Bilingualism enriches the poor: enhanced cognitive control in low-income minority children.

ABSTRACT: This study explores whether the cognitive advantage associated with bilingualism in executive functioning extends to young immigrant children challenged by poverty and, if it does, which specific processes are most affected. In the study reported here, 40 Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilingual children from low-income immigrant families in Luxembourg and 40 matched monolingual children from Portugal completed visuospatial tests of working memory, abstract reasoning, selective attention, and interference suppression. Two broad cognitive factors of executive functioning-representation (abstract reasoning and working memory) and control (selective attention and interference suppression)-emerged from principal component analysis. Whereas there were no group differences in representation, the bilin

SUBMITTER: Engel de Abreu PM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4070309 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature