ABSTRACT
This study examines the dimensionality of and relationships between two subscales from the British Ability Scales - Third Edition, measuring verbal (expressive vocabulary) and non-verbal (reasoning) cognitive skills for toddlers (age three) and preschoolers (age five), in a Norwegian context across genders. Descriptive statistics revealed item selection criteria that included specific items within each subscale. Subsequently, Confirmatory Factor Analysis established the subscales' dimensionality (Naming Vocabulary and Picture Similarities; N = 1094) and confirmed measurement invariance across genders. Further, the relationships between the verbal and non-verbal factors were investigated using correlation analysis and Structural Equation Modeling. The findings revealed that the verbal factor at age three strongly predicted the verbal factor at age five and significantly influenced the non-verbal factor at age five. The non-verbal factor at age three exhibited a moderate predictive relationship with the non-verbal factor at age five, and did not significantly predict the verbal factor at age five. In terms of gender differences, girls showed higher scores on the verbal factor at age three, and a stronger correlation between the non-verbal factor at age three and the verbal factor at age five. In summary, this research provides valuable insights into cognitive skill measurement and development in a Norwegian context and highlights possible variations across gender. The study's findings, limitations, and implications are discussed.
ABSTRACT
Bilingual people are often claimed to have an advantage over monolingual people in cognitive processing owing to their ability to learn and use two languages. This advantage is considered to be related to executive function (EF). However, no consensus exists as to whether this advantage is present in the population or under which conditions it prevails. The present meta-analysis examines the bilingual advantage in EF of children aged 18 years and under for different components of inhibition (hot; rewarding stimuli/cold; neutral stimuli), attention, switching, monitoring, working memory, and planning in 143 independent group comparisons comprising 583 EF effect sizes. The bilingual advantage in overall EF was significant, albeit marginal (g = 0.06), and there were indications of publication bias. A moderator analysis showed significant group differences on EF in favor of bilinguals for studies of children from middle-class socioeconomic backgrounds and studies from one specific lab. The EF components of cold inhibition, switching, and monitoring expressed significant bilingual advantages, but monitoring and cold inhibition were affected by publication bias. As for switching, this remained significant after controlling for publication bias. Thus, given the small mean effect size and small-study effects, this meta-analysis gives little support for a bilingual advantage on overall EF. Still, also after the moderator analysis, there was a large heterogeneity of true effects and a large amount of unexplained heterogeneity in the effect sizes. Thus, there might be bilingual advantages (or disadvantages) under conditions that this study is not able to identify through the analysis of 12 moderators. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
