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Bilingualism and ambiguous emotional cues 1

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Independent degree project second cycle

Psychology Major subject Title Bilingualism and Children's Attention to Facial Expressions that Conflict with Lexical Content Amani Asad


MID SWEDEN UNIVERSITY Department of Psychology Examiner: Anders Flykt, [email protected] Supervisor: Helena Örnkloo, [email protected] Co-supervisor: Marie-France Larsson, [email protected] Author: Amani Asad, [email protected] Degree programme: Psykologprogrammet, 300 credits Main field of study: Psychology Semester, year: VT, 2015


Abstract

Due to the experience of managing two simultaneously competing languages, bilingual

children show an advantage in controlled attention and more specifically in interference

suppression. Such an advantage has been seen in various domains, for instance in bilingual

children's abilities to read vocal tone when this conflicts with lexical content – despite the

fact that young children normally display a lexical bias in such emotionally ambiguous

situations. The current study examined whether this bilingual advantage generalizes to

attending to happy and sad facial expressions when these are congruent or incongruent,

respectively, to happy and sad lexical content. Data from thirty preschoolers showed that all

children performed better in the congruent condition regarding number of correct responses,

but reaction time (RT) was not significantly different between conditions. No main effect of

language group and no interaction effect between language group and condition was found.

It might be that the bilingual advantage only generalizes to some domains. However, the

current study was limited in its statistical conclusion validity, as participants were

heterogeneous. Thus, this study may suggest that not all bilingual experiences lead to a

bilingual advantage in interference suppression in all domains. A replication should use a

more homogeneous sample. Future research could further investigate which specific

experiences lead to an advantage in interference suppression and in which domains.


Bilingualism and Children's Attention to Facial Expressions that Conflict with Lexical

Content

Up until the 21st century, research on bilingualism was scarce. Paradis, Genesee and

Crago (2011) describe how it used to be believed that bilingualism would hinder a child's

cognitive development. Being exposed to two languages was feared to lead the child to

getting confused and not being fully competent in either language (Paradis et al., 2011).

While bilingual preschoolers tend to have smaller receptive and expressive vocabularies in

each of their languages in comparison with monolingual preschoolers (Bialystok, Barac,

Blaye, & Puling-Dubois, 2010; Mahon & Crutchley, 2006), bilinguals tend to outperform

monolinguals in tasks requiring metalinguistic awareness, controlled attention, working

memory and abstract and symbolic representation skills (Adesope, Lavin, Thompson, &

Ungerleider, 2010). Furthermore, Siegal, Iozzi and Surian (2009) argue that in the context

of today’s globalization, where bilingualism is becoming more prevalent, the effects of

bilingualism on child development should be even better understood.

Benefits from being bilingual can be seen even in people not learning their second

language from birth (Kalashnikova & Mattock, 2014; Poarch & van Hell, 2012a; Vega-

Mendoza, West, Sorace, & Bak, 2015). However, learning a second language as early as

possible creates a special impact on neural and cognitive development (Bialystok, Craik,

Green, & Gollan, 2009; Hull & Vaid, 2007; Kapa och Colombo, 2013; Kroll & Bialystok,

2013; Luk, DeSa, & Bialystok, 2011; Olsen et al., 2015; Struys, Mohades, Bosch, & van den

Noort, 2015).

For instance, a meta-analysis (Hull & Vaid, 2007) showed that early bilinguals (i.e.

those who learn the second language before the age of six) show a more bilateral activation

for both acquired languages. In late bilinguals (i.e. those learning the second language after

the age of six), both languages are lateralized to the left hemisphere (Hull & Vaid, 2007) – a

pattern that is in line with the left hemispheric language lateralization in monolinguals

(Breedlove, Watson, & Rosenzweig, 2010). Thus, learning the second language while brain

plasticity is at its highest can have dramatic effects. There is no definite conclusion to why

the right hemisphere is more involved in language use for early bilinguals than for late

bilinguals and for monolinguals (Hull & Vaid, 2007). One of the possible explanations is

the early bilinguals' greater metalinguistic awareness, as such awareness is associated with

right hemispheric activation (Hull & Vaid, 2007).

