a bilingual advantage in preschoolers’ Stroop task performance. Cognitive Development, 28 (4), 354–363.
Filippi, R., Morris, J., Richardson, F. M., Bright, P., Thomas, M. S., Karmiloff-Smith, A., & Marian, V. (2014). Bilingual children show an advantage in controlling verbal interference during spoken language comprehension. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18 (3), 490–501.
Friedman, N. P., & Miyake, A. (2004). The relations among inhibition and interference control functions: a latent-variable analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133 (1), 101.
Green, D. W., & Abutalebi, J. (2013). Language control in bilinguals: The adaptive control hypothesis. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25 (5), 515–530.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Paul H Brookes Publishing.
Hoff, E. (2006). How social contexts support and shape language development. Developmental Review 26, 55–88.
Hoff, E., Core, C., Place, S., Rumiche, R., Señor, M., & Parra, M. (2012). Dual language exposure and early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language, 39 (1), 1–27.
Iluz-Cohen, P., & Armon-Lotem, S. (2013). Language proficiency and executive control in bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16 (4), 884–899.
Luk, G., & Bialystok, E. (2013). Bilingualism is not a categorical variable: Interaction between language proficiency and usage. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25 (5), 605–621.
Luk, G., De Sa, E., & Bialystok, E. (2011). Is there a relation between onset age of bilingualism and enhancement of cognitive control? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14 (4), 588–595.
Marian, V., Blumenfeld, H. K., & Kaushanskaya, M. (2007). The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50 (4), 940–967.
Martin-Rhee, M. M., & Bialystok, E. (2008). The development of two types of inhibitory control in monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11 (1), 81–93.
Marton, K. (2015a). Theoretically driven experiments may clarify questions about the bilingual advantage. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18 (1), 37–38.
(2015b, May). Do bilingual children perform more efficiently in experimental tasks than their monolingual peers? Paper presented at the Workshop on Bilingualism and Executive functions. An interdisciplinary approach. New York, NY.
Marton, K., Campanelli, L., Eichorn, N., Scheuer, J., & Yoon, J. (2014). Information processing and proactive interference in children with and without specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57 (1), 106–119.
Mazuka, R., Jincho, N., & Oishi, H. (2009). Development of executive control and language processing. Language and Linguistics Compass, 3 (1), 59–89.
Milner, B. (1963). Effects of different brain lesions on card sorting: The role of the frontal lobes. Archives of Neurology, 9, 100–110.
Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., & Howerter, A. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 49–100.
Morales, J., Calvo, A., & Bialystok, E. (2013). Working memory development in monolingual and bilingual children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 114 (2), 187–202.
Nicolay, A. C., & Poncelet, M. (2013). Cognitive advantage in children enrolled in a second-language immersion elementary school program for three years. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16 (03), 597–607.
Novick, J. M., Hussey, E., Teubner-Rhodes, S., Harbison, J. I., & Bunting, M. F. (2013). Clearing the garden-path: Improving sentence processing through cognitive control training. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29 (2), 186–217.
Owen, A. M., Roberts, A. C., Hodges, J. R., Summers, B. A., Polkey, C. E., & Robbins, T. W. (1993). Contrasting mechanisms of impaired attentional set-shifting in patients with frontal lobe damage or Parkinson’s disease. Brain, 116, 1159–1175.
Phillips, L. H., Wynn, V., Gilhooly, K. J., Della Sala, S., & Logie, R. H. (1999). The role of memory in the Tower of London task. Memory, 7 (2), 209–231.
Portocarrero, J. S., Burright, R. G., & Donovick, P. J. (2007). Vocabulary and verbal fluency of bilingual and monolingual college students. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 22, 415–422.
Tao, L., Marzecová, A., Taft, M., Asanowicz, D., & Wodniecka, Z. (2011). The efficiency of attentional networks in early and late bilinguals: the role of age of acquisition. Frontiers in Psychology, 2 (123), 1–19.