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Cognitive development of bilingual children

Raluca Barac and Ellen Bialystok

Language Teaching / Volume 44 / Issue 01 / January 2011, pp 36 - 54

DOI: 10.1017/S0261444810000339, Published online: 03 December 2010

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0261444810000339

How to cite this article:

Raluca Barac and Ellen Bialystok (2011). Cognitive development of bilingual children. Language
Teaching, 44, pp 36-54 doi:10.1017/S0261444810000339

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 Lang. Teach. (2011), 44.1, 36–54 
c Cambridge University Press 2011
doi:10.1017/S0261444810000339

Research Timeline

Cognitive development of bilingual children

Raluca Barac & Ellen Bialystok York University, Toronto, Canada

rbarac@yorku.ca, ellenb@yorku.ca

There has always been a common-sense view that the number of languages that children
learn, whether through natural exposure or educational intervention, has consequences for
their development. The assumption was that these consequences were potentially damaging.
Even now, after approximately 50 years of research on the topic, parents remain concerned
about their children’s development when it includes a bilingual experience. It is now clear that
although parents were correct that speaking more than one language has consequences, the
assumption about the nature of these consequences is not: the outcome of the experience is in
fact the opposite of what many early researchers claimed and what many contemporary
parents intuitively believe. In contrast to early warnings about negative consequences,
bilingualism turns out to be an experience that BENEFITS many aspects of children’s
development. Although there are documented delays in acquiring some formal aspects of each
language, such as vocabulary (Bialystok 2010), bilingualism has either no effect (intelligence)
or positive effects (metalinguistic awareness, cognitive development) on development.
There are many reasons why the early research was consistent in its negative conclusions,
but two of them are (a) the way in which the question was formulated and (b) the methodology
used to conduct the research. Regarding the first, the early research focused primarily on
intelligence as defined by standardized test scores. It is not at all clear what is measured by such
tests, but we do know that IQ scores are strongly influenced by such factors as socioeconomic
status (SES). Furthermore, IQ is a conglomerate measure that tells us little about specific
aspects of intellectual functioning. In this sense, there is no compelling reason to expect that
bilingualism per se, or at least bilingualism on its own, would influence IQ score outcomes. In
the early studies, bilingual children actually scored lower than monolinguals on these tests,
but it soon became apparent that the problem was in the second factor mentioned above,
namely, methodology. In most studies, bilingual children were lower SES than monolinguals;
when subsequent studies controlled for SES, IQ differences between groups disappeared.
Similarly, bilingual children often have poorer verbal skills in the language of testing than
monolingual children, a factor that was not considered in comparing performance on tests
that typically have a high verbal component.
The field has progressed through the examination of different domains in search of bilingual
effects on development. Following the early studies on measures of standardized intelligence,
during the 1970s and 1980s interest turned to language acquisition and to metalinguistic
development in particular. This was a sensible place to seek evidence of bilingual effects
on development, and, indeed, the studies showed almost uniformly positive outcomes for

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 BARAC & BIALYSTOK: DEVELOPMENT OF BILINGUAL CHILDREN 37

bilinguals. Learning two languages in childhood changed the way in which children could
think about language. Such metalinguistic insights are a central component of academic
success in that they are in part what schools are designed to teach. Therefore, another line of
research examined the effect of bilingualism on school achievement, in particular on literacy
and mathematical abilities. Along with this, research began investigating the impact of new
educational programs in which a language not necessarily used in the home was the medium
of school instruction. Research in immersion education began in the late 1960s, but more
focused studies on literacy and mathematical abilities were more prevalent in the 1990s.
An active focus of research since 2000 has been the effect of bilingualism on cognitive
ability: specifically, the set of cognitive abilities known as the executive function. These are
the processes responsible for attention, selection, inhibition, shifting and flexibility that are at
the centre of all higher thought. Exciting new research is now providing strong evidence that
early bilingualism has the power to set in place precocious development of these crucial skills.
Our review traces the main developments in this research by focusing on its evolution from
the search for effects of bilingualism on intelligence, through interest in linguistic outcomes, to
school achievement and, finally, to cognitive development. In some sense, the advancement
of the field depended on the two points noted above, namely, getting the question right and
designing an appropriate methodology. But there may have been a third factor responsible for
the dire conclusions of the early research: there may have been a pre-existing bias to believe
that bilingualism was harmful for children. Throughout each of the four thematic areas
examined there is early evidence for either neutral or even positive outcomes of bilingualism,
but negative claims typically continue for 20 years beyond those initial findings. Thus, for
example, the result reported by Darcy (1946) showing superior bilingual performance on
non-verbal tasks, in conjunction with poorer performance on verbal tasks, is precisely the
result found in the most current research, but the study was nonetheless used to support the
view that bilingualism created a handicap for children.
The next stage in this research will be to engage in systematic studies of the consequences
of bilingualism on structural and functional brain outcomes. This research is just beginning,
and the next decade will take us to exciting new levels of understanding.
Our review is organized around the four major outcome variables examined in the
literature we review.
A Intelligence
A1: Verbal IQ test performance
A2: Non-verbal IQ test performance
A3: Creativity

B Metalinguistic awareness
C School achievement
C1 Literacy
C2 Mathematics

D Cognition
D1 Theory of mind (i.e., the ability to attribute mental states to other people)
D2 Executive functioning

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 38 RESEARCH TIMELINE

References

Bialystok, E., G. Luk, K. F. Peets & S. Yang (2010). Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual
and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 13, 525–531.
Darcy, N. T. (1946). The effect of bilingualism upon the measurement of the intelligence of children of
preschool age. The Journal of Educational Psychology 37, 21–44.

