The Role of Biliteracy in Bilingual Children’s Executive Function

Abstract

The impact of bilingualism upon cognition has been investigated extensively. However, the effects of biliteracy have not been examined to the same degree. The main aim of the current study is to investigate the role of biliteracy in the performance of bilingual children with regard to several executive function measures. The second objective is to compare the performance of both bilingual and monolingual children in relation to their executive function. Three groups of children, whose ages range between 7;1 and 11;7, participated in the study. Two of the groups comprised Arabic–English bilingual children living in the UK: biliterate bilingual children (n= 11) who can read and write in two languages, and monoliterate bilingual children (n= 10) who are able to read and write in only one language. Meanwhile, the third group consisted of Arabic monolingual children (n= 8) living in Saudi Arabia. A language background questionnaire was filled out by the parents of the participants. The children completed four language assessments and three experimental tasks tapping into several executive function components such as working memory, inhibitory control, and switching and mixing. The findings show no significant differences between the groups in respect of working memory and switching. There are mixed findings for inhibitory control that might be attributed to task-specific issues. However, the correlational analysis revealed a positive correlation between the Arabic reading ability score and the inhibitory control performance of biliterate bilingual children. Specifically, children with better Arabic reading ability scores exhibited better performance in the inhibitory control task.