No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
An assessment of the effects of SES on the development of executive attention in Singapore: Early English–Malay bilinguals
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2014
Abstract
Thirty-four English–Malay bilinguals of between four and six years of age (both balanced and dominant) characterized as low socioeconomic status (SES) on income and parental education were tested on the child-Attentional Network Task (child-ANT; Rueda, Fan, McCandliss, Halparin, Gruber, Lercari & Posner, 2004) measuring executive attention. Although SES measures fell below the Singapore median, Malay children's performance on the child-ANT remained high when compared to other age-matched monolingual and bilingual children previously tested with the child-ANT (Yang, Yang & Lust, 2011), and English–Chinese Singaporean bilinguals (Kang, 2009). None of the three SES measures – father's and mother's education, and income, significantly correlated with child-ANT components. Regression analyses confirmed that none of the SES measures significantly predicted performance on the child-ANT. Caregiver reports suggested that both balanced and dominant bilinguals displayed high executive control. We consider the possibility that cultural variations – simultaneous and pervasiveness of bilingualism in Singapore, or pervasive code-switching – may ameliorate potential negative effects of SES on executive control development.
Keywords
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014
Footnotes
We thank Yang Hwajin at the Singapore Management University for providing us with research assistants and guidance for this project, as well as Celestine Tan and Zhi Ting Chow from Singapore Management University for their assistance with data collection in Singapore. We also thank Yang Sujin, who developed the research paradigm focusing on the cognitive advantages of bilingualism using the child-Attention Network Task. We thank Qi Wang for insightful direction on cross-cultural study of SES. Finally, we would like to thank the reviewers for their detailed comments and suggestions for the manuscript.
References
Abutalebi, J., & Green, D. W. (2008). Control mechanisms in bilingual language production: Neural evidence from language switching studies. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23, 557–582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akhtar, N., & Menjivar, J. A. (2012). Cognitive and linguistic correlates of early exposure to more than one language. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 42, 41–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ardila, A., Rosselli, M., Matute, E., & Guajardo, S. (2005). The influence of the parents’ educational level on the development of executive functions. Developmental Neuropsychology, 28, 539–560.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Association of Muslim Professionals (AMP). (2012). Demographic study on Singapore Malays. http://www.amp.org.sg/edisi/data/Publications/3rd%20Convention%20Journal/Section%209%20-%20Demographic%20Study.pdf (retrieved October 7, 2013).Google Scholar
Barac, R., & Bialystok, E. (2012). Bilingual effects on cognitive and linguistic development: Role of language, cultural background, and education. Child Development, 83, 413–422.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bialystok, E. (1999). Cognitive complexity and attentional control in the bilingual mind. Child Development, 70, 636–644.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bialystok, E., & Barac, R. (2012). Emerging bilingualism: Dissociating advantages for metalinguistic awareness and executive control. Cognition, 122, 67–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bialystok, E., & Martin, M. (2004). Attention and inhibition in bilingual children: Evidence from the dimensional change card sort task. Developmental Science, 7, 325–339.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bialystok, E., & Viswanathan, M. (2009). Components of executive control with advantages for bilingual children in two cultures. Cognition, 112, 494–500.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blume, M., Yang, S., & Lust, B. (2014). Virtual Linguistics Lab Child Multilingualism Questionnaire. Ms., Cornell University.Google Scholar
Bokhorst-Heng, W. (1998). Language planning and management in Singapore. In Foley, J. A., Kandiah, Bao Zhiming, T., Gupta, A. F., Alsagoff, L., Lick, Ho Chee, Wee, L., Talib, I. S. & Bokhorst-Heng, W. (eds.), English in new cultural contexts: Reflections from Singapore, pp. 287–309. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bradley, R. H. (1994). The HOME Inventory: Review and reflections. In Reese, H. (eds.), Advances in child development and behavior, pp. 241–288. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bradley, R. H., & Corwyn, R. F. (2002). Socioeconomic status and child development. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 371–399.