Majority language skill, not measures of bilingualism, predicts executive attention in bilingual children.

ABSTRACT: Evidence is mixed regarding whether and why bilingual children might be advantaged in the development of executive functions. Five preregistered hypotheses regarding sources of a bilingual advantage were tested with data from 102 Spanish-English bilingual children and 25 English monolingual children who were administered a test of executive attention, the flanker task, at 7, 8, and 9 years of age. Measures of the children's early and concurrent bilingual exposure and their concurrent English and Spanish skill were available from a larger longitudinal study in which these children participated. Tests of the preregistered hypotheses yielded null findings: The bilingual children's executive attention abilities were unrelated to their amount of early exposure to mixed input, to balance in thei

SUBMITTER: Giguere D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10408728 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature