[en] 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 suppres-sion. Two broad cognitive factors of executive functioning labeled representation (abstract reason-ing 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 demon-strate 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 af-fected by bilingualism. The bilingual advantage lies in control but not in visuo-spatial representa-tional processes.
Research center :
EMACS
Disciplines :
Theoretical & cognitive psychology
Identifiers :
UNILU:UL-ARTICLE-2012-720
Author, co-author :
Engel de Abreu, Pascale ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education (FLSHASE) > Educational Measurement and Applied Cognitive Science (EMACS)
Cruz-Santos, A.; University of Minho, Portugal
Tourinho De Abreu Neto, Carlos José ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education (FLSHASE) > Educational Measurement and Applied Cognitive Science (EMACS)
Martin, Romain ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education (FLSHASE) > Educational Measurement and Applied Cognitive Science (EMACS)
Bialystok, E.; York University, Canada
Language :
English
Title :
Bilingualism Enriches the Poor: Enhanced Cognitive Control in Low-Income Minority Children
Publication date :
2012
Journal title :
Psychological Science
ISSN :
1467-9280
Publisher :
Blackwell Publishing, Malden, United States - Massachusetts