Materials

The study raises the problem of benefits and difficulties of younger monolingual and bilingual schoolchildren at the beginning of school education by identifying the relation between regulation of activation and executive functions. Regulation of activation ensure the maintenance of general and selective activity associated with indicators of slow tempo, fatigability, impulsivity, hyperactivity and tendency to perseveration. Executive functions provide planning and programming of activities, retention of the plan during execution, control over the processing and the achieved result. The study involved 150 primary school children in age from 7 to 8.4 (M = 7.7, SD = 0.39). Among them: 75 primary school children with balanced bilingualism (Udmurt and Russian languages); and 75 monolinguals with native Russian. The following methods of neuropsychological executive functions research were used: Go-No-Go Task, Verbal Fluency Test, Counting, Problem Solving, Verbal Memory Test, Visual-Spatial Memory; computerized tests of the psychologists toolkit software «Moscow State University Practice»: Stroop Test, Shulte Tables, Dots. Regulation of activation were observed during all the trials. The mathematical and statistical analysis included: Structural Equation Modeling implemented with IBM SPSS Statistics V22.0. The leading functions of activity regulation were identified as predictors of executive functions productivity in monolingual and bilingual primary school students. Different development trajectories of executive functions individual components of children with different language status were identified: if an increase of reactivity of monolinguals reduced the productivity of their cognitive flexibility in nonverbal activity, then among bilinguals it ensured the productivity of auditory-speech memory; if activity of monolinguals led to an increase of cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control in solving non–verbal tasks, bilinguals tended to increase cognitive flexibility in speech activity. The research was financially supported by the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) research project №23-28-10202.

Download presentation

Download