Bialystok, E. (2005). Consequences of
bilingualism for cognitive development. In J. F. Kroll and A. M. B. DeGroot
(Eds.) Handbook of bilingualism (pp.
417-432). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
The
performance of bilingual and monolingual children on cognitive tasks has been
compared for decades in psychology research. Historically, research has suggested a
bilingual disadvantage for cognitive
tasks, such as IQ measures and mathematics problems. As Bialystok presented in
this review chapter, however, many of the measures used require a considerable
amount of language processing, and bilingual children may be being tested in a language they are only beginning to learn. Of
course, this would offer a clear advantage to monolingual children who are
being tested in their native language. In light of this bias, recent testing
has focused on creating more balanced tasks for monolingual and bilingual
children. And in fact, as Bialystok’s review shows, bilingual children appear
to show an advantage on certain kinds of tasks.
Bilingual
children seem to show a considerable advantage in tasks that require
controlling attention and inhibiting misleading information. For example, in studies
involving a Towers Task, young monolingual and bilingual children were shown
two towers: One made of Lego blocks, and one made of Duplo blocks. The Duplo
blocks were identical to the Lego blocks, except they were twice the size. The
two towers contained the same amount of blocks, and children were required to count the number of blocks in each tower. The height of
the Duplo tower was hard to ignore, but it was a misleading cue. Bilingual
children performed better than their monolingual peers on counting the number
of blocks in each tower, and ignoring the height of the tower. Bilingual
children were more able to control their attention in attending to the counting
task and ignoring the misleading height cue. Advantages for bilingual children on these
skills seem to fit with the idea that they are constantly inhibiting
interference between their two (or more) languages when they are using
language.
There
does not seem to be a bilingual or a
monolingual advantage on some cognitive tasks. However, certain features of the
tasks will affect children’s performance. If the task requires a high amount of
language skills, such as mathematical word problem, children being tested in
their native language may perform better. Or, if the task requires controlling
attention and inhibiting misleading information, bilingual children may show an
advantage. When testing bilingual children it is important to take into account
their verbal skills in the language in which they are being tested. And, it is
interesting to consider the areas in which bilingual children may be at an advantage
due to their ability to use multiple languages.
Blogger:
Nicolette Noonan, PhD student with Drs. Lisa Archibald and Marc Joanisse, and
coordinator of the Canadian SLP blog.
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