The role of nonverbal working memory in morphosyntactic processing by school-aged monolingual and bilingual children

Gangopadhyay, Ishanti; Davidson, M. Meghan; Weismer, Susan Ellis; Kaushanskaya, Margarita

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2015.09.025

Cited by 19 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 93 publications

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“…Four studies (Bialystok and Viswanathan, 2009 ; Gangopadhyay et al, 2016 ; Park et al, 2018 ; Veenstra et al, 2018 ) used the Corsi blocks task to assess visuospatial working memory. No significant differences emerged between the performance of monolinguals and bilinguals.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Three studies (Gangopadhyay et al, 2016 ; Arizmendi et al, 2018 ; Janus and Bialystok, 2018 ) used the N-back task to assess non-verbal working memory. In Gangopadhyay et al ( 2016 ), no significant differences were found between bilinguals and monolinguals. Arizmendi's et al ( 2018 ) study used two N-back tasks (i.e., N-back Auditory task and N-back Visual task), and monolinguals solved the tasks more efficiently than bilinguals.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Impact of Bilingualism on Executive Functions in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review Based on the PRISMA Method

et al. 2020

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Approximately half of the world's population is bilingual or multilingual. The bilingual advantage theory claims that the constant need to control both known languages, that are always active in the brain, to use the one suitable for each specific context improves cognitive functions and specifically executive functions. However, some authors do not agree on the bilingual effect, given the controversial results of studies on this topic. This systematic review aims to summarize the results of studies on the relationship between bilingualism and executive functions. The review was conducted according to PRISMA-statement through searches in the scientific database PsychINFO, PsycARTICLES, MEDLINE, and PUBMED. Studies included in this review had at least one bilingual and monolingual group, participants aged between 5 and 17 years, and at least one executive function measure. Studies on second language learners, multilingual people, and the clinical population were excluded. Fifty-three studies were included in the systematic review. Evidence supporting the bilingual effect seems to appear when assessing inhibition and cognitive flexibility, but to disappear when working memory is considered. The inconsistent results of the studies do not allow drawing definite conclusions on the bilingual effect. Further studies are needed; they should consider the role of some modulators (e.g., language history and context, methodological differences) on the observed results.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Impact of Bilingualism on Executive Functions in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review Based on the PRISMA Method

et al. 2020

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“…It is possible, and even likely, that different aspects of language processing (and/or different language-processing tasks) are associated with distinct EF skills. For instance, in the work on syntactic processing, the ability to recover from garden path sentences has been linked with inhibition/shifting (Mazuka et al, 2009;Novick et al, 2005;Woodard et al, 2016), while the ability to identify errors in sentences (Gangopadhyay, Davidson, Ellis Weismer, & Kaushanskaya, 2016) and the ability to integrate a word into the broader sentence structure (Roberts et al, 2007) have been linked with updating. However, because the vast majority of prior work focusing on language-EF relationships targeted a single EF task and a single language task, there remains the question regarding the specificity and the generality of the language-EF relationships.…”

Section: Ef and Language Abilitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationship Between Executive Functions and Language Abilities in Children: A Latent Variables Approach

