Cognitive Advantage in Children Enrolled in a Second-Language Immersion Elementary School Program for One Year.

Cristina Barbu,Audrey Gonzalez,Martine Poncelet,Sophie Gillet

doi:10.5334/pb.469

Abstract

Early bilingualism has been shown to improve attentional and executive functioning. Nicolay and Poncelet (2013a, 2015) have shown that an early immersion program in school of 3 years improves the completion of tasks assessing these skills. This study aimed to determine whether similar benefits might be present after only 1 year of immersion education. The study also observed whether these potential advantages might also have a positive effect on the academic achievement. Participants included 59 immersed children and 57 monolingual controls. The two groups were compared using the same tasks as those employed by Nicolay and Poncelet (2015). The immersed children showed faster responses in comparison to monolinguals on the selective auditory task. No significant differences were observed on the other attentional, executive, or academic tasks. These outcomes suggest that a period of immersion education as short as 1 year can yield cognitive advantages associated with bilingualism.

Highlights

A large number of studies have shown that early bilingualism acquired in the home or other community settings enhances attentional and executive functioning
We hypothesized that L2 acquired through a formal one-year Content and language – Integrated learning method” (CLIL) program might have a positive indirect effect on academic achievement based on findings showing that better executive functioning is directly related to bilingualism, and seem to predict academic success. (Diamond & Daphne, 2016)
The main aim of the present study was to determine whether cognitive advantages observed on tasks assessing different attentional and executive functions acquired through a 3-year early immersion education program (Nicolay & Poncelet, 2013a, 2015)

Summary

Introduction

A large number of studies have shown that early bilingualism acquired in the home or other community settings enhances attentional and executive functioning (for a review see Bialystok, 2011, 2015) These advantages have been observed on tasks requiring conflict resolution and monitoring skills and in different agegrouped populations, such as toddlers, children, young adults, and even older adults. 2018; Paap, 2015; Paap & Greenberg, 2013; Paap, Johnson, & Sawi, 2014, 2015; Paap & Sawi, 2016; Valian, 2015) These studies suggest that there are no convincing arguments that would favor the existence of a positive effect of bilingualism on executive functioning and claim that the observed advantages could be attributed to other factors, including socioeconomic status, video games, music practice, L2 proficiency or L2 onset age (AoA), or language-switching frequency. These factors would account for the inconsistent results observed in the current literature (Boot, Kramer, Simons, Fabiani, & Gratton, 2008; Dong, 2015; Hackman et al, 2015)

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