RALUCA BARAC is a graduate student in the Department of Psychology at York University, Toronto,
Canada. Her research investigates the effect of bilingualism on children’s cognitive development and
electrophysiological outcomes as measured by event-related potentials (ERP).
ELLEN BIALYSTOK is Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at York University. Her research
examines the effect of bilingualism on cognitive ability across the lifespan.

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 YEAR REFERENCES ANNOTATIONS THEME

1923 Saer, D. J. (1923). The effect of bilingualism on This is one of the earliest studies claiming that speaking two languages leads A
intelligence. The British Journal of Psychology 14, 25–38. to detrimental cognitive effects in children. Saer compared monolingual and

BARAC & BIALYSTOK: DEVELOPMENT OF BILINGUAL CHILDREN

Welsh–English bilingual children coming from rural or urban backgrounds
and reported that bilingual children from rural areas obtained significantly
lower scores than monolinguals on the Stanford-Binet Scale of intelligence.
Later criticism pointed out that groups were not matched for age,
socioeconomic status (SES) and degree of bilingualism.

1935 Manuel, H. T. (1935). A comparison of Manuel moved from measuring IQ as in the earlier studies to focusing on C
Spanish-speaking and English-speaking children in school outcomes. He compared Spanish-speaking and English-speaking
reading and arithmetic. Journal of Applied Psychology 19, children (grades 2–8), who were instructed in English on reading and
189–202. arithmetic tasks. The Spanish-speaking children lagged behind the
English-speaking children on both arithmetic (approximately 1.5 years) and
reading measures (approximately 2 years) and the gap persisted through
grade 8. Additionally, Spanish-speaking children gained less between the two
testing points (fall-spring) on reading measures but showed similar gains on
arithmetic performance to the English-speaking children. It was argued that
the results reflected discontinuous schooling of the Spanish-speaking group,
creating a ‘language handicap’. Again, however, the groups were not
matched on SES, with the Spanish-speaking children coming from lower
SES backgrounds. Nonetheless, the study was used to support the view that
bilingualism interferes with children’s school success.

1936 Hill, H. S. (1936). The effect of bilingualism on the Hill investigated the effect of bilingualism on intelligence by comparing A
measured intelligence of elementary school children monolingual and Italian–English bilingual children who were matched on
of Italian parentage. The Journal of Experimental age, gender, mental age and socioeconomic status. Having matched the
Education 5, 75–79. groups more carefully, this was the first study to show that there were no
differences between monolingual and bilingual children on any of the
measures. Importantly, this early study showed no detriment to intelligence
from bilingualism but the view that it was harmful continued for another 25
years.

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 40 RESEARCH TIMELINE
1937 Pintner, R. & S. Arsenian (1937). The relation of The researchers investigated the relationship between degree of bilingualism, A
bilingualism to verbal intelligence and school verbal intelligence, and school adjustment (as measured by a questionnaire).
adjustment. Journal of Educational Research 31, 255–263. Participants were Jewish–English bilingual children in grades 6 and 7 who
were divided into two groups (high and low bilinguals) based on their scores
on a questionnaire assessing the degree of bilingualism. The two groups were
matched on SES. The authors found no differences between the high and
low bilingual groups on any of the measures and null correlations between
the degree of bilingualism and verbal intelligence scores. This study was
important because it was one of the first to look more carefully at the
definition of bilingualism.

1937 Arsenian, S. (1937). Bilingualism and mental development. Arsenian proposed five factors to be considered when conducting A
New York, NY: College Press. bilingualism research: degree of bilingualism, degree of similarity of the two
languages, age of learning, method of learning and attitude toward the L2.
The author found no support for the early studies reporting negative
outcomes nor was there acceleration of mental development as measured by
intelligence tests. Again, the conclusion of this book was ignored.

1939– Leopold, W. F. (1939–1949). Speech development of a In this seminal four-volume work, Leopold followed the development of his B
1949 bilingual child: a linguist’s record. Evanston, IL: daughter, Hildegard, who was exposed to English and German from birth in
Northwestern University Press. a one-parent one-language environment. Leopold noted that his daughter
could tell a story in two languages, showed awareness of the two languages,
and experienced minimal interference between the languages. Noteworthy is
the observation that this bilingual experience had some benefits on the child’s
language development. For instance, Hildegard showed an early ability to
separate word form from word meaning (‘a noticeable looseness of the link
between the phonetic word and its meaning’, as Leopold wrote later in
19531 , p. 13), and to understand the arbitrariness of linguistic labels, which
was believed by Leopold to lead to more abstract forms of thinking. Although
Leopold’s investigation was primarily about language acquisition, he pointed
to the possibility of enhanced metalinguistic awareness, providing the first
link between bilingualism and cognitive systems.