Kaushanskaya

Park

Gangopadhyay

et al. 2017

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose: We aimed to outline the latent variables approach for measuring nonverbal executive function (EF) skills in school-age children, and to examine the relationship between nonverbal EF skills and language performance in this age group. Method: Seventy-one typically developing children, ages 8 through 11, participated in the study. Three EF components, inhibition, updating, and task-shifting, were each indexed using 2 nonverbal tasks. A latent variables approach was used to extract latent scores that represented each EF construct. Children were also administered common standardized language measures. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between EF and language skills.Results: Nonverbal updating was associated with the Receptive Language Index on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fourth Edition (CELF-4). When composites denoting lexical-semantic and syntactic abilities were derived, nonverbal inhibition (but not shifting or updating) was found to predict children's syntactic abilities. These relationships held when the effects of age, IQ, and socioeconomic status were controlled. Conclusions: The study makes a methodological contribution by explicating a method by which researchers can use the latent variables approach when measuring EF performance in school-age children. The study makes a theoretical and a clinical contribution by suggesting that language performance may be related to domain-general EFs. E xecutive functions (EFs) are a set of top-down cognitive control processes used to manage thought and behavior (Diamond, 2013;Miyake et al., 2000). EFs are crucial to the ability to adapt efficiently to changes in the environment (Huizinga, Dolan, & van der Molen, 2006;Zelazo, Müller, Frye, & Marcovitch, 2003), and to the ability to manage basic daily tasks, such as planning, decision making, and problem solving (Friedman et al., 2006;Miyake et al., 2000). It is not surprising then that there is a wealth of literature linking EFs and broad quality-of-life outcomes, including academic achievement (e.g., Best, Miller, & Naglieri, 2011;Blair & Razza, 2007) and social-emotional development (Broidy et al., 2003;Ferrier, Bassett, & Denham, 2014) There is a great deal of interest in accurately measuring EF skills in our field, both for the purposes of documenting EF deficits in impaired populations and for the purposes of possibly influencing language outcomes through targeting EF skills. In the present study, we examined EF performance in a sample of monolingual typically developing children, with the following three goals. The first goal was a methodological one: We aimed to document the use of a latent variables approach when measuring nonverbal EF performance in children. The second goal was a clinical one: We aimed to examine whether children's performance on common standardized language measures is associated with EFs. The third goal was a theoretical one: We aimed to examine whether domain-general EF skills (as indexed by performance on nonverbal EF tasks)...

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“…In light of this, a plausible account for our findings is that learners with higher visuospatial WM skills in the Speaking group were able to maintain and reproduce the sequential order of relevant morphosyntactic elements in a sentence more effectively, which supported initial L2 grammar development and, in particular, promoted greater accuracy within tasks requiring the assessment of the combinatorial felicity of utterances. This advantage afforded by higher visuospatial WM may have been underscored in the judgment tasks employed in the present study because participants were required to wait until the end of the utterance to determine its acceptability, and errors occurring later in the sentence are said to place higher executive processing demands (e.g., Gangopadhyay et al, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does learner cognition count on modality? Working memory and L2 morphosyntactic achievement across oral and written tasks

Zalbidea

Sanz

2020

Applied Psycholinguistics

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This study investigates how working memory (WM) abilities are implicated in second language (L2) learners’ (a) morphosyntactic achievement and (b) perceptions of required mental effort and task difficulty under oral versus written task modality conditions. Beginning-level learners of L2 Spanish completed two computerized focused tasks in which they produced output and received feedback in oral form (Speaking group) or written form (Writing group). Two grammatical structures varying in their relative level of salience were targeted. After each task, participants rated their perceptions of mental effort required and task difficulty. Production and written and aural acceptability judgment tasks were employed to measure immediate and sustained L2 morphosyntactic achievement. Executive, phonological, and visuospatial WM abilities were gauged using automated operation span, nonword recognition, and forward Corsi block-tapping tasks, respectively. Regression analyses revealed that WM capacity was predictive of L2 morphosyntactic outcomes and task perception ratings in the Speaking group only. Specifically, phonological and visuospatial WM were associated with production and acceptability judgment performance accuracy, whereas executive WM was related to learners’ ratings of perceived mental effort. Differences were also observed based on the target structure.

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The role of nonverbal working memory in morphosyntactic processing by school-aged monolingual and bilingual children

Cited by 19 publications

References 93 publications

The Impact of Bilingualism on Executive Functions in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review Based on the PRISMA Method

The Impact of Bilingualism on Executive Functions in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review Based on the PRISMA Method

The Relationship Between Executive Functions and Language Abilities in Children: A Latent Variables Approach

Does learner cognition count on modality? Working memory and L2 morphosyntactic achievement across oral and written tasks

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