Het effect van verschillen in beginleeftijd van een tweede taal en de cognitieve voordelen op het gebied van inhibitie en selectieve aandacht

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study is to examine the influence of age of onset of a second language on the achievements on executive functions tasks. The executive functions are divided into two functions; selective attention and inhibitory control. Method: The data was conducted from the Flanker-task, the Visual-Sky-Search and the PaBiQ questionnaire completed by the parents. The sample consists of 55 children, aged 7 to 8 years old. ANOVAs were applied to test whether there are differences between children who are bilingual from birth and children who become bilingual after at least 1 year as regards their selective attention and inhibitory control. Results: A correlation was found between the achievements on inhibitory control and selective attention. No significant differences have been found between the groups on the functions selective attention and inhibitory control. Conclusions: The present study provides no evidence for a difference between the executive functions selective attention and inhibitory control for children who are bilingual from birth and children who become bilingual after at least 1 year. A bigger sample with more distribution in age of onset is needed in order to find potential correlations.