A study on the executive functioning skills of Greek–English bilingual children – a nearest neighbour approach

Abstract

Findings of bilingual participants outperforming their monolingual counterparts in executive functioning tasks have been repeatedly reported in the literature (Bialystok, 2017). However, uncontrolled factors or imperfectly matched samples might affect the reliability of these findings. This study aims to take into account a range of relevant variables in combination with innovative analyses to investigate the performance of one unstudied language group, Greek–English bilingual children in the north of England, compared to monolingual control groups. Our battery of executive function tasks taps into inhibition, updating and shifting. We use k-means nearest neighbour methods to match the groups and factor analysis to determine language proficiency. We find that bilinguals’ accuracy is on a par with their monolingual peers – however, they are faster in inhibition and working memory tasks. Our study provides strong evidence for the presence of a bilingual advantage in these domains, while making important methodological contributions to the field.

Inside the Multilingual and Bidialectal Mind: An Investigation of the Cognitive Effect on Executive Function

“…First, through a statistical analysis on EF that, besides the Group factor (multilinguals, bidialectals, "monolinguals"), included SMG vocabulary proficiency as a predictor variable (see also Section S9 in the Supplementary Materials Online). Second, through a further analysis that compared the EF performance of two groups matched in SMG vocabulary and other background variables: "multilinguals" (comprised of both multilingual and bidialectal participants) and "monolinguals" (see e.g., Papastergiou et al, 2023, for a similar approach). The results of these two analyses in combination could provide evidence that the multilingual and bidialectal EF effect is found in those multilinguals and bidialectals with high, (approximately) similar to monolinguals (second) language proficiency.…”