Bilingualism reading group

Speaker: Maki Kubota

Title: How bilingual experience and executive control modulate development in language control among bilingual children

Abstract: This study investigates whether the development in executive control and bilingual experience predicts the improvement in language control in bilingual children. We conducted a longitudinal study by testing the children twice over the course of one year, using the language-switching paradigm and the Simon task. The participants were Japanese-English bilingual ‘returnee’ children (ages 7-13), who returned to their first language (L1) environment after spending some years in a second language (L2) dominant environment. Testing these children upon their return to the L1 environment allowed us to disentangle the effect of age from bilingual experience, as they experienced an increase in age but a decrease in L2 exposure overtime. The results showed that English mixing cost (i.e., the difference between single and mixed repetition trials) increased over time. When teasing apart this effect, we found that the children’s development on single trials that involved language-specific processing (i.e., linking concept to form) were predicted by language exposure (as well as executive control): children who had less L2 exposure showed smaller improvement in naming pictures in English. Moreover, development in trials where children had to switch between languages were modulated by development in executive control. Our findings demonstrate that both factors—executive control and bilingual experience—influenced the change in language control among bilingual children, suggesting an interplay between language control and executive control in children’s development.