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1999). Environments in developmental perspective: Theoretical and operational models. In Friedman, S. L. & Wachs, T. D. (eds.), Measuring environment across the life span: Emerging methods and concepts, pp. 3–28. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlson, S., & Meltzoff, A. (2008). Bilingual experience and executive functioning in young children. Developmental Science, 11, 282–298.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cavallaro, F., & Serwe, S. K. (2010). Language use and language shift among Malays in Singapore. Applied Linguistics Review, 1, 129–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Costa, A., Hernández, M., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2008). Bilingualism aids conflict resolution: Evidence from the ANT task. Cognition, 106, 59–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Department of Statistics (2010). Census of Population 2010 Statistical Release 1: Demographic characteristics, education, language and religion. Department of Statistics, Ministry of Trade and Industry. http://internet-stg2.singstat.gov.sg/publications/publications_and_papers/cop2010/census_2010_release1/cop2010sr1.pdf (retrieved October 20, 2013).Google Scholar
Department of Statistics (2013). Singapore in figures. Department of Statistics, Ministry of Trade and Industry. http://internet-stg2.singstat.gov.sg/statistics/latest_data.html#16 (retrieved October 20, 2013).Google Scholar
Dixon, L.Q. (2003). The bilingual education policy in Singapore: Implications for second language acquisition. In J. Cohen, K. T. McAlister, K. Rolstad & J. MacSwan (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism, pp. 625–635. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Dunn, L. M., Dunn, L. L., & Dunn, D. M. (2006). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test – Fourth Edition examiner's manual and norms booklet. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.Google Scholar
Engel de Abreu, P. M. J., Cruz-Santos, A., Martin, R., & Bialystok, E. (2012). Bilingualism enriches the poor. Psychological Science, 23, 1364–1371.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ensminger, M. E., & Fothergill, K. (2003). A decade of measuring SES: What it tells us and where to go from here. In Bornstein, M. H. & Bradley, R. H. (eds.), Socioeconomic status, parenting, and child development (Monographs in Parenting Series), pp. 13–27. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Fan, J., McCandliss, B. D., Sommer, T., Raz, A., & Posner, M. I. (2002). Testing the efficiency and independence of attentional networks. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 340–347.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foley, J. A. (1998). Code-switching and learning among young children in Singapore. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 130, 129–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gathercole, V. C. M., Thomas, E. M., Jones, L., Guasch, N. V., Young, N., & Hughes, E. K. (2010). Cognitive effects of bilingualism: Digging deeper for the contributions of language dominance, linguistic knowledge, socio-economic status and cognitive abilities. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13, 617–664.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hilchey, M. D., & Klein, R. M. (2011). Are there bilin-gual advantages on nonlinguistic interference tasks? Imp-lications for the plasticity of executive control pro-cesses. Psychonomic Bulletin Review, 18, 625–658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hughes, C., & Ensor, R. (2005). Executive function and theory of mind in 2 year olds: A family affair? Developmental Neuropsychology, 28, 645–668.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kang, C. K. (2009). Tracing the etiology of discrepancies: When socioeconomic and literacy effects are considered in the bilingual advantage of executive attention. Honors thesis, Singapore Management University.Google Scholar
Kaufman, A. S., & Kaufman, N. L. (2004). Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test – Second Edition. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service, Inc.Google Scholar
Kovács, A., & Mehler, J. (2009). Cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 6556–6560.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leimgruber, J. R. E. (2013). Singapore English: Structure, variation, and usage (Studies in English Language). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, C., Koyasu, M., Oh, S., Ogawa, A., Short, B., & Huang, Z. (2009). Culture, executive function, and social understanding. New Directions in Child and Adolescent Development, 123, 69–85.Google Scholar
Lipina, S. J., Martelli, M. I., Vuelta, B., & Colombo, J. A. (2005). Performance on the A-not-B task of Argentinean infants from unsatisfied and satisfied basic needs homes. Interamerican Journal of Psychology, 39, 49–60.Google Scholar