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 YEAR REFERENCES ANNOTATIONS THEME

1940 Stark, W. A. (1940). The effect of bilingualism on Stark compared Irish–English bilinguals and English monolinguals (aged A
general intelligence: An investigation carried out in 10–12) on two measures of verbal intelligence and one individual

BARAC & BIALYSTOK: DEVELOPMENT OF BILINGUAL CHILDREN

certain Dublin primary schools. British Journal of performance test. Bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on one verbal
Educational Psychology 10, 78–79. measure, but the pattern was reversed on the other. The two language groups
did not differ in their performance on the non-verbal test. The author
interpreted the results as showing that learning two languages has positive
consequences on cognitive development and does not bring any cost to the
home language.

1946 Darcy, N. T. (1946). The effect of bilingualism upon Darcy tested English monolingual and Italian–English bilingual children A
the measurement of the intelligence of children of aged 2.5–4.5 on verbal (Revision of the Stanford-Binet Scale) and non-verbal
preschool age. The Journal of Educational Psychology 37, (Atkins Object-fitting Test) tests of intelligence. Children were matched on
21–44. age, socioeconomic status and gender. Results showed an interesting
dissociation: bilingual children outperformed monolinguals on the
non-verbal test and the monolinguals showed superior performance on the
verbal test. The author concluded that bilinguals suffered from a ‘language
handicap’ but did not discuss their superior non-verbal performance.

1953 Darcy, N. T. (1953). A review of the literature on the In this extensive review, Darcy identified and discussed three main patterns A
effects of bilingualism upon the measurement of of results found in studies examining the cognitive consequences of
intelligence. Journal of Genetic Psychology 82, 21–57. bilingualism: positive effects or no reliable differences (i.e. a minority of
studies) and negative effects (most studies conducted until the 1950s). Darcy
concluded that when intelligence testing included verbal measures,
monolingual children outperformed bilinguals, but on non-verbal measures
monolingual and bilingual children generally performed similarly. In a later
review (Darcy 19632 ), the author found the same general trend in
performance between monolinguals and bilinguals, with bilingualism
producing costs in verbal intelligence tests and no difference in non-verbal
intelligence. Darcy also pointed out that some early research determined
bilingualism on the basis of parents’ names or country of birth. This analysis

41
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 42 RESEARCH TIMELINE
clearly blamed early negative outcomes to methodological flaws and set the
stage for finding cognitive benefits of bilingualism. Interestingly, Darcy’s view
of linguistic costs and possible cognitive benefits is the position advocated in
most current research.

1959 Kittell, J. E. (1959). Bilingualism and language: Kittell examined monolingual and bilingual third graders’ performance on A
non-language intelligence scores of third grade the language and non-language sections of the California Test of Mental
children. Journal of Educational Research 52, 263–268. Maturity. The bilingual children formed a heterogeneous group speaking a
total of fifteen non-English languages. Bilingual and monolingual children
obtained similar performance on the reading tests in English and similar IQ.
The author argued for the inclusion of measures other than standardized
intelligence tests when comparing monolingual and bilingual children.

1959 Lewis, D. G. (1959). Bilingualism and non-verbal Lewis compared 10-year-old monolingual and Welsh–English bilingual A
intelligence: A further study of test results. British children on a non-verbal intelligence test to shed light on the inconsistent
Journal of Educational Psychology 29, 17–22. results reported in previous studies. This study is important because it was
the first to use a language questionnaire to quantify the degree of
bilingualism, but the groups were not matched on SES. The main finding
was that monolinguals outperformed bilinguals on these IQ measures.

1961 Lerea, L. & S. Kohut (1961). A comparative study of The aim was to investigate the performance of monolingual and bilingual C
monolinguals and bilinguals in a verbal task children aged 9–11 on a task requiring learning Hebrew characters both
performance. Journal of Clinical Psychology 17, 49–52. visually and auditorily. Bilingual children (most of whom spoke Polish as the
non-English language) were matched to monolinguals in terms of gender,
age, socioeconomic status and intelligence. The bilingual children needed
fewer trials to acquire the same performance as monolinguals. The authors
argued for ‘the presence of a learning potential among bilinguals that has yet
to be recognized’ (p. 52), acknowledging the possibility of broad bilingual
learning advantages.

1962 Peal, E. & W. E. Lambert (1962). The relation of This is the first study to provide strong empirical evidence showing positive A
bilingualism to intelligence. Psychological Monographs: effects of bilingualism in children. Peal & Lambert compared 10-year-old
General and Applied 76, 1–23. monolingual and French–English bilingual children on verbal and

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 YEAR REFERENCES ANNOTATIONS THEME

non-verbal intelligence tests. The children were matched on age, SES and
gender and bilinguals were fully competent in both languages, i.e. ‘balanced

BARAC & BIALYSTOK: DEVELOPMENT OF BILINGUAL CHILDREN

bilinguals’. Contrary to the findings of earlier work, bilingual children
outperformed monolinguals on both verbal and non-verbal measures of
intelligence. These results were used as a justification for setting up French
Immersion programs in Canada where Anglophone children would be
educated in French. That movement was an important link between the
intellectual consequences of bilingualism (theme A) and outcomes in school
achievement (theme C) and educational policy.

