Cognitive perspectives on bilingualism in children

COGNITIVE ASPECTS 0 PERSPECTIVES COGNITIVES

Daniel A Wagner

Cognitive perspectives on bilingual ism in children

University of Pennsylvania

I. Introduction

For the last several decades, there has been a large and increasing interest in the relationship between language and cognition. This interest has spilled over into the more specific area of bilingualism and cognition, in order to study the generalizability of phenomena to diverse populations, as well as to test cognitive hypotheses on populations that vary in linguistic proficiency. Much of this research has focused on adolescent and adult bilinguals (e.g. Dor- nic, 1977; McCormack, 1977; Wagner, 1978). Research devoted to the study of child bilingualism is more recent, and began with claims about the effects of bilingualism on intelligence. The first part of this paper will focus on that issue, while the second section will review recent studies on bilingualism and cognitive development, and a final section will deal with a number of areas where psychologists may provide insights into the process of becoming bilingual. Due to limitations of space, a number of related areas will not be reviewed, including: the optimal age of language learning and its relationship to cognitive development (Ekstrand, 1978; Ervin-Tripp, 1974; and McLaughlin, 1978); varieties of second language acquisition (case studies: e.g. Fantini, 1974; Leopold, 1949; or ‘immersion’ programs: e.g. Lambert and Tucker, 1972); and the general question of bilingual education programs (see

International Review of Applied Psychology (SAGE, London and Beverly Hills), Vol. 29 (1980), 31-41

32 Danid A. Wagner

recent volumes by Hornby, 1977; Mackay and Anderson, 1977; McLaughlin, 1978; and Simoes, 1976).

11. Bilingualism and intelligence

Since standardized intelligence tests became popular in the 1920s, psychologists have tried to apply these measures to many types of subject populations. These early tests (and some recent ones) quite often found ethnic groups to be inferior in IQ with respect to American mainstream cultural groups (usually white middle-class groups). It was in this era that bilingualism and intelligence were first studied together (e.g. Saer, 1923, Smith, 1923). Lower IQ scores among bilinguals, who often composed a substantial propor- tion of these ethnic groups, were explained as some sort of ‘deficit’ that bilinguals suffered from, due to having to learn, and/or having learned, two languages instead of one. Interestingly, this view was politically ‘liberal’ in that it provided an alternative to the biogenetic hypothesis of racial and cultural differences in intelligence (c.f. Kamin, 1974).

Major reviews of the pre-1960s literature on the relationship between bilingualism and intelligence (e.g. Darcy, 1953, 1963; Haugen, 1961; Peal and Lambert, 1962), concluded that most previous studies were, on the whole, contradictory. And, since most intelligence tests were conducted in English, some investigators - not surprisingly - began to wonder if perhaps non- native English speakers were not understanding the task at hand. Many of these earlier studies lacked proper experimental controls on such variables as socio-economic class, degree of bilingual proficiency and type of tests used. Measurement of the degree of bilingual proficiency has been a special problem not only because proficiency has so many different dimensions, but also because bilingualism itself has been defined in the literature in very different ways. For example, Bloomfield (1933) defined bilingualism as ‘native-like control over two languages’, while Macnamara (1 967) stated that bilinguals were those ‘persons who possess at least one of the language skills (i.e. speaking, writing, listening, or reading) even to a minimal degree in their second language’. Thus, it would appear that any investigator who wishes to study bilingualism will have to establish some arbitrary criteria to control for proficiency.

Bilingualism in children 33

In sum, studies of the relationship between intelligence and bilingualism have been unhelpful because they lacked proper controls. Furthermore, studies such as these will probably remain unhelpful because standardized tests almost always discriminate against those (e.g. most ethnic groups) who were not part of the standardization sample, and because such tests allow little direct access to the nature of cognitive processing involved.

