Bilingual vs. Monolingual Children: Examining Working Memory Performance - Essay Sample

Introduction

The working memory for the Bilingual children is anticipated to be quite higher than those of the monolingual children. In the US, the majority of the public-school teachers are seen to interact with the majority of the non-English children who are seen to face challenges of poverty and enrolled in schools with poor resources (Engel de Abreu, 2011). The assessment determines the performance of the bilingual and multilingual children when compared to the monolingual children in the performance. The analysis of the differences will pave the way for further policy implementation in ensuring equality success in performance among all the children. The literacy levels and ability to learn languages differ considerably among the bilinguals and the monolinguals. The learning of a new language is seen as time-consuming and requires a considerable injection of resources. In raising children, it becomes considerable to either focus on bilingualism or monolingualism. However, despite all theses, there will always be concerns and myths regarding raising children in any way. Some of the common myths in language learning among the young learners include; monolingual brains, time taking in learning, bilingualisms challenges for children with disorders in development and the myth that the young people are better in language learning than the other aged children (Blom, Kuntay, Messer, Verhagen, & Leseman, 2014). The paper will examine the effects of raising children with Monolingualism, bilingualism, or even multilingualism working memory, the effects on the performance and the accrued benefits. In the first case, the analysis will be based on the working memory for the multilingual children and the research on the bilingual effect an article by Engel De Abreu. The research investigated the six to eight years old who are bilingual to determine the effect of bilingualism on the performance of the young people. The research was carried out for three years leading to the development of hypothesis and conclusion about the performance of the bilingual and monolinguals aged 6-8 years. The second article used for the study is based on the benefits of been bilingual, a research study carried out among the Turkish-Dutch children. The third article used for this research is based on the comparison between the performance of the Bilinguals and monolingual working memories (Morales, Calvo, & Bialystok, 2013). The analysis of the three researched journal articles will prove the facts relating to the working memory of the Bilingual children.

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The measured on the bilingual effect is based on the cognitive measures among the children aged 6- 8 years who are either bilinguals or even monolinguals. The comparison for the memory function of the bilinguals is ranked to be of higher performance in the controlled activities as compared to the monolinguals, despite their underperformance on the assessed vocabulary. According to Engel de Abreu, 2011, the development of the bilingual effect is attributed to performance and cognitive activities among young people. In speech production, Bilinguals are parallel in performing for all the languages. The accruing challenge comes in the competitive responses which are correction through the suppression of one of the non-main language in action. The efficient Bilingualism who can switch the languages outperforms monolinguals in the tasks that require interference suppression. In task switching, the Bilinguals are better in performance than the monolinguals. In vocabulary performance, the young bilingual is at lower performance when compared to their counterparts, monolinguals. The deployment of the working memory provides the basis for language learning and the ability to switch between the languages. The bilingual effect is seen to impact on the working memory in cognitive actions and control. The environment for the Bilinguals possesses the improved working memory that is attributed to the training in the language restrain and switching. The research underpinned among the bilinguals, monolinguals and multilingual at Luxembourg with the recognition of the three languages which are French, German, and Luxembourgish, as the officially used languages. Luxembourgish remains one of the official and native language that the majority of the people speak (Engel de Abreu, 2011). The essence of learning French and German brings the benefits in the interaction with the foreigners and also in the freedom of learning through the three allowable languages. The three languages are taught in school for the young children, represent the basis for the study, whereby the cognitive control and working memory development among the young children at Luxemburg. The assessment proves that the working memory, cognitive control increases with age and also with the exposure to a second or even third language. Less vocabulary expertise is expected among the younger children, a depiction of lower working memory among the young children as compared to the older ones.