1966 Macnamara, J. (1966). Bilingualism and primary Macnamara examined the impact of the program to restore Irish language C
education: A study of Irish experience. Edinburgh: The in school on children’s arithmetic and English attainment. Children from
University Press. English-speaking homes spent about half their time in primary schooling
using Irish. Macnamara reported that these children were about 17 months
behind children studying in English on written English tests and behind
Irish-speaking children on tests of written Irish. Similarly, teaching arithmetic
in Irish was associated with ‘retardation’ in problem, but not in mechanical,
arithmetic. The author concluded that the most ‘grave’ consequence of this
program of Irish language restoration is the low English language
attainment. These results and conclusions were opposite to those reported for
French immersion in Canada (LAMBERT & MACNAMARA 19693 ).

1969 Lambert, W. E. & J. Macnamara (1969). Some This study examined the consequences of a French immersion program by C
cognitive consequences of following a first-grade comparing grade one children from English-speaking homes who were
curriculum in a second language. Journal of Educational instructed in French to children attending English or French classes. After
Psychology 60, 86–96. one year of immersion, these children showed similar mathematical
performance to the other two control groups. On the language tasks,
children instructed in their L2 showed rapid progress in learning French and
transfer to their English skills. Unlike in previous studies, no negative
consequences were found for immersion education.

43
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 1970 Torrance, E. P., J. C. Gowan, J. M. Wu & N. C. Torrance et al. tested a large sample of monolingual and bilingual children A

44 RESEARCH TIMELINE
Aliotti (1970). Creative functioning of monolingual in Singapore (grades 3–5) on a measure of creativity – the Figural Form of
and bilingual children in Singapore. Journal of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking. Monolinguals outperformed
Educational Psychology 61, 72–75. bilinguals on two measures of creativity (i.e. fluency and flexibility) but
bilinguals scored higher on two other measures (elaboration and originality).
This study helped to specify which aspects of intelligence might be affected
by bilingualism so that future studies could be more precise.

1971 Feldman, C. & M. Shen (1971). Some The main direction of research in the 1970s was the development of B
language-related cognitive advantages of bilingual metalinguistic awareness. In this early study on the topic, five-year-old
five-year-olds. Journal of Genetic Psychology 118, Spanish–English bilinguals and English monolinguals attending the Head
235–244. Start program in the United States received tasks assessing their
understanding of object constancy, the arbitrary nature of words, and their
ability to use three types of labels (standard, non-words and
common-switched) in sentences. Bilinguals were better than monolingual
children in their ability to switch familiar labels and use various types of
labels in the context of sentences. It was suggested that this precocious
development in bilinguals was due to the fact that bilinguals operate on ‘two
language codes’. The study was the first to clearly document metalinguistic
advantages in bilingual children. Evidence for differential development of
metalinguistic awareness set the stage for discovering the non-verbal
cognitive advantages 20 years later.

1972 Ianco-Worrall, A. (1972). Bilingualism and cognitive Ianco-Worrall set out to empirically test Leopold’s observation (LEOPOLD B
development. Child Development 43, 1390–1400. 1939–1949) that bilingual children show an early separation of word sound
from word meaning. Afrikaans–English bilinguals and monolinguals in
Afrikaans or English matched on IQ , age (4–6 and 7–9), SES and grade
level, completed metalinguistic tasks. The young bilinguals were more likely
than monolinguals to treat words as arbitrary labels and showed a strong
preference for semantic over phonetic similarity when asked to match words
for similarity. This preference for semantic similarity was observed only in
older monolingual children, again supporting precocious metalinguistic
development in bilingual children.

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 YEAR REFERENCES ANNOTATIONS THEME

1974 Bain, B. (1974). Bilingualism and cognition: Toward Bain examined problem-solving abilities and sensitivity to emotional D
a general theory. In S. T. Carey (ed.), Bilingualism, expressions in 11-year-old monolinguals and French–English bilinguals
biculturalism, and education. Edmonton, Canada: matched on SES, IQ and academic performance. Bilinguals performed
University of Alberta, 119–128. better than monolingual children in solving problems based on logical

BARAC & BIALYSTOK: DEVELOPMENT OF BILINGUAL CHILDREN

operations and in identifying emotional expressions of characters depicted in
portraits. Bain concluded that ‘the bilingual child has a greater cognitive
plasticity than his unilingual counterpart’ (p. 127). This was the first study to
claim cognitive advantages in problem solving, but the tasks were not defined
with sufficient precision to determine which aspects of cognition were
affected by bilingualism or why.

1974 Cummins, J. & M. Gulutsan (1974). Some effects of The authors administered tests of memory, reasoning and divergent thinking B
bilingualism on cognitive functioning. In S. T. Carey using both verbal and spatial stimuli to 11-year-old monolingual and
(ed.), Bilingualism, biculturalism, and education. bilingual children. Bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on verbal ability,
Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta, 129–136. general reasoning and originality, but the pattern was reversed for memory
performance. The authors suggested that the bilingual’s outperformance in
general reasoning and verbal ability is the result of a common mechanism
that emerges from having two labels for the same referent. This idea
anticipates later research proposing a general mechanism underlying
bilingualism-related changes. The authors’ findings were interpreted in terms
of enriched metalinguistic awareness for bilingual children.