111. Bilingualism and cognitive development

With the increasing popularity of theories of cognitive development - such as those of Piaget and Bruner - some psychologists interested in bilingualism have studied the nature and level of various cognitive abilities in monolingual and bilingual children. The movitation for these studies seems to be three-fold: first, there remains interest in demonstrating that there are no cognitive ‘deficits’ that result from being bilingual - indeed, most recent studies seem to wish to demonstrate that, in fact, ‘bilingual is better’; second, some investigators are interested in the theoretical basis of cognition, and have found bilingual subjects to be an interesting group to study; and third, the practical issues of bilingual education, such as language learning and literacy, may be based in important ways on cognitive skills.

In a recent review, Lambert (1977) has suggested that bilinguals, relative to monolingual controls, show ‘definite advantages of ‘‘cognitive flexibility”, ‘ ‘creativity’ ’ , or “divergent thought’ ’ . ’ In- terestingly, the positive or ‘advantage’ hypothesis that bilinguals are more flexible or more creative seems to be derived from a much earlier negative or ‘deficit’ hypothesis, namely, that bilinguals must suffer from ‘mental confusion’, due to interference between their two (or more) codes. Leopold (1949), in studying his own bilingual child, was one of the first investigators to suggest that an advantage might result from bilingualism. His hypothesis was that the bilingual child probably has an early ability to separate the word as a symbol from its referent, i.e. a headstart in abstract thinking.

In the search for the advantages of bilingualism, a number of studies have followed up on Leopold’s abstract thinking hypothesis. For example, Ianco-Worrall (1972) tested 4 to 9 year old bilingual and monolingual children on a task where words had to be grouped by either semantic or phonetic similarity. Results

34 Daniel A. Wanner

indicated that the bilingual 4 to 6 year olds sorted semantically significantly more than the monolingual control group - in- dicating that they were abstracting meaning while monolingual children were still sorting by simple speech sounds. However, for the older 7 to 9 year olds, there were no differences in sorting, in- dicating, according to Ianco-Worrall, that the bilingual advantage may be short lived. In two recent studies, Ben-Zeev (1977 a, b) has tested 5-10 year old children from two bilingual communities on a range of cognitive tasks. In both studies - of Hebrew-English speakers and of Spanish-English speakers - Ben-Zeev found evidence that bilinguals, relative to monolingual controls, scored equal or higher on a variety of cognitive tests, with most of the ‘advantage’ appearing at younger ages. The salient exception was of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, where monolinguals were superior due probably to a richer vocabulary in a single language.

In a similar manner, Bain (1975) compared French-English bilingual children with monolingual controls, and found a bilingual advantage in numerical series problems; this difference was significant at 6-8 years of age, but, as in the above studies, the difference disappeared by about age 12. Finally, in a study aimed at providing further support for Leopold’s aforementioned hypothesis, Cum- mins (1978) found that Irish 8- and 11-year-old bilinguals showed significantly greater ‘metalinguistic’ awareness than monolingual children, who are said to have ‘a less flexible and analytic orienta- tion to linguistic input’ (p. 148).

This brief and selective review (see McLaughlin, 1978, for a more complete review) does, indeed, seem to support Lambert’s (1 977) contention that ‘there is a definite advantage enjoyed by bilingual children in the domain of cognitive flexibility’ (p. 18). But what about all those earlier studies showing bilingual ‘deficits’? Most of the early studies in the period 1920-1950 considered the effects of bilingualism in predominantly lower-class ethnic communities. We have already noted that cultural biases in testing methodology were especially evident in those years. Also, many bilingual children had only limited degrees of competence in their second language. More recent studies which have shown positive effects of bilingualism, have primarily involved ‘balanced’ bilinguals - that is, those who were chosen because they were more-or-less equally competent in both languages. Furthermore, some studies (e.g. d’Anglejan, Gagnon, Hafez, Tucker and Winsberg, 1979) have shown that moderate differences in bilingual ability have little effect on


cognitive outcomes, such as solution of deductive reasoning problems. Therefore, it may be the case, as suggested by Cummins (1977)’ that some minimum level of bilingual or second language competence is necessary t o promote cognitive skills, as demonstrated in the recent studies discussed earlier.

