Comparing working memory in bilingual and monolingual Hispanic/Latino preschoolers with disruptive behavior disorders

Abstract

The current study examined differences in working memory (WM) between monolingual and bilingual Hispanic/Latino preschoolers with disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs). A total of 149 children (M = 5.10 years, SD = 0.53; 76% male) with elevated levels of DBDs, as indicated by their parents or teachers, were recruited to participate in an 8-week summer program prior to the start of kindergarten (Summer Treatment Program for Pre-Kindergarteners). Prior to the start of treatment, parents completed several measures about their children's behavior and executive function, and children were administered two subtests of the Automated Working Memory Assessment to examine their current WM capabilities. After controlling for demographic variables (i.e., age, sex, socioeconomic status, IQ, and diagnostic status), no significant differences were observed between bilingual and monolingual children in verbal WM performance (β = .03, p > .05). However, children who were bilingual did perform better than monolinguals on spatial WM tasks (β = .23, p < .01). Finally, parent reports of WM corroborated these findings such that bilingual children were reported as having fewer WM problems by parents (β = -.19, p < .05) and teachers (β = -.22, p < .05). Whereas WM deficits are often found among children with DBDs, the current findings suggest that bilingualism may serve as a protective factor for preschoolers with DBDs.

Cognitive Benefits of Being Bilingual for Young Children: A Literature Review

“…Additionally, with the help of being bilingual, children also show enhancement in their working memory (WM). Daubert and Ramani suggested that young bilinguals' enhanced working memory could be a positive influencer for mathematical development [8]. They compared 74 bilinguals and monolinguals by completing both non-verbal WM tests and metathetical tests involving addition, numeral identification and nonsymbolic magnitude comparison tasks [8].…”

“…How bilingual individuals are different from monolinguals has been extensively studied, with a majority of researchers focusing on the better performance of bilinguals on tasks that measure certain cognitive abilities. Previous studies suggested that using two languages actively alters the executive functions, including inhibitory control and task shifting [5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. These cognitive abilities may be generalized to some non-linguistic domains.…”

“…Filippi et al inspected that bilinguals are more likely to ignore distractors to understand complex sentences than monolinguals [7]. Garcia et al explored that bilinguals had enhanced working memory which had a positive effect on children's mathematical development [8]. Daubert & Ramani furthermore maintained that being bilingual for children with disruptive behavior disorders displayed fewer working memory problems [9].…”

The bilingual [dis]advantage

“…Alternatively, findings may be spurious, as Kaushanskaya and colleagues (2011) found similar results for monolinguals in comparison to both simultaneous bilinguals and native English late sequential learners of Spanish on an English short-term memory task, suggesting that no degree of bilingualism affected results, and that significant findings are likely due to some other variable. Moreover, research on working memory for verbal stimuli shows an equally muddy picture, with certain studies showing no difference (Buac et al, 2016;Danahy et al, 2007;Garcia, Ros, Hart, Graziano, 2018;Kohnert et al, 2006) and others showing a bilingual advantage (Kaushanskaya et al, 2014). However, these studies suffer from the same issues as mentioned for short-term memory.…”

“…Finally, research on several other domains has delivered consistent results, but the small number of studies suggests the need for repetition before any theories are made or conclusions are drawn from results. For example, a bilingual advantage for creativity in children (Galindo, 2012) and visuospatial working memory in both children (Garcia et al, 2018) and older adults (Padilla et al, 2016) have been reported. On the other hand, there was no difference found between monolingual and bilingual groups on a long-term memory task for real word (Padilla et al, 2016) or non-word lists , or on visual and auditory reaction time tests .…”