When completing metalinguistic tasks, attention plays a large role. For instance,

attentional activation is more related to metalinguistic tasks than it is to tasks only placing

demands on basic speech perception (Astheimer, Janus, Moreno, & Bialystok, 2014).

Furthermore, abilities of controlled attention can help children think metalinguistically when

encountering a linguistic stimulus, as they are better able to suppress attention from moving

to the very salient concrete meaning of the linguistic stimulus (Bialystok, 2009). More

specifically, controlled attention is the ability to monitor the environment, selectively

allocate attention to specific aspects of a representation and to inhibit attention from moving

to irrelevant aspects of a representation (Bialystok et al., 2009). Lastly, controlled attention

plays into the cognitive flexibility that enables effective attentional switching between

different aspects of a representation (Bialystok et al., 2009).

Bilingual children frequently outperform monolingual children in tasks placing

demands on controlled attention (Bialystok et al., 2009). As controlled attention is part of

the executive functions (EF) associated with prefrontal regions, and those regions are not

fully developed until young adulthood (Taylor, Doesburg, & Pang, 2014), such tasks are


usually very difficult for children to succeed in.

The exact mechanisms for why bilingualism affects controlled attention are still

under debate (Kapa & Colombo, 2013). Green (1998) suggests that bilinguals always have

both language systems active. Thus, child bilinguals exercise their abilities of controlled

attention from an early age, as they regularly need to monitor the linguistic context and

attend to the appropriate language system while suppressing concepts from the language that

is not presently relevant (Green, 1998).

Subsequent research has indeed shown that bilinguals experience coactivation of

languages, causing competition between language systems and thereby causing a need to

attend to one language system while inhibiting the system that is not relevant in a particular

linguistic context (Costa, Miozzo, & Caramazza, 1999; Hermans, Bongaerts, de Bot, &

Schreuder, 1998; Hermans, Ormel, Van Besselaar, & Van Hell, 2011; Kroll, Bobb, &

Wodniecka, 2006). Examining coactivation closer, it can be seen that all bilinguals, even

those not very proficient in their second language, experience coactivation when exposed to

their non-dominant language (Poarch and van Hell, 2012b; van Hell & Tanner, 2012).

Proficient bilinguals experience coactivation of languages not only when exposed to their

non-dominant language but also when exposed to their dominant one (Poarch and van Hell,

2012b; van Hell & Tanner, 2012).

Furthermore, many of the brain regions involved in language selection (see Luk,

Green, Abutalebi, & Grady, 2012 for a meta-analysis) are in frontal regions where EF has its

base (Breedlove et al., 2010). It has also been shown that damage to the left dorsolateral

prefrontal cortex causes bilinguals to suffer difficulties in selecting the correct language in a

given linguistic context (Abutalebi, Miozzo, & Cappa, 2000; Fabbro, Skrap, & Aglioti,

2000).

Summarizing the above, there seems to be a relationship between the bilingual

experience of language management and EF. However, it has been questioned whether the

advantage in controlled attention should really be attributed to bilingualism per se or

whether the relationship may be confounded by such factors as culture or socioeconomic

status (SES; Barac & Bialystok, 2012; Morton & Harper, 2007).

To test the effects of background culture, of similarity between children's two

languages and of language of schooling on children's abilities of task switching, Barac and

Bialystok (2012) compared three bilingual groups of six-year-olds who differed from each

other on the aforementioned grounds as well as one monolingual group of six-year-olds.

Results showed no difference in performance between the bilingual groups. However, all

bilingual groups performed better than the monolingual group (Barac & Bialystok, 2012).

To rule out effects of immigration when comparing bilingual children with different

cultural backgrounds, Bialystok and Viswanathan (2009) compared a bilingual group

currently living in India with a bilingual group living in Canada as well as a monolingual

group living in Canada. Both bilingual groups performed equally on controlled attention,

and both outperformed the monolingual group (Bialystok & Viswanathan, 2009).