These (and other) findings seem to fit a picture of bilingual ‘advantage’ - a view which conforms to the ideological desires of many concerned with problems of bilingual education and particularly with those combating anti-bilinguaVanti-ethnic prejudice. In spite of the evidence presented, the cognitive ‘case’ is far from closed. Why is this so? There are a number of compelling reasons: First, even the ‘best’ studies - like those discussed above - con- tain their own problems of interpretation and methodology, that call the results into question. For example, most claim that cognitive advantages are predominant in younger rather than older subjects. Why should this be the case, if: a) much of cognitive development is additive, in the sense that individual differences ac- celerate and group scores diverge increasingly with time; and b) bilingual ‘balance’ is important for cognitive development and for most children ‘balance’ seems to be achieved with increasing age (through increased schooling). It does not follow, therefore, that as bilingual balance is approached cognitive differences disap- pear - just the opposite would be predicted by Cummins’ (1977) hypothesis. Also, there remains the problem of fair or controlled comparison between the bilingual groups and monolingual controls. For example, in the Ben-Zeev (1977b) study, the Spanish- English bilinguals were significantly superior to the monolingual controls of the WISC IQ test. Although Ben-Zeev appropriately partialled out variation in IQ, such mean differences raise the question of whether bilingual children may be more ‘flexible’ and more ‘creative’ simply because they are smarter. Studies which have selected and studied ‘balanced’ bilinguals (e.g., Ben-Zeev, 1977, a, b; Bain, 1975; Cummins, 1977) are particularly susceptible to the critique of confounding general intelligence with bilingual ability. That is, it may be that balanced bilinguals are smarter, but it may also be that children have to be smarter, or have complex cognitive skills, to become ‘balanced’ bilinguals. This is a problem that is ex- tremely difficult to resolve. As McLaughlin points out, most researchers have looked at the cognitive consequences of bilingualism, even though the ‘more interesting question would seem to be the effect of intelligence on bilingualism’ (p. 168).

36 Daniel A. Wagner

IV. Some directions for further research

After a discussion of the above methodological and theoretical pitfalls, one might ask what is reasonable and relevant that developmental or cognitive psychology might offer to those interested in the study of childhood bilingualism and bilingual education. Let me mention two areas of research that remain practicable and interesting: (1) within-population experimental designs relating linguistic proficiency to cognitive skills; and (2) the study of reading acquisition in first and second languages.

With respect to within-population designs, I mean the use of in- depth studies of children becoming bilingual within a single com- munity. That is, rather than comparing bilinguals with ill-defined monolingual controls, I would suggest relating individual differences in bilingual proficiency to various cognitive skills. Although much research has been generated (e.g., see Macnamara, 1970; Slobin, 1973; Cromer, 1976), there is little reason to believe that cognition necessarily causes language acquisition, nor vice ver- sa. Thus, there is little reason to choose determinate sorts of ANOVA or group difference techniques over simpler correlational or multiple regression techniques, which may be done within a given population. It is now fairly well known that there exist large individual differences in monolinguals’ language acquisition (c. f. Brown, 1973), as well as in bilinguals’ second language acquisition (c.f. the recent work by Wong-Fillmore, 1976). In a manner similar to that of Carroll (1963), who related cognitive abilities like rote memory and rule learning ability among adult second language learners, it would be quite interesting to see how language and cognitive development are related in children. By eliminating the between-group design, we eliminate many of the confounding variables of earlier studies, and would allow a comparison of the matrix of psycholinguistic abilities in bilinguals as compared to monolinguals. An example of this method may be seen in the comparison of intra-individual variability in the recent study of Steven- son, Parker, Wilkenson, Bonnevaux, and Gonzales (1978). A similar within-group approach was taken by Ekstrand (1978) in his studies of second language acquisition and cognitive development in Sweden.

A second area that would be interesting to unravel is that of acquisition of reading skills or literacy in a second language. This is not a new topic, but it is apparent that much of the research on

Bilingualism in children 3 1

reading has been hampered by many of the control or comparabili- ty issues just described. For example, in the oft-cited study by Mo- diano ( 1 972) in Mexico, Mayan children’s literacy in Spanish was found to be improved when the children were first taught to read in Mayan. The problem here is that special instruction by motivated instructors was also likely to improve performance in these children. Thus, we are not sure whether native-language literacy in all cases or in any case is the causal factor for increased literacy. Simply having bilingual‘ or Mayan instructors - rather than Mestizo ‘foreigners’ - might be just as effective as native-language literacy programs. Related to Modiano’s work is an important question - that of transfer from native language literacy to second language literacy. Not enough research has been devoted to this important topic, and little use has been made of the work of cognitive psychologists on reading.

