Simultaneous and Sequential Cognitive Processing in Monolingual and Bilingual Children in South Africa

Abstract

Academic success is correlated with simultaneous and sequential cognitive processing. The cognitive processing skills of bilingual children have come under scrutiny. Cognitive processing may be mediated by level of orthographic transparency, level of bilingualism, and language of instruction at school. Given the imperative of assessing the impact of bilingualism and multilingualism on learning, the performance of 30 monolingual English and 30 bilingual Afrikaans-English third grade children was compared on the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) simultaneous and sequential processing standard scales. The K-ABC is relatively culture fair with low language requirements. We did not find any significant differences between the two groups on the global simultaneous-sequential scales, but significant differences were found on two specific subtests of the K-ABC: Hand Movements and Matrix Analogies. Findings provide overall support for the usefulness of the K-ABC as a measure of cognitive processing for children from diverse cultural-linguistic backgrounds, but with the understanding that a monolingual and a bilingual literacy-learning environment influences cognitive processing skills on specific cognitive tasks on the K-ABC. Importantly, the unchanged Hand Movements subtest and a modified version of the Matrix Analogies subtest (i.e. Pattern Recognition) is used in the K-ABC II, not yet widely used in South Africa. This study has important implications for using the K-ABC and K-ABC II across cultural-linguistic groups, for educational purposes.