Bilingualism Enriches the Poor: Enhanced Cognitive Control in Low-Income Minority Children

Poster (2013, June 24)

This study explores whether the cognitive advantage associated with bilingualism in executive functioning extends to young children challenged by poverty and if so, which specific processes are most ... [more ▼]

This study explores whether the cognitive advantage associated with bilingualism in executive functioning extends to young children challenged by poverty and if so, which specific processes are most affected. Forty Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilingual children from low-income immigrant families in Luxembourg and 40 matched monolingual children from Portugal completed visuo-spatial tests of working memory, abstract reasoning, selective attention, and interference suppression. Two broad cognitive factors of executive functioning labeled representation (abstract reasoning and working memory) and control (selective attention and interference suppression) emerged from principal components analysis. Whereas there were no group differences in representation, the bilinguals performed significantly better than the monolinguals in control. These results demonstrate first, that the bilingual advantage is neither confounded with nor limited by socioeconomic and cultural factors and second, that separable aspects of executive functioning are differentially affected by bilingualism. The bilingual advantage lies in control but not in visuo-spatial representational processes. [less ▲]

Poverty and executive functions A latent variable study of children growing up in enriched and deprived conditions in Brazil

Poster (2013, April)

Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects on verbal working memory and vocabulary: Testing minority-language children with an immigrant background

in Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing research (2013), 56(2), 630-642

PURPOSE: This study explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language minority children. METHOD: Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese ... [more ▼]

PURPOSE: This study explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language minority children. METHOD: Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first- and second-language vocabulary (comprehension and production), executive-loaded working memory (counting recall and backward digit recall), and verbal short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition). Cross-linguistic task performance was compared within individuals. The language minority children were also compared with multilingual language majority children from Luxembourg and Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Brazil without an immigrant background matched on age, sex, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal reasoning. RESULTS: Results showed that (a) verbal working memory measures involving numerical memoranda were relatively independent of test language and cultural status; (b) language status had an impact on the repetition of high- but not on low-wordlike L2 nonwords; (c) large cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects emerged for productive vocabulary; (d) cross-cultural effects were less pronounced for vocabulary comprehension with no differences between groups if only L1-words relevant to the home context were considered. CONCLUSION: The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed. [less ▲]

Effects of impoverished environmental conditions on working memory performance

in Memory (2013), Mar 26. [Epub ahead of print]

This cross-cultural study investigates the impact of background experience on four verbal and visuo-spatial working memory (WM) tasks. Eighty-four children from low income families were recruited from the ... [more ▼]

This cross-cultural study investigates the impact of background experience on four verbal and visuo-spatial working memory (WM) tasks. Eighty-four children from low income families were recruited from the following groups: (1) Portuguese immigrant children from Luxembourg impoverished in terms of language experience; (2) Brazilian children deprived in terms of scholastic background; (3) Portuguese children from Portugal with no disadvantage in either scholastic or language background. Children were matched on age, gender, fluid intelligence, and socioeconomic status and completed four simple and complex span tasks of WM and a vocabulary measure. Results indicate that despite large differences in their backgrounds and language abilities, the groups exhibited comparable performance on the visuo-spatial tasks dot matrix and odd-one-out and on the verbal simple span task digit recall. Group differences emerged on the verbal complex span task counting recall with children from Luxembourg and Portugal outperforming children from disadvantaged schools in Brazil. The study suggests that whereas contributions of prior knowledge to digit span, dot matrix, and odd-one-out are likely to be minimal, background experience can affect performance on counting recall. Implications for testing WM capacity in children growing up in poverty are discussed. [less ▲]

Efeitos de contextos ambientais desfavoráveis na memória operacional

Poster (2012, October)

Há um crescente número de estudos indicando que o desempenho em tarefas de memória operacional (MO) depende fortemente do conhecimento e experiência prévios. Poucos estudos, entretanto, têm explorado ... [more ▼]

Há um crescente número de estudos indicando que o desempenho em tarefas de memória operacional (MO) depende fortemente do conhecimento e experiência prévios. Poucos estudos, entretanto, têm explorado diretamente o papel do ambiente social no desenvolvimento de habilidades de MO.Este estudo teve como objetivo investigar o impacto da experiência escolar e linguística do indivíduo em tarefas de MO verbal e visual. [less ▲]

LEARN stellt sech fier

E-print/Working paper (2012)

Language bias in nonword repetition: Towards a culture fair nonword  repetition task

Presentation (2012, May)

L'école luxembourgeoise: (quel) besoin de changement?

Conference given outside the academic context (2012)

D’Exekutivfunktiounen an d’Sproochentwécklung bei jonken Immigrantekanner zu Lëtzebuerg

Conference given outside the academic context (2012)

Executive and phonological processes in second language acquisition

in Journal of Educational Psychology (2012), 104(4), 974-986

This paper reports a latent variable study exploring the specific links between executive processes of working memory, phonological short-term memory, phonological awareness, and proficiency in first (L1 ... [more ▼]

This paper reports a latent variable study exploring the specific links between executive processes of working memory, phonological short-term memory, phonological awareness, and proficiency in first (L1), second (L2), and third (L3) languages in 8- to 9-year-olds experiencing multilingual edu-cation. Children completed multiple L1-measures of complex span, verbal short-term storage, and phonological awareness, and tests of proficiency in a range of linguistic domains (vocabulary, grammar, and literacy) in Luxembourgish (L1), German (familiar L2) and French (unfamiliar L3). Results indicate that executive processing abilities, phonological short-term memory, and phono-logical awareness operate as distinct but related constructs that manifest differential associations with native and second language proficiency in multilingual children: Phonological short-term memory was uniquely linked to vocabulary in L1 and the structurally similar L2; executive pro-cesses were related to grammar across languages, reading comprehension, and spelling; and phono-logical awareness made specific contributions to word decoding, spelling, and language proficiency in the structurally dissimilar L3. Phonological processing abilities appear to be critical for acquiring the sound structure of a new language, whereas executive processes share more general links with higher-order linguistic abilities in second language learners. [less ▲]