Among some psychologists, the topic of how differing orthographies are related to decoding processes in reading has receiv- ed considerable attention recently. For example, it has been shown that English and Chinese monolingual readers seem to vary in the kinds of cognitive or inference rules by which they attempt to decode a written passage (Treiman and Baron, 1979). Using a pro- cedure tha t involved t ru th judgments of ambiguous (homophonemic) sentences, Treiman and Baron found that type of orthography (Chinese logograph vs. English alphabet) was a significant determinant in the reader’s use of rules for speech recoding (i.e. use of sound in silent reading). One might ask, therefore, how these different rule systems may affect reading acquisition in the young Chinese-English bilingual. How do these rules operate and/or interfere with respect to orthographies with varying contrast - such as Spanish-English or Chinese-English? Another related issue is that of individual styles in reading recently studied in English monolinguals (Baron, 1977). How might these styles vary by differing orthographies and with respect to learning to read in two orthographies? If a child is an incipient bilingual, in which orthography or language should he learn to read first? Following an earlier suggestion on the lack of reading disabilities among Chinese reading children (Makita, 1968), Rozin and Gleit- man (1 977) have proposed that logographies themselves are the simplest and easiest way to learn basic reading skills. An interesting alternative point of view to the suggestion of Gleitman and Rozin is that of Harold Stevenson and his colleagues (at the University of

38 Daniel A . Wamer

Michigan), who are working on a project designed to demonstrate that early childhood socialization patterns may be more important than type of logography in the reading skills of young Chinese children.

These are only some of the current areas in which cognitive psychology might contribute in fruitful ways to the study of child bilingualism and bilingual education. Based on the recent statements of various North American government agencies, there is little doubt that cognitive psychologists will play an increasing role in the study of childhood bilingualism. The methodological, and even ideological, pitfalls are many. The greatest need at present would appear to be a long-term interdisciplinary approach to bilingual acquisition in various natural settings, across a variety of language groups. When such baseline data is available, we will be much closer to answering the basic questions about the relationship between cognition and bilingualism.

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Perspectives cognitives sur le bilinguisme chez les enfants.

Depuis que les tests d’intelligence standardises sont devenus populaires dans les annkes 1920, les psychologues ont tentk d’appli- quer ces mesures a diffkrents types de population. Avec les premiers tests, les groupes ethniques ont souvent obtenu des resultats infkrieurs a ceux du groupe culture1 de reference (en general des sujets blancs de classe moyenne). C’est fi cette Cpoque que le bilinguisme et l’intelligence ont i t i ttudits simultankment. Des analyses rtcentes de ces premitres etudes montrent clairement que des defauts mkthodologiques ont diforme les conclusions. Un de ces problsmes consistait a dkfinir le degre de bilinguisme.

Des ktudes rkcentes ont en gCnkral rejet6 l’idke selon laquelle les tests d’intelligence verbale peuvent fournir des informations scien- tifiquement intkressantes sur les effets du bilinguisme. Du fait de la popularit6 croissante des theories sur le dkveloppement cognitif, les


chercheurs se sont interesses au niveau et aux types d’aptitudes cognitives chez les sujets bilingues et monolingues. Un certain nom- bre d’etudes recentes - sur la pensee cognitive, la pensee abstraite etc. . . - ont montre I’avantage cognitif des enfants bilingues sur les enfants monolingues. D’autres chercheurs ont propose que le degre d’equilibre bilingue (i.e. competence equivalente dans les deux langues) represente un facteur crucial des avantages et des handicaps. Une revue critique de ces etudes montre que ces conclusions ne sont pas obligatoires. D’autres recherches possibles sont suggkrees, utilisant les plans experimentaux A I’interieur des populations et l’etude de la lecture bilingue.