Sentence Comprehension in Monolingual and Bilingual Children

Abstract

Bilingual children outperform monolingual children on non-linguistic tasks that tap executive function. It still unknown whether the enhancement of executive functioning found for bilingual children improves complex linguistic comprehension. The present study examined possible differences between monolingual and bilingual childrens sentence comprehension in the presence of different sources of information that conflicted with a correct interpretation.100 children (33monolinguals and 67 bilinguals) between the ages of 4- and 5-years old were examined on two complex linguistic tasks. The findings showed that bilingual children were more accurate than monolingual children in understanding the meaning of the spoken sentences in the presence of distraction. Bilingual childrens advanced attentional control skill has been proposed as a possible cause that led them to effectively focus their attention on the relevant information while ignoring other sources of information that interfered with the correct interpretation.

Keyword: Bilingual children, Monolingual children, Executive function, Attentional Control, Sentence comprehension