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Does Early Exposure to Chinese–English Biliteracy Enhance Cognitive Skills?

Clarifying the effects of biliteracy on cognitive development is important to understanding the role of cognitive development in L2 learning. A substantial body of research has shed light on the cognitive factors contributing to biliteracy development. Yet, not much is known about the effect of the...

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Autores principales: Yin, Jing, Guan, Connie Qun, Smolen, Elaine R., Geva, Esther, Meng, Wanjin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9083352/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35548521
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.852437
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author Yin, Jing
Guan, Connie Qun
Smolen, Elaine R.
Geva, Esther
Meng, Wanjin
author_facet Yin, Jing
Guan, Connie Qun
Smolen, Elaine R.
Geva, Esther
Meng, Wanjin
author_sort Yin, Jing
collection PubMed
description Clarifying the effects of biliteracy on cognitive development is important to understanding the role of cognitive development in L2 learning. A substantial body of research has shed light on the cognitive factors contributing to biliteracy development. Yet, not much is known about the effect of the degree of exposure to biliteracy on cognitive functions. To fill this research void, we measured three categories of biliteracy skills (language, reading, and cognitive–linguistic skills in both Chinese and English) jointly and investigated the effects of biliteracy skill performance in these three categories on cognitive skills (working memory and attentional control) in Chinese L1 children who were exposed to English as L2 beginning at age 3 (“early”) or in grade 3 (“late”). In this cross-sectional study, 10 parallel Chinese and English language, reading, and cognitive–linguistic measures were administered to emerging Chinese–English bilingual children in grade 3 (n = 178) and grade 6 (n = 176). The results revealed that early exposure to Chinese–English biliteracy enhanced cognitive skills but with a cost of a slight delay in performance on Chinese L1 language skills in grade 3 (but not in grade 6). Importantly, the present findings suggest that, in addition to universal and developmental processes, the cumulative effect of early and sustained bi-scriptal exposure enhances working memory and attention in school children.
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spelling pubmed-90833522022-05-10 Does Early Exposure to Chinese–English Biliteracy Enhance Cognitive Skills? Yin, Jing Guan, Connie Qun Smolen, Elaine R. Geva, Esther Meng, Wanjin Front Psychol Psychology Clarifying the effects of biliteracy on cognitive development is important to understanding the role of cognitive development in L2 learning. A substantial body of research has shed light on the cognitive factors contributing to biliteracy development. Yet, not much is known about the effect of the degree of exposure to biliteracy on cognitive functions. To fill this research void, we measured three categories of biliteracy skills (language, reading, and cognitive–linguistic skills in both Chinese and English) jointly and investigated the effects of biliteracy skill performance in these three categories on cognitive skills (working memory and attentional control) in Chinese L1 children who were exposed to English as L2 beginning at age 3 (“early”) or in grade 3 (“late”). In this cross-sectional study, 10 parallel Chinese and English language, reading, and cognitive–linguistic measures were administered to emerging Chinese–English bilingual children in grade 3 (n = 178) and grade 6 (n = 176). The results revealed that early exposure to Chinese–English biliteracy enhanced cognitive skills but with a cost of a slight delay in performance on Chinese L1 language skills in grade 3 (but not in grade 6). Importantly, the present findings suggest that, in addition to universal and developmental processes, the cumulative effect of early and sustained bi-scriptal exposure enhances working memory and attention in school children. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-04-25 /pmc/articles/PMC9083352/ /pubmed/35548521 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.852437 Text en Copyright © 2022 Yin, Guan, Smolen, Geva and Meng. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Yin, Jing
Guan, Connie Qun
Smolen, Elaine R.
Geva, Esther
Meng, Wanjin
Does Early Exposure to Chinese–English Biliteracy Enhance Cognitive Skills?
title Does Early Exposure to Chinese–English Biliteracy Enhance Cognitive Skills?
title_full Does Early Exposure to Chinese–English Biliteracy Enhance Cognitive Skills?
title_fullStr Does Early Exposure to Chinese–English Biliteracy Enhance Cognitive Skills?
title_full_unstemmed Does Early Exposure to Chinese–English Biliteracy Enhance Cognitive Skills?
title_short Does Early Exposure to Chinese–English Biliteracy Enhance Cognitive Skills?
title_sort does early exposure to chinese–english biliteracy enhance cognitive skills?
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9083352/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35548521
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.852437
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