Mezzacappa, E. (2004). Alerting, orienting, and executive attention: Developmental properties and sociodemographic correlates in an epidemiological sample of young, urban children. Child Development, 75, 1373–1386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mcloyd, V. C. (1998). Socioeconomic disadvantage and child development. American Psychologist, 53, 185–204.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morton, J. P., & Harper, S. N. (2007). What did Simon say? Revisiting the bilingual advantage. Developmental Science, 10, 719–726.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mutalib, H. (2005). Singapore Muslims: The quest for identity in a modern city-state. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 25, 53–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mutalib, H. (2011). The Singapore minority dilemma. Asian Survey, 51, 1156–1171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noble, K. G., Norman, M. F., & Farah, M. J. (2005). The neurocognitive correlates of a socioeconomic status in kindergarten children. Developmental Science, 8, 74–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Noble, K. G., McCandliss, B. D., & Farah, M. J. (2007). Socioeconomic background predicts individual differences in neurocognitive abilities. Developmental Science, 10, 464–480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oh, S., & Lewis, C. (2008). Korean preschoolers’ advanced inhibitory control and its relation to other executive skills and mental state understanding. Child Development, 79, 80–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paap, K. R., & Greenberg, Z. I. (2013). There is no coherent evidence for a bilingual advantage in executive processing. Cognitive Psychology, 66, 232–258.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Patterson, J. L. (2002). Relationships of expressive vocabulary to frequency of reading and television experience among bilingual toddlers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 23, 493–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, M. I., & Fan, J. (2004). Attention as an organ system. In Pomerantz, J. & Crair, Michael C. (eds.), Topics in integrative neuroscience: From cells to cognition, pp. 31–61. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Posner, M. I., & Petersen, S. E. (1990). The attention systems of the human brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 13, 25–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Posner, M. I., & Rothbart, M. K. (2007). Research on attention networks as a model for the integration of psychological science. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rueda, M. R., Fan, J., McCandliss, B. D., Halparin, J. D., Gruber, D. B., Lercari, L. P., & Posner, M. I. (2004). Development of attentional networks in childhood. Neuropsychologia, 42, 1029–1040.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rueda, M. R., Rothbart, M. K., McCandliss, B. D., Saccomanno, L., & Posner, M. I. (2005). Training, maturation, and genetic influences on the development of executive attention. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102, 14931–14936.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sabbagh, M. A., Xu, F., Carlson, S. M., Moses, L. J., & Lee, K. (2006). The development of executive functioning and theory of mind: A comparison of Chinese and U.S. preschoolers. Psychological Science, 17, 74–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stroud, C. (2007). Multilingualism in ex-colonial countries. In Auer, P. & Wei, Li (eds.), Handbook of multilingualism and multilingual communication, 509–538. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tobin, J. J., Wu, D. Y. H., & Davidson, D. H. (1989). Preschool in three cultures. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Townsend, J. T., & Ashby, F. G. (1978). Methods of modeling capacity in simple processing systems. In Castellan, J. & Restle, F. (eds.), Cognitive theory (vol. III), pp. 200–239. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Videsott, G., Della Rosa, P. A., Wiater, W., Franceschini, R., & Abutalebi, J. (2012). How does linguistic competence enhance cognitive functions in children? A study in multilingual children with different linguistic competences. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15, 884–895.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, K. R. (1982). The relation between socioeconomic status and academic achievement. Psychological Bulletin, 91, 461–481.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yang, S., Yang, H., & Lust, B. (2011). Early childhood bilingualism leads to advances in executive attention: Dissociating culture and language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14, 412–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yim, O., & Bialystok, E. (2012). Degree of conversational code-switching enhances verbal task switching in Cantonese–English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15, 873–883.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
A correction has been issued for this article:
A retraction has been issued for this article:
Linked content
Please note a has been issued for this article.
Please note a has been issued for this article.