Cognitive Advantages of a Bilingual Child
In Today’s Society
Ana Elashry
Western Governors University
In the last couple of years raising bilingual children become the thing to do. However, a couple of years back teaching children a second language would have being looked down upon. For the most part, because it was believe that bilingualism had a negative impact in a child’s cognitive abilities. On the other hand, recent studies have confirmed that being bilingual is an asset; it not only helps a child’s cognitive development but his or her cultural status as well. Bilingualism first surface in the early 1900’s when the first wave of bilingual children from immigrant parents was noticed. Bilingual children were not performing academically at the same level as the monolingual children did. At that point in time they did not really know why, so their hypothesis was that raising bilingual children had a negative effect in the cognitive development. Nevertheless, the reason why they were behind monolingual children was primarily because their socioeconomic status was different. It was not until the 1960’s that researches started to performed studies taking into consideration those factors. It was then that the myth that being bilingual had negative effects was discarded. This new wave of research open the idea that bilingualism had a positive effect in the cognitive development of children. The studies went further to suggest that teaching children a second language is beneficial because it improves concept formation, metalinguistic skills and ability to problem solve.
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The speculation that bilingual children have the ability to develop some areas of the cognitive development in more depth have being back up by many studies. Some of those studies have center around concept formation in bilingual and monolingual children. According to Diaz (1985), one of the pioneer studies of this subject was performed by Pearl & Lambert in 1962 this pair of Canadian scientist compare children who spoke French and English fluently. They were also the first ones to make sure the two groups of study the monolingual and the bilingual children came from the same socioeconomic background. This similarity formed a perfect balance to achieve accurate results. They also took into consideration that they children had the same knowledge of the two languages (Wodniecka & Cepeda, 2007).
Out of the 364 children tested all the bilingual children excel in all of the three tests performed, however they did much better in the subtest. According to Diaz (1985), “subtest required mental manipulation and reorganization of visual symbols, rather than mere perceptual abilities. A factor analysis of test score indicated that bilinguals were superior to monolinguals in concept formation….” ( p. 71).
Many researches have being performed in the trying to prove why bilingual children have an advantage in concept formation. In 1992 Lanza did a study on children as young as 1 and 2 year olds, the study proved that these young children have the ability to make language choices depending on whom they are talking to. These children have the ability to differentiate what language to use, to be able to communicate and be understood. This process of though at such a young age contributes with the development of concept formation (Goetz, 2003, p. 5).
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The concept formation theory was also study by Bain a scientist from Canada in 1974. He performed a study where children had to discover a rule. The rule would then be used to achieve an outcome. The outcome would include task that develop concept formation such as: the ability to classify and generalize. The bilingual children performed better in some of the tasks. For example Diaz (1985), mentions that bilingual children have the ability to discover additive rules faster than the monolingual, they were able to beat them by eight minutes. The same concept of study has also being performed by other scientist. According to Diaz (1985), “Similar concept-formation advantages have been observed by Liedtke & Nelson (1968) in bilingual first-graders on concepts of linear measurement” (p. 73).
This has led scientist to consider the idea that bilingual children could have an advantage in mathematical concepts. Following this idea in 1974 Bain perform a study to determine the rules required to solve linear numeral problems, and he also concluded what other scholars had agree on in earlier years about concept formation (Lee, 1996, p. 505).
On the contrary, to the scientist performing test on bilingual children there was a group of scientists that study the anatomy of the brain. That is the case of two professors from the University of Castellon Spain, they explain how bilinguals use the Broca area of the brain which is the left inferior frontal lobe. This area is used for executive functions such as organizing items either by shape or color. Quite the opposite of bilinguals the monolinguals uses the right to perform the same task (Garbin et al., 2010).
According to Bialystok and Martin (2004), other scientists believe that concept formation develop in bilingual children because from an early age they start encoding and associating words from two languages. They have the ability to see words in an abstract level not just the fact that a word has a meaning. By doing this they create a higher hierarchical process allowing them to be better at concept formation.
From all the studies in bilingual children metalinguistic ability has always stand out as one of the cognitive development that is further develop in these children. This is how Hakuta (1986), defines Metalinguistic ability “This mouthful of a term refers to the ability to think flexibly and abstractly about language…In children, this can be seen in the ability to make judgment about the grammar of sentences and to appreciate plays on words in jokes” (p. 4).
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The hypothesis is that although monolingual and bilingual children have metalinguistic abilities, bilingual children have the capacity to regulate the mental process more efficiently because of the advantage of being bilingual. On the other hand, research with monolingual children in the literature field has demonstrated that they have the ability to read earlier. Moreover, bilingual children have also demonstrated the ability to learn the basics of reading faster. Additionally, there was a study performed in Connecticut with Puerto Rican children; these children were in a bilingual program learning English, the children started to show advantage in the metalinguistic abilities even in their native language as well as nonverbal intelligence. This proves that bilingual children transfer their knowledge of one language to the other language (Hakuta, 1986).
Translating is also a metalinguistic skill that has been notice in bilingual children. It has being demonstrated they have the ability to translate as early as in fourth and fifth grade. There have being studies that show that children make mistakes when translating. To clear this point Hakuta (1990), mentions a study performed by Zentella in 1981 proving that when bilingual children make mistakes is not because of language confusion, but instead because code-switching. Code- switching is when a bilingual person borrows words from one language to make her or his point clearer. Overall scientists have come to the conclusion that translation has a constructive effect in children literacy skills. According to Myers (2008), “Bilinguals also have a greater awareness of meaning and structure in language because they have two languages from which they can draw generalizations about the characteristics of languages instead of one” (p.18).
