Longitudinal Examination of Potential Bilingual Advantage Effects for Selective Attention and Cognitive Functioning in Young Children

ABSTRACT

A good deal of research purports that bilingualism has a positive effect on some aspects of cognitive functioning. However, this effect is not consistent, and little research examines trajectories of cognitive skill development in bilingual children. Moreover, it remains unclear whether different types of bilingualism impact how cognitive abilities unfold. The reported study investigates children’s data from three linguistic groups (179 sequential bilingual, 96 simultaneous bilingual and 57 monolingual German-speaking children) and examines differences (1) regarding cognitive outcome measures pertaining to selective attention, visuospatial thinking and abstract thinking and (2) searches for substantial developmental trajectory differences regarding said measures. Children were tested at 3 points in time; at age 4;10, 6;2 and 7;4. Results indicate no significant linguistic group differences in selective attention, visuospatial thinking and abstract thinking when controlling for gender, language comprehension of the child, and families’ socioeconomic status. Moreover, the three linguistic groups did not differ in developmental trajectories. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Acknowledgments

The project ^ZWEITSPRACHE was supported by the Department of Education Canton Basel-Stadt and the Jacobs Foundation. We would like to thank the families without whom this project would not have been possible. We also would like to thank Karin Keller for her important contribution to the project and Sarah Loher and Anette Bünger for their feedback and work on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Mauchly’s test indicated that the assumption of sphericity had been met for all analyses (selective attention: X²(2) = 1.63, p = .55; visuospatial thinking: X²(2) = 6.16, p = .11; abstract thinking: X²(2) = 7.01, p = .08).