1974 Landry, R. G. (1974). A comparison of second Landry tested the hypothesis that learning an L2 enhances children’s A
language learners and monolinguals on divergent divergent thinking abilities. Children in grades 1, 4 and 6 who attended a
thinking tasks at the elementary school level. The Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES) program were compared
Modern Language Journal 58, 10–15. to children in regular school programs on their performance on the Torrance
Tests of Creative Thinking. Only in grade 6 was there a significant benefit for
children learning another language. Landry concluded that sufficient
experience with the two languages was required for benefits to emerge, which
is in line with the ‘threshold hypothesis’ developed later by Cummins
(Cummins 19764 ). Landry also proposed that learning two languages
promoted the ability to switch between tasks, a skill essential for modern

45
concepts of multi-tasking, anticipating later research on bilingual advantages
in executive control.

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 46 RESEARCH TIMELINE
1976 Barick, H. C. & M. Swain (1976). A longitudinal This is the first longitudinal study to examine the effects of becoming A
study of bilingual and cognitive development. bilingual on children’s intelligence. The authors compared children enrolled
International Journal of Psychology 11, 251–263. in a French-immersion program (from senior kindergarten to grade 4) and
children attending regular English programs. An initial analysis showed that
the two groups did not differ in the magnitude of IQ increase over the period
tested, suggesting that learning an L2 is not associated with cognitive
benefits. However, when the immersion group was divided according to
French proficiency, the high-French achievers obtained higher IQ scores than
lower-French-achievers even when the results were adjusted for the effect of
grade and IQ at the end of kindergarten. Again, the results support the idea
that the level of language proficiency has to be considered when discussing
the effects of bilingualism, an idea that had been proposed by Arsenian
almost four decades earlier (ARSENIAN 1937) and would be discussed in more
detail by CUMMINS (1979).

1977 Bruck, M., W. E. Lambert & G. R. Tucker (1977). This study examined children from English-speaking families who were C
Bilingual schooling through the elementary grades: instructed in an L2 (French) for seven years. Compared to control
the St. Lambert project at grade seven. Language monolingual groups or to the norms of standardized tests, these children
Learning 24, 183–204. showed similar academic performance and achieved high levels of French
proficiency. These results offer strong support to the earlier tentative findings
showing no detrimental effects after one year of education in an L2.

1977 Ben-Zeev, S. (1977). The influence of bilingualism on Ben-Zeev tested monolingual children (English or Hebrew) and B
cognitive strategy and cognitive development. Child Hebrew–English bilingual children (7 years old) to examine the cognitive
Development 48, 1009–1018. strategies developed in the process of learning two languages. There were
three outcome measures: syntactic rule usage, semantic knowledge and
non-verbal processing. In spite of lower receptive vocabulary scores,
bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on the other measures. The author
suggested that bilingual children show a more analytic processing approach
that is evident in verbal tasks and that this carries over to certain non-verbal,
spatial-perceptual tasks. The study anticipated later research (e.g. BIALYSTOK
1999) showing non-verbal cognitive advantages for bilingual children.

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 YEAR REFERENCES ANNOTATIONS THEME

1978 Cummins, J. & R. Mulcahy (1978). Orientation to The authors compared three groups of children (Ukrainian–English B
language in Ukrainian-English bilingual children. bilinguals, Ukrainian L2 learners, and English monolinguals) matched on
Child Development 49, 1239–1242. SES, non-verbal IQ , sex and age, attending grades one and three, on a set of

BARAC & BIALYSTOK: DEVELOPMENT OF BILINGUAL CHILDREN

metalinguistic tasks. The tasks assessed ability to analyze linguistic structures
and detect ambiguities, and to understand the arbitrary nature of linguistic
labels. Bilingual children performed better than monolinguals on most tasks.
Although the bilingual metalinguistic advantage was found by past studies
(e.g. FELDMAN & SHEN 1971), the present paper used different tasks and the
bilingual children spoke different languages.

1978 Cummins, J. (1978). Bilingualism and the Irish–English bilinguals and English monolinguals in grades three and six B
development of metalinguistic awareness. Journal of matched on age, SES, IQ and sex received tasks assessing the understanding
Cross-Cultural Psychology 9, 131–149. of the stability of word meanings (e.g. what does ‘giraffe’ mean if no more
giraffes are left in the world?), the arbitrary nature of linguistic labels (e.g.
whether it is possible to interchange word labels if one decides to make up
words), the non-physical nature of words (e.g. whether the word ‘book’ is
made of paper), and evaluation of the truth nature of empirical (e.g. ‘The
counter in my hand is yellow and it is not green’) and non-empirical (e.g.
‘Either the counter in my hand is white or it is not white’) statements.
Bilinguals at both grades showed a better understanding of the arbitrary
nature of linguistic labels and greater ease in evaluating non-empirical
contradictory statements.

1979 Cummins, J. (1979). Linguistic interdependence and This paper explains the interdependence of language and cognitive ability in B, C
the educational development of bilingual children. bilingual children through the ‘threshold hypothesis’. The idea is that a
Review of Educational Research 49, 222–251. bilingual child must achieve certain levels of proficiency in both languages in
order to avoid negative developmental outcomes and show cognitive benefits.
Therefore, it is the attainment of adequate LEVELS of proficiency in the L1
that leads to positive cognitive and academic consequences for the bilingual
child. This paper is important because Cummins elaborates on the idea
that the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive/academic outcomes
is mediated by the level of language proficiency, which helps to explain some

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of the inconsistent findings reported by past research.