Regarding SES, this is known to affect cognitive functioning (Bradley & Corwyn,

2002). Results from studies examining the role of SES in the bilingual advantage, have been

mixed. Morton and Harper (2007) conducted a study with six- and seven-year-olds, and

showed that the bilingual advantage disappeared when they controlled for SES. However,

other studies, where low SES child bilinguals have been compared to middle class or high

SES child monolinguals, have instead shown that even low SES bilinguals do in fact

outperform higher SES monolinguals in tasks placing demands on controlled attention


(Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008; Engel de Abreu, Cruz-Santos, Tourinho, Martin, & Bialystok,

2012; Mezzacappa, 2004). Calvo and Bialystok (2014) set out to examine the roles of SES

and bilingualism, respectively, in the bilingual advantage in completing EF tasks. It turned

out that both SES and bilingualism had main effects, that is, independent effects, on

children's EF (Calvo & Bialystok, 2014).

In sum, there is evidence for a bilingual advantage associated with the training of

language management from a young age. This advantage does not seem to be due to cultural

effects. While high SES can contribute to better abilities of controlled attention, it does not

explain the bilingual advantage. Instead, both SES and bilingualism seem to independently

affect abilities of controlled attention.

A closer examination of the bilingual advantage reveals that it can be seen in a

variety of domains. As stated earlier, controlled attention helps children attend to one aspect

of a linguistic presentation while ignoring another (Bialystok, 2009). For instance,

Bialystok (1988) showed that six- and seven-year-olds detected a larger number of

grammatical errors than their monolingual peers in a task where they needed to attend to

grammar while ignoring distracting, absurd lexical content.

Looking at non verbal task performance, three tasks are frequently used to examine

the bilingual advantage in controlled attention, namely the Stroop task, the Simon task and

the Flanker task. Regarding the Stroop task (Stroop, 1935), where automatic processes

interfere with controlled processes, there has been some inconsistent results. Bilingual

children do not tend to outperform monolingual children on a version often used with

preschoolers, namely the Day/Night Stroop (Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008; Siegal et al.,

2009). The Day/Night Stroop (Gerstadt, Hong, & Diamond, 1994) requires children to

respond with the word “day” when shown a picture of a moon, and vice versa respond with

“night” when shown a picture of a sun. Esposito, Baker-Ward and Mueller (2013) argue that

this Stroop paradigm cannot be used to test children's abilities of controlled attention, as it

rather tests response inhibition.

In the adult Color/Word Stroop (Stroop, 1935), participants are instead asked to state

the color of words, while ignoring the salient lexical content – which happens to read the

name of a color that is either congruent or incongruent with the color that the word is in.

Adult bilinguals do in fact manage to state the colors in the incongruent condition faster than

adult monolinguals, implying that bilinguals are better at ignoring the interference from the

lexical content (Hernández, Costa, Fuentes, Vivas, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2010). Indeed,

bilinguals seem to particularly have an advantage in tasks where they are simultaneously

presented with two conflicting stimuli (i.e. placing demands on a part of controlled attention

called interference suppression; Bialystok et al., 2009; Bialystok & Viswanathan, 2009;

Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008; Esposito et al., 2013; Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008).

While response inhibition and interference suppression are closely related, as they

are both cognitive control EF (Bunge, Dudukovic, Thomason, Vaidya, & Gabrieli, 2002),

they are indeed two dissociated EF (Brydges et al., 2012; Luk, Anderson, Craik, Grady, &

Bialystok, 2010). In light of this, Esposito et al. (2013) had monolingual and bilingual

children between ages three and five complete the common Day/Night Stroop that tests

response inhibition, as well as a newly developed Bivalent Shape Stroop that tests

interference suppression. Bilinguals and monolinguals did not differ on the Stroop testing

response inhibition, neither in the congruent nor incongruent condition. Group

performances also did not differ on the congruent condition in the Bivalent shape Stroop, but

bilinguals performed significantly better than monolinguals in the incongruent condition


(Esposito et al., 2013). Furthermore, Poulin-Dubois, Blaye, Coutya and Bialystok (2011)

showed that a bilingual advantage in a Stroop task placing demands on interference

suppression, can be seen already at the age of two.