The research involved the recruitment of a total of 44 students who were to be enrolled in public schools. The young children came from the eleven villages in 'Grand - Duchy' Luxembourg. The collection of information came through the questionnaires taken from the children's caregivers, who provided information on demographic characteristics of the children's family. Additionally, the language the child uses at home is recorded besides the native and the foreign languages of the parents. The testing for the children aged 6, scored averagely on 50th and 95th percentile for the nonverbal reasoning. Among the analyzed participants, 28 were girls and 16 boys, of which all were Caucasian. Nevertheless, the children came from the middle-income groups or even higher; the parents had completed at least 13 years of schooling, in which an SD of 2.45 was obtained (Engel de Abreu, 2011). The mean number of children per family ranged from 2.4 whereas the families had approximately 237 books. The research did not encounter any of the children with any neurological disorder, while the original place of birth remained Luxembourg. The majority of the participants were monolingual during their first years in preschool, whereas none of the children had severe challenges in the learning. All the participants had attended the schools in Luxembourg. The sample selection for the children came from the larger multilingual society which comprises of 122 children that were selected. The final analysis incorporated only children with the following features; the division was based on the monolinguals and the Bilinguals; the grouping was also executed based on age, sex and parent's social-economic status. The complexity in grouping based on the verbal articulation removed the criteria; however, the details have been used for the analysis. The bilingual group, consistence of the children who had been exposed to two languages since their birth, in which one of the languages was the parents' native language while the other the child had learned at the school. The parents of the 16 children indicated that the first native language for the children was Luxembourgish, whereas the others had been learned while at the young age of 3 years. The parents showed that the children had been exposed to the foreign language at the young ages and employed the Luxembourgish as their dominant language. also, the foreign-speaking languages' have been exposed to the Luxembourgish language which they could speak fluently with the foreign language and communicate with the friends in Luxembourgish rather than the foreign languages, showing a dominance for the native language. The selected monolinguals comprised of parents who completely spoke Luxembourgish as the native language and minimum exposure to other languages (Engel de Abreu, 2011). At the kindergarten level, the children tested proved to have no other prolificacy in any other language than the Luxembourgish which was used to communicate and socialize with others. The previous researches had not depicted a higher performance for the bilinguals when compared to the monolinguals in the working memory which the researched embarked to find out. The final result was in line with the previous researches that the bilingualism did not predispose the advantage in the working memory for the young learners. The performance for the monolinguals on vocabulary, syntax and language measures were much better than those of bilinguals. The research proved that the mastery of the many languages had a reducing effect on cognitive control and reduced performance on the nonword repetition.

The performance of the Bilingual children is anticipated to be higher than those of the monolingual children on tasks requiring interfering incongruent information and also the visuospatial capabilities are better than those of the monolinguals, a research study was done on the Dutch children. The bilinguals have exemplary control, working memory advantage, and inhibition advantage over the monolinguals. The research embarked on determining the working memory among the bilinguals especially those from lower-income families. The establishment of the research had an imperative result on whether the bilingualism affected the working memory of the Dutch children (Blom, Kuntay, Messer, Verhagen, & Leseman, 2014). The children under the study showed key interest in the research as they had imperative challenges in remembrance when it came to words in Dutch and also, they identified the strengths in the working memories. The bilingual children had a cognitive advantage over the monolinguals. The bilinguals have higher cognitive control and can ignore the tasks that are information incongruent. The competition among the two languages among bilingualisms provides the opportunity to choose their most dominant language, which activates their lexemes for both the learned languages. The working memory is anticipated to assist in the storage of temporary information awaiting cognitive processing. The relation on the working memory and the executive control shows an advantage for the bilinguals and also the improvement in the visuospatial working memory. The study showed differential prolificacy in the two languages among the bilinguals, for the Turkish- Dutch research. However, the same research finding is depicted for the lower mastery of the language among the Bilinguals. However, there existent higher performance among the bilinguals in attention control than in the monolinguals. Children aged 5- 6 years were the understudy for both the bilinguals and monolinguals. The expectation for the research was to find higher performance among the bilinguals than the monolinguals. On language prolificacy, it was anticipated that the bilinguals used both the languages efficiently at their homes and would outperform the monolinguals in the working memory.

The research involved Turkish- Dutch children ranging from 4 to 6 years in which the monolinguals were Dutch speakers. Two third of the children participants were boys and the other female. The research on the first wave of 62 months proved the same results for the nonverbal IQ scores (Blom, Kuntay, Messer, Verhagen, & Leseman, 2014). The age for the bilingual was quite higher than those of the monolinguals, which bring out an advantage to the bilinguals. Home Interviews with the parents more so the mothers provided the demographic background for the participants. The vocabulary and working memory measures were used in the research among the bilinguals and the monolinguals. Conflicting results are obtained in the memory tasks among the bilinguals and the monolinguals. The results showed that the monolinguals outperformed the bilinguals in the working memory tasks. Additionally, the bilin...