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 1983 Diaz, R. M. (1983). Thought and two languages: the Diaz identified two methodological flaws in early bilingualism research: the A, B,

48 RESEARCH TIMELINE
impact of bilingualism on cognitive development. use of monolingual and bilingual groups with different SES backgrounds and D
Review of Research in Education 10, 23–54. failure to quantify the degree of bilingualism. He showed that in carefully
controlled studies bilingualism led to improvements in various aspects of
cognitive functioning such as cognitive flexibility (stemming, he argued, from
the experience of switching between the two languages), metalinguistic
awareness (in contrast to the early research talking about ‘mental confusion’
(SAER 1923)), concept formation, divergent thinking and creativity, and
field-independence.

1985 Diaz, R. M. (1985). Bilingual cognitive development: Two groups of Spanish–English bilingual children (aged 5–7), with varying B, D
addressing three gaps in current research. Child degrees of proficiency in English and attending a bilingual education
Development 56, 1376–1388. program, were tested at two time points. In contrast to the prediction made
by Cummins’ threshold hypothesis (CUMMINS 1976), Diaz found a strong
relationship between degree of bilingualism and cognitive abilities in children
with low English proficiency, suggesting that it is the efforts of learning an L2,
rather than the increasing language proficiency, that leads to cognitive
benefits. At the second testing, children with low English proficiency who
were also from a lower SES background showed significant progress and
differed from the highly proficient group on only one measure. This suggests
that a bilingual education program has the potential to compensate for the
negative effects associated with lower SES, which is consistent with positive
effects of immersion programs (e.g. BRUCK ET AL. 1977).

1986 Bialystok, E. (1986). Factors in the growth of Although previous studies (e.g. CUMMINS & MULCAHY 1978) found that B
linguistic awareness. Child Development 57, 498–510. bilingual children outperformed monolinguals on tasks of metalinguistic
awareness, the explanations proposed were vague and formulated in terms of
bilinguals showing a greater orientation to language. Bialystok proposed
that metalinguistic awareness relies on two skill components: analysis of
linguistic knowledge and control of attentional process. She hypothesized
that bilinguals outperform monolinguals on tasks requiring high levels of
control. To test this hypothesis, Bialystok compared monolingual and
bilingual children (ages 5, 7 and 9) on a sentence judgment task and

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 YEAR REFERENCES ANNOTATIONS THEME

manipulated the analysis and control demands by creating sentences that (i) B
had intact grammar and meaning, (ii) had grammatical error but intact
meaning, (iii) had meaning anomalies but were grammatically intact (i.e. high
control demands), and (iv) had both grammatical and semantic anomalies.

BARAC & BIALYSTOK: DEVELOPMENT OF BILINGUAL CHILDREN

Bilingual children found it easier to judge the sentences requiring high levels
of control, suggesting that bilingualism boosts children’s ability to ignore
irrelevant information. The description of tasks in terms of analytic and
control demands is an important contribution to research because it offers a
framework for understanding and interpreting bilingual processing.

1988 Bialystok, E. (1988). Levels of bilingualism and levels Bialystok used the analysis and control framework to investigate the B
of linguistic awareness. Developmental Psychology 24, relationship between degree of bilingualism and metalinguistic awareness.
560–567. The results showed that bilingual children had better control of processing
than monolinguals and that bilingual children with higher proficiency in
their L2 had better analysis skills than children of lower proficiency.

1992 Ricciardelli, L. A. (1992). Bilingualism and cognitive Ricciardelli compared 5- to 6-year-old monolingual and Italian–English B, C
development in relation to threshold theory. Journal of bilinguals on measures of creativity, metalinguistic awareness, non-verbal
Psycholinguistic Research 21, 301–316. abilities and reading achievement to test the hypothesis derived from the
threshold theory that high levels of proficiency in bilinguals lead to cognitive
benefits and lack of cognitive disadvantages. The highly proficient bilinguals
in this study showed enhancement in several (but not all) tested abilities. In
line with the threshold theory (CUMMINS 1979), bilingual children with low
proficiency in both languages performed worse than bilingual children with
high proficiency in at least one language, but did not differ from
low-proficiency monolinguals.

1997 Bialystok, E. (1997). Effects of bilingualism and Bialystok tested three groups of 4- and 5-year-old children (English B, C
biliteracy on children’s emerging concepts of print. monolinguals, French–English bilinguals and Chinese–English bilinguals) on
Developmental Psychology 33, 429–440. tasks assessing the understanding of how print refers to language. Bilingual
children showed better understanding of the symbolic representation of the
written word. There were differences between the French and Chinese
groups in some tasks, indicating a role for the relation between languages in

49
this development.

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 50 RESEARCH TIMELINE
1998 Bialystok, E. & S. Majumder (1998). The relationship This is the first study to use cognitive tasks to assess non-verbal ability rather D
between bilingualism and the development of than intelligence tests. The study compared balanced bilinguals, partial
cognitive processes in problem solving. Applied bilinguals and monolinguals on non-verbal tasks that varied in their demands
Psycholinguistics 19, 69–85. for analysis and control. Balanced bilinguals outperformed the other two
groups when the problems relied heavily on control, with greater effects for
higher levels of bilingualism.

