Bilingualism and Attentional Control of Cognitive Tasks

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This research shows the correlation between bilingualism and attention control of cognitive tasks.

Investigates whether the bilingual advantage in control (selective attention) can be found in a nonverbal task, the dimensional change card sort, used by P. D. Zelazo and D. Frye (e.g., 1997) to assess Cognitive Complexity and Control (CCC). The author contends this problem contains misleading information characteristic of high-control tasks but minimal demands for analysis. 60 preschool children, half of whom were bilingual, were divided into a group of younger (mean age 4.2 yrs) and older (mean age 5.4 yrs) children. All the children were given a test of English proficiency (PPVT-R; L. M. Dunn and L. M. Dunn, 1981) and working memory (Visually-Cued Recall Task) to assure comparability of the groups and then administered the dimensional change card sort task and the moving word task. The bilingual children were more advanced than the monolinguals in the solving of experimental problems requiring high levels of control. It is concluded that these results demonstrate the role of attentional control in both these tasks.

Cognitive complexity and attentional control in the bilingual mind. Child Development,70(3), 636-644. from PsycINFO database.

Bialystok , E. (1999).