ERIC Number: EJ1176591
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018-Mar
Pages: 33
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0272-2631
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Identifying a Threshold for the Executive Function Advantage in Bilingual Children
De Cat, Cecile; Gusnanto, Arief; Serratrice, Ludovica
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, v40 n1 p119-151 Mar 2018
The literature exploring the executive function correlates of bilingualism is vast, but to date, few studies have concentrated on children, for whom the bilingual advantage appears even more inconsistent than for adults. We investigate a highly heterogeneous group of children (in terms of bilingual experience and socioeconomic status) and identify the critical threshold of bilingual experience from which an advantage can be observed at group level. The modeling methods adopted allow the use of fine-grained, continuous factors for age and socioeconomic status, thereby effectively controlling for their effect and isolating the specific effect of bilingual experience. We pioneer the use of Cox Proportional Hazard regression to analyze performance in the Simon task. This allows the modeling of "all" data points without transformation or outlier removal, and captures both accuracy and reaction time within the same analysis, while being able to handle multiple predictor variables.
Descriptors: Executive Function, Bilingualism, Children, Socioeconomic Status, Regression (Statistics), Models, Predictor Variables
Cambridge University Press. 100 Brook Hill Drive, West Nyack, NY 10994-2133. Tel: 800-872-7423; Tel: 845-353-7500; Fax: 845-353-4141; e-mail: subscriptions_newyork@cambridge.org; Web site: http://journals.cambridge.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A