1999 Bialystok, E. (1999). Cognitive complexity and Bilingual and monolingual children (ages 4 and 5) with similar receptive D
attentional control in the bilingual mind. Child vocabulary and memory span performed the dimensional change card sort
Development 70, 636–644. task and the moving word task, both relying on attentional control. Bilingual
children outperformed their monolingual peers on both tasks, showing the
first evidence for bilingual advantages in the development of the executive
functioning system. Importantly, this study differs from past research showing
bilingual advantages (e.g. BAIN 1974) in that it proposes the mechanism
underlying the experience-related changes in bilingual children.

2003 Goetz, P. J. (2003). The effects of bilingualism on This study examined the effect of bilingualism on theory of mind D
theory of mind development. Bilingualism: Language development in 3- and 4-year-old children. English monolinguals, Mandarin
and Cognition 6, 1–15. monolinguals, and Mandarin–English bilinguals solved problems in
appearance–reality, perspective-taking, and false-belief. Bilingual children
performed better than monolinguals, with no difference between the two
monolingual groups. Goetz attributed the bilingual advantage to better
inhibitory control, stronger metalinguistic skills and greater sociolinguistic
understanding than monolinguals. This is the first study to show improved
theory of mind abilities in bilingual children.

2003 Bialystok, E., S. Majumder & M. M. Martin (2003). Attempting to resolve mixed results reported for phonological awareness in B
Developing phonological awareness: Is there a bilinguals, three studies were carried out and found no general bilingual
bilingual advantage? Applied Psycholinguistics 24, 27–44. advantage on this skill. Only one group (Spanish–English bilinguals) on one
of the tasks (phoneme segmentation) showed a difference compared to the
other groups. These results limit the generality of the bilingual advantage in
metalinguistic awareness and indicate other factors that are also involved in
this development.

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 YEAR REFERENCES ANNOTATIONS THEME

2004 Bialystok, E. & L. Senman (2004). Executive Four- and five-year-old monolingual and bilingual children solved D
processes in appearance-reality tasks: the role of appearance–reality tasks. Scoring distinguished between appearance
inhibition of attention and symbolic representation. questions (‘What did you think this was when you first saw it?’) and reality
Child Development 75, 562–579. questions (‘What is it really?’). Bilinguals were better than monolinguals at

BARAC & BIALYSTOK: DEVELOPMENT OF BILINGUAL CHILDREN

answering the reality questions because it is only these that present a conflict
that must be resolved through attention and inhibition.

2004 Bialystok, E. & M. M. Martin (2004). Attention and The authors aimed to distinguish between the contribution of three possible D
inhibition in bilingual children: evidence from the abilities that could underlie the bilingual advantage previously documented
dimensional change card sort task. Developmental on the dimensional change card sort task (BIALYSTOK 1999): representation,
Science 7, 325–339. response inhibition or conceptual inhibition. Bilinguals outperformed
monolinguals when card sorting was based on a perceptual (as opposed to
semantic) feature of the stimulus, indicating the greater attentional control of
bilinguals. There was no difference between groups for conditions requiring
greater analysis of the representations.

2004 Mezzacappa, E. (2004). Alerting, orienting, and This study was designed to examine the effect of SES on three dimensions of D
executive attention: developmental properties and attention: alerting, orienting and executive attention. Participants were
sociodemographic correlates in an epidemiological 6-year-old children from three SES backgrounds who belonged to three
sample of young, urban children. Child Development 75, ethnic groups (African/American, Caucasian and Hispanic). The Hispanic
1373–1386. children, many of whom were from a low SES background, showed the most
proficient performance on executive attention. The author suggested that the
bilingualism of this group may be responsible for their greater success.

2005 Bialystok, E. & D. Shapero (2005). Ambiguous This study extended the control differences to a task based on perceptual D
benefits: the effect of bilingualism on reversing analysis. Children inspected ambiguous figures (e.g. the rat-man) and were
ambiguous figures. Developmental Science 8, 595–604. guided through a process of attempting to see the alternative image.
Six-year-old bilingual children were superior to monolingual children
matched on age, general cognitive functioning and memory span in their
ability to assign a new interpretation to an already identified and labeled
figure. Although previous studies (e.g. BEN-ZEEV 1977) showed a bilingual
advantage in a different spatial-perceptual task, the present study is
important because it moves beyond description and it interprets the results in

51
terms of differences in executive control abilities.

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 2005 Bialystok, E., G. Luk & E. Kwan (2005). Bilingualism, The authors examined the effect of bilingualism on children’s early literacy C

52 RESEARCH TIMELINE
biliteracy, and learning to read: interactions among abilities. Four groups of grade one children (English monolinguals,
languages and writing systems. Scientific Studies of Spanish–English bilinguals, Chinese–English bilinguals and Hebrew–English
Reading 9, 43–61. bilinguals) received tests of decoding and phonological awareness in English
if they were monolinguals and in both languages if they were bilinguals. All
bilingual children showed some general advantage over monolinguals in their
ability to decode written forms into meaningful units. Additionally, results
demonstrated that a more specific bilingual advantage in early literacy
abilities and transfer of reading skills across languages was present when the
two languages of the bilingual children used similar writing systems (i.e.
Hebrew and Spanish bilinguals).