They also have the ability to learn another language easier than monolinguals. On the contrary, there are some drawbacks that scientist have found in bilingual children. For example, children learning two languages tend to have a smaller vocabulary because they have two learn two words for just one object. Older bilingual children are faced using the grammar structure of one language with the other language. However, all being said bilingual children have the ability in their own mind to create strategies to keep the two languages separated; this is a perfect sample of metalinguistic skills (Myers, 2008, p. 20).
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While researching the idea that bilingual children can have grammar problems between languages Bialystok and Martin (2004) found the following:
In metalinguistic tasks, bilingual children were better than monolinguals at judging the grammaticality of sentences that contained distracting semantic anomalies (Apples grow on noses) but both groups were equivalent in detecting errors in sentences that had grammatical violations but no distracting information (Apples on tree grow).
(p.326)
According to Marcos (1998), in a recent study of 134 children between the ages of four and five-year old, they concluded that bilingual children do better in the concept of print task. Print task is when a child understands that the meaning of a word does not change when the word is moved to represent another picture. Scientist also call this ability general symbolic representation of print another branch of metalinguistic ability.
A metalinguistic skill is the area that has being study the most since bilingualism develops in this cognitive area. According to Lee (1996), Ianco-Worrall (1972) in South Africa study children that spoke English and Afrikaans, these children were between the ages of 4 and 9. They did a test call Semantic-Phonetic Preference Test, the test measures the phonetic and semantic dimensions in children. The results demonstrated that bilingual children were between two to three years ahead of the monolingual children. According to Lee (1996), another interesting study is the one conducted by Ben-Zeev in 1977 he study what is call “symbol substitution” with children proficient in Hebrew and English. According to Lee (1996), “Such tasks are designed to measure children’s awareness of language features as well as the ability to control the automatic production of correct sentences” (p. 505).
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The study once again proved that bilingual children outperformed monolingual children in this field as well. No matter how many problems bilingual children might encounter in their metalinguistic skills these children would accomplish the same milestones as monolingual children. In order for bilingual children to meet those milestones they just diverse strategies to accomplish them (Nauert, 2010).
Thinking in creative ways and having the ability to process different concepts and creating a relationship between them at once are abilities that Ben-Zeev in 1997 study in bilingual children. These skills are of great importance in problem-solving another cognitive function that develops in bilingual children (Myers, 2008, p. 16).
Myers goes on to mention that bilingual children tend to look at the whole picture putting into perspective all the solutions when they encounter a challenging situation. Their minds have the ability to acknowledge that the first solution that comes to their mind is not always the correct one. These children are very attentive to the cues around them, allowing them to focus better in the problem they are trying to resolve. Myers also concluded that bilingual children have the ability “to switch between tasks more quickly than those who know only one language, and may even have improved multi-tasking ability as a result.
Many studies have being performed to exhibit the advantage bilingual children have in problem solving. For instance, Werner Leopold in (1949) echoed what the study performed by a Russian psychologist in (1932) concluded that bilingualism accelerates the development of conceptual reasoning by releasing the child mind from concreteness (Diaz, 1985, p. 69).
Researchers also observe that bilingual children have an exceptional control of attention, while they were furthering their studies in problem solving. A substantial amount of studies performed have concluded that bilingualism allows children to have better control of their attention mainly in misleading situations. According to Goetz (2003),
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Bialystok found that bilingual children can figure out problems that contain misleading information at a younger age. For example, children in both groups were told that moon means sun and sun means moon. Then they were asked to think of the sky at night when the “sun” is up. What’s the sky like? The correct answer is “dark.”Scientists believe this ability develops because the children have to constantly attend to one language ignoring the other language (p. 4).
Another common assumption why bilingual children are at an advantage in problem solving is that they have the capacity to perceive when others don’t understand their language. This situation trains them to approved their theory of others understanding and intentions. This gives an advantage to the bilingual children over the monolingual because they can sort out problems of intention and perspective (Goetz, 2003, p. 5).
After many years of research and hard work the myth of bilingualism having a negative effect in the cognitive development of children was finally proven wrong, not by one but by many studies. Raising bilingual children or teaching a second language to children can only be beneficial, all the recent research show that the cognitive development in these children is more advance than in monolingual children in many areas. Bilingual education is based on the principal that the knowledge of one language would convey to the other language. Bilingual children are place in situations where they have to figure out what language to use helping them develop their concept formation. They are also taught two sets of vocabulary exposing them to different mechanics in language increasing their metalinguistic skills. Finally from an early age bilingual children also start thinking very creatively, and have the ability to maintain two thoughts of process at the same time. They also have to learn from a very early age what language to use by determining their surroundings; this allows them to have a better grasp in problem solving. Overall bilingualism can only be beneficial to the cognitive development of a child, no matter what negativism has being said studies show the contrary. Bilingualism is an asset for children. These children have the ability to develop better in any kind of culture they are exposed to since they would be able to cope easier to changes and be more open minded to different scenarios.
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