Running head: Consequences of bilingualismConsequences of Bilingualism for Cognitive DevelopmentEllen BialystokYork UniversityCanadaDirect correspondence to:Ellen BialystokDepartment of PsychologyYork University4700 Keele StreetToronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3CanadaEmail: [email protected] of bilingualism 2AbstractResearch addressing the possible cognitive consequences of bilingualism for children’sdevelopment has found mixed results when seeking effects in domains such as language abilityand intelligence. The approach in the research reported in this chapter is to investigate the effectthat bilingualism might have on specific cognitive processes rather than domains of skilldevelopment. Three cognitive domains are examined: concepts of quantity, task-switching andconcept formation, and theory of mind. The common finding in these disparate domains is thatbilingual children are more advanced than monolinguals in solving problems requiring theinhibition of misleading information. The conclusion is that bilingualism accelerates thedevelopment of a general cognitive function concerned with attention and inhibition, and thatfacilitating effects of bilingualism are found on tasks and processes in which this function ismost required.Consequences of bilingualism 3Consequences of Bilingualism for Cognitive DevelopmentA significant portion of children in the world enter the realm of language learning beingexposed to multiple languages, required to communicate using different systems and proceed toschool where the instructional discourse bears no resemblance to the language at home.Normally, few questions are asked and few concerns are expressed by parents, teachers, orpoliticians. In many cultures, this quiet acceptance indicates that the experience is either socommon that it is not detected as anomalous or so crucial for survival that it is futile to challengeit. Yet, an experience as broad in its impact as the way in which language is learned and used inthe first years may well impact on the child’s cognitive development. This chapter exploresresearch that has addressed itself to identifying whether childhood bilingualism alters the typicalcourse of cognitive development, either favorably or deleteriously, for children whose languageacquisition has proceeded by building two linguistic systems.The cognitive effect of the linguistic environment in which children are raised appears onthe surface to be an issue of psychological and educational relevance but it conceals anunderlying dimension that is explosively political. Children who are recipients of thisexperience, for better or worse, are not randomly chosen, nor are they randomly distributedthrough the population. They tend to belong to specific ethnic groups, occupy particular socialpositions, and be members of communities who have recently immigrated. It is not surprising,then, that historically some attempts to investigate the psychological and educational questionsthat follow from this situation have failed to meet standards of scientific objectivity. Instead, thejudgment about the effect of bilingualism on children’s development in early studies wassometimes used to reflect societal attitudes towards such issues as immigration and to reinforcepreconceived views of language and its role in education.Consequences of bilingualism 4In some nontrivial way, bilingual minds cannot resemble the more homogenous mentallandscape of a monolingual. Although there is debate about the precise manner in whichlanguages and concepts are interconnected in bilingual minds (discussed below), it isuncontroversial that the configuration is more complex than that of a monolingual for whomconcepts and languages ultimately converge in unambiguous and predictable manners.Monolinguals may have multiple names for individual concepts, but the relation among thosealternatives, as synonyms for example, does not invoke the activation of entire systems ofmeaning, as the alternative names from different languages is likely to do. From the beginning,therefore, bilingualism has consequence. What is not inevitable, however, is that one of theseconsequences is to influence the quality or manner of cognitive development.Early research on the cognitive consequences of bilingualism paid virtually no attentionto such issues as the nature of bilingual populations tested, their facility in the language oftesting, or the interpretation of the tests used. As an apparent default, cognitive ability was takento be determined by performance on IQ tests, at best a questionable measure of intelligence (seeGould, 1981). For example, Saer (1923) used the Stanford Binet Test and compared Welshchildren who were bilingual with monolingual English children and reported the inferiority and“mental confusion” of the bilinguals. Darcy (1963) reviewed many subsequent studies of thistype and pointed to their common finding that bilinguals consistently scored lower on verbaltests and were often disadvantaged on performance tests as well. Although Darcy cautioned thatmultiple factors should be considered, a more salubrious account of this research is offered byHakuta (1986) who attributes the inferior results of the bilinguals in comparison to their newnative-speaking peers to the tests being conducted in a language they were only beginning tolearn.Consequences of bilingualism 5The antidote to the pessimistic research was almost as extreme in its claims. In awatershed study, Peal and Lambert (1962) tested a carefully selected group of French-Englishbilingual children and hypothesized that the linguistic abilities of the bilinguals would besuperior to those of the monolinguals but that the nonverbal skills would be the same. Even theexpectation of an absence of a bilingual deficit was radical departure from the existing studies.Not only was the linguistic advantage confirmed in their results, but they also found anunexpected advantage in some of the nonverbal cognitive measures involving symbolicreorganization. Their conclusion was that bilingualism endowed children with enhanced mentalflexibility and that this flexibility was evident across all domains of thought. Subsequentresearch has supported this notion. Ricciardelli (1992), for example, found that few tests in alarge battery of cognitive and metalinguistic measures were solved better by bilinguals, but thosethat were included tests of creativity and flexible thought. In addition, balanced bilinguals