2008 Martin-Rhee, M. M. & E. Bialystok (2008). The Using tasks that differ in the type of inhibition required, Martin-Rhee & D
development of two types of inhibitory control in Bialystok established that bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on tasks
monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: requiring attentional control to competing cues but not on tasks requiring
Language and Cognition 11, 81–93. inhibition of a response or the withholding of a practiced response. The first
type of inhibition is sometimes measured by a Simon task. In this task
children need to respond to the color of a stimulus appearing on the left or
the right side of a screen by pressing either the left or the right mouse button.
Conflict is created when there is a mismatch between the position of the
stimulus and its correct response key, and attentional control is needed to
resolve that conflict. The second type of inhibition requires the ability to
resist executing a cued response and is thus less a matter of attention, control
and conflict. Both types of inhibition are part of the executive function, but
bilingualism only improves one of them. These results helped to refine the
understanding of the cognitive effects of bilingualism.

2008 Carlson, S. M. & A. N. Meltzoff (2008). Bilingual Carlson & Meltzoff tested three groups of 6-year-old children (English D
experience and executive functioning in young monolinguals, Spanish–English bilinguals, and an immersion group) on a
children. Developmental Science 11, 282–298. large battery of executive function tasks. Although the bilingual children had
lower SES and receptive vocabulary than the other two groups, they obtained
higher scores than monolinguals on conflict tasks when the effect of SES,
receptive vocabulary and age were statistically controlled. There were no
group differences on measures of impulse control or withholding a response.

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 YEAR REFERENCES ANNOTATIONS THEME

2009 Kovács, A. M. (2009). Early bilingualism enhances Previous research (GOETZ 2003) showed advanced theory of mind abilities in D

BARAC & BIALYSTOK: DEVELOPMENT OF BILINGUAL CHILDREN

mechanisms of false-belief reasoning. Developmental bilingual children. Kovács examined the possible mechanisms underlying
Science 12, 48–54. this advantage by comparing 3-year-old children on a control task and two
theory of mind tasks (standard false-belief task and modified theory of mind
task that required understanding others’ mental states). Bilingual children
outperformed monolinguals on both tasks. Her interpretation was that the
precocious development of bilinguals is related to better executive control
abilities and not to specific knowledge about language-switching.

2009 Kovács A. M. & J. Mehler (2009). Cognitive gains in The authors examined whether the bilingual advantage can be found very D
7-month-old bilingual infants. Proceedings of the National early in development. In a series of eye-tracking studies, 7-month-old
Academy of Sciences 106, 6556–6560. bilingual infants were better than same-age monolingual infants at switching
the direction of their anticipatory looks for a visual reward in response to a
change in the visual or auditory cue. This finding demonstrates that being
exposed to two languages from birth leads to very early executive control
benefits.

2009 Bialystok, E. & M. Viswanathan (2009). Components The authors compared three groups of 8-year-old children (monolinguals, D
of executive control with advantages for bilingual bilinguals of immigrant background in Canada, and bilinguals of
children in two cultures. Cognition 112, 494–500. non-immigrant background in India) to investigate the generality of the
bilingual advantage over the influence of immigration status. The three
groups were matched on SES and memory abilities, but both groups of
bilingual children outperformed monolinguals on an executive function task
that required cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control, with no differences
between the two bilingual groups. This study contributes to the field by
showing that the bilingual advantage documented by past research (e.g.
BIALYSTOK 1999) overrides the influence of factors correlated with
bilingualism, such as immigration experience.

53
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 54 RESEARCH TIMELINE
2010 Bialystok, E. (2010). Global-local and trail-making In a series of studies, Bialystok tested monolingual and bilingual 6-year-old D
tasks by monolingual and bilingual children: beyond children on two non-verbal tasks that have not been previously investigated:
inhibition. Developmental Psychology 46, 93–105. the global–local and the trail-making tasks. Bilingual children consistently
outperformed monolinguals on conditions that have been typically
considered to be cognitively demanding (i.e. incongruent trials where there is
a conflict between different dimensions of the stimuli), but also on conditions
considered to be less effortful (i.e. congruent trials that did not require
inhibition). These findings refine our understanding of the nature of the
bilingual advantage by demonstrating that it is not limited to inhibitory
control but extends to other aspects of executive function such as monitoring,
switching and updating.

2010 Adesope, O. O., T. Lavin, T. Thompson & C. Recent decades of research on bilingualism in children show diverse A, B,
Ungerleider (2010). A systematic review and outcomes. In order to clarify the reliability and strength of these outcomes, C, D
meta-analysis of the cognitive correlates of Adesope et al. conducted a meta-analysis of 63 studies that examined the
bilingualism. Review of Educational Research 80, cognitive effects associated with bilingualism in children. Results showed that
207–245. the experience of speaking two languages yields cognitive benefits in the
areas of attentional control, working memory, abstract and symbolic
representation skills, and metalinguistic awareness.

1
Leopold, W. F. (1953). Patterning in children’s language learning. Language Learning 5, 1–14.
2
Darcy, N. T. (1963). Bilingualism and the measure of intelligence: review of a decade of research. Journal of Genetic Psychology 103, 259–282.
3
Authors’ names are shown in small capitals when the study referred to appears in this timeline.
4
Cummins, J. (1976). The influence of bilingualism on cognitive growth: a synthesis of research findings and explanatory hypotheses. Working Papers on
Bilingualism 9, 1–43.

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