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Abstract:
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Children, young adults, and the elderly have demonstrated a “bilingual advantage” in cognitive flexibility (Adi-Japha, Berberich-Artzi, & Libnawi, 2011). Specific bilingual advantages have been found for all three components of executive functioning (EF) – inhibition, working memory (WM), and cognitive flexibility (Feng, Bialystok, & Diamond, 2009; Kovacs & Mehler, 2009). EF has not previously been investigated in toddlers due to a difficulty with finding age-appropriate tasks. However, WM tasks for 18- to 30-month-olds have recently been developed, allowing researches to investigate EF at an age previously not investigated (Hughes & Ensor, 2005; Bernier, Carlson & Whipple, 2010). In the present study, 18- and 24-month-old bilingual and monolingual infants were given age-appropriate EF tasks. Given previous research on bilingual cognitive advantages of bilingualism (Bialystok, Craik Green, & Gollan, 2009), we predicted that bilinguals would outperform monolinguals on both WM tasks. Our results did not show a bilingual advantage in WM at this age, suggesting a need for additional research on EF tasks for young infants, as well as additional longitudinal analysis of these tasks. |