In the Simon Task (Simon, 1969), interference is caused when the target stimulus'

spatial location conflicts with the location of the correct response. While there are some

variants of the Simon task, Martin-Rhee and Bialystok (2008) asked bilinguals and

monolinguals around the age of five to identify the direction of an arrow showed on a

screen. Children were to provide an answer by pressing the left or the right mouse button.

Each button corresponded to a specific arrow direction. Meanwhile, the stimulus could

appear on either the right or the left side of the screen. The location of the target stimulus

was irrelevant, but when this location conflicted with the location of the button that

corresponded to the correct identification of the arrow's direction, all children performed

worse than in the congruent condition. Overall, however, bilinguals had faster reaction

times (RT) than monolinguals in the congruent condition as well as in the incongruent

condition, where they were better able than monolinguals to resolve the interference

(Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008).

In the Flanker task (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974) participants need to focus on a central

stimulus while ignoring surrounding, misleading, stimuli. In a child version of this,

participants need to identify the direction of a fish and ignore other simultaneously presented

fishes, whose directions are either congruent or incongruent with the central fish's direction

(Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008; Yang, Yang, & Lust, 2011). Bilinguals between ages four and

seven tend to show faster RTs in the incongruent condition in comparison with monolinguals

(Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008; Yang, Yang, & Lust, 2011).

Moving on to the realm of socially and emotionally oriented tasks, Bialystok and

Senman (2004) compared bilingual and monolingual four- and five-year-olds on two theory

of mind tasks. One task mainly placed demands on representational ability, while the other

placed demands on interference suppression as it involved conflicting representations and

misleading cues. While bilinguals and monolinguals performed equally on the task only

placing demands on representational abilities, bilinguals outperformed monolinguals in the

task requiring interference suppression (Bialystok & Senman, 2004).

Furthermore, Yow and Markman (2011) showed that bilingual four-year-olds

outperformed their monolingual peers in ability to attend to the target stimulus of vocal tone

when this was incongruent with lexical content. Specifically, children were exposed to

sentences consisting of happy lexical content as well as sentences consisting of sad lexical

content. These sentences were presented in either a congruent condition, where lexical

content matched the vocal tone of the voice reading the sentence, or in an incongruent

condition, where lexical content did not match vocal tone. All children performed better in

the congruent condition than in the incongruent. Bilinguals and monolinguals performed

similarly in the congruent condition regarding number of correct responses as well as RT for

responding. While there was no difference in RT between monolinguals and bilinguals in

the incongruent condition, an interaction effect between language group and condition was

found regarding number of correct responses; bilinguals performed significantly better in

this condition than monolinguals did. It is worth mentioning that bilinguals only performed

as good as someone who would have guessed throughout the incongruent trials. However,

monolinguals performed well below chance level in the incongruent trials (Yow &

Markman, 2011).

The aforementioned experiment poses a situation that is notably difficult for children


that young. Children, even infants, can in fact attend to paralanguage (e.g. vocal tone and

facial expression) to discern someone's attitude (Baldwin, 2000; Moses, Baldwin, Rosicky,

& Tidball, 2001). However, children who have acquired language, demonstrate a lexical

bias when paralanguage conflicts with the lexical content of words, as children interpret

words literally in such emotionally ambiguous situations (Demorest, Meyer, Phelps,

Gardner, & Winner, 1984, Friend, 2000; Morton & Trehub, 2001; Reilly & Muzekari, 1979;

Rotenberg, Simour, & Moore, 1989). Even if children clearly remember instructions to

focus on paralanguage in such situations, they have a hard time voluntarily modulating their

responses in accordance (Morton, Trehub, & Zelazo, 2003).

Adults on the other hand, attend even more to paralanguage in emotionally

ambiguous situations in order to identify the correct emotion of the person they are

communicating with (Reilly & Muzekari, 1979; Rotenberg et al., 1989). This tendency was

demonstrated in a study where adults were tested on a Stroop paradigm where positive or

negative facial expressions were presented simultaneously with positive or negative

emotionally valenced words in text (Beall & Herbert, 2008). In the congruent condition, the

word matched the facial expression. In the incongruent condition, the word conflicted with

the facial expression. In some trials, participants were instructed to focus on faces, while

they were instructed to focus on the words in other trials. Regardless of whether the face or

the word needed to be ignored, RTs were slower in the incongruent condition. The key

finding, however, was that RTs were especially slow when participants needed to attend to

words when faces were distracting. Thus, adults seemed to process facial expressions more

automatically than they did emotionally valenced words (Beall & Herbert, 2008).

The tendency to attend more to paralanguage in emotionally ambiguous situations

facilitates an understanding of such social interactions as joking, pretending or using irony

(Eskritt & Lee, 2003). Indeed, children up to around six or eight years old find it difficult to

understand someone's intent when they are ironic (Ackerman, 1981; Demorest et al, 1984).

Wang, Lee, Sigman & Dapretto (2006) had adults and children between nine and fourteen

watch cartoon drawings and listen to sentences while instructed to either attend to facial

expression or vocal tone. Their task was to determine whether the lexical content in the

sentence was ironic or sincere. Results showed that when children were asked to attend to

paralanguage instead of lexical content, they recruited frontal areas more strongly than

adults, while adults showed a stronger posterior occipitotemporal activation. This was

interpreted as children needing more deliberate effort in order to attend to paralanguage,

while this had become automatized in adults (Wang et al., 2006).

Concluding from the study of Yow and Markman (2011), the bilingual advantage

seems to generalize to abilities in four-year-old bilinguals to read paralanguage

operationalized as vocal tone in emotionally ambiguous situations. It is, however, not clear

whether the advantage generalizes to reading paralanguage operationalized as facial

expressions when these conflict with lexical content. As recently mentioned, ability to

understand ironic remarks seems to develop after the age of six or eight (Ackerman, 1981;

Demorest et al, 1984). In line with this, Morton and Trehub (2001) found that the ability to

attend to vocal tone when it conflicts with lexical content, gradually diminishes between

ages five and ten, where children eight or younger more often attend to lexical content than

paralanguage. Such a detailed understanding of the developmental process of the lexical

bias in relation to facial expressions remains unknown (Morton & Trehub, 2001). However,

people in general seem to have an easier time identifying and agreeing on facial expressions

presented alone than vocal tone presented alone (Russell, Bachorowski, & Fernández-Dols,


2003).

The ability to read facial expressions when these are presented in isolation, is fully

developed in adulthood (Knudsen & Muzekari, 1983). Children's abilities seem to develop

until they are around ten years old (Baudouin, Durand, & Gallay, 2008; Durand, Gallay,

Seigneuric, Robichon, & Baudouin, 2007). However, happy and sad facial expressions seem

to be the earliest ones that children can discriminate (Camras & Allison, 1985; Durand et al.,

2007; Walden & Field, 1982). Furthermore, while it can be difficult to freely name facial

expressions, children as young as three have been seen to understand the emotional meaning

in various facial expressions (Russell & Widen, 2002).

The current study examines whether the bilingual advantage in interference

suppression generalizes to preschoolers attending to happy and sad facial expressions when

these are congruent or incongruent, respectively, to happy and sad lexical content.

Summarizing from earlier congruent-incongruent tasks, it has been seen that incongruent

tasks are more difficult than congruent tasks for all children. However, bilinguals tend to

outperform monolinguals in the incongruent conditions – but often not in the congruent

conditions. In light of this, the current study hypothesizes that all children will perform

better in the congruent condition than in the incongruent one. Furthermore, it is

hypothesized that bilinguals will outperform monolinguals in the incongruent condition but

not in the congruent condition.


Method

Participants Thirty-one children (13 female and 18 male) were recruited in seven preschools (n =

28) and through personal contacts (n = 3). Out of these, the data from one male child was

removed altogether from the study due to disturbances during test administration. The

remaining children were between ages 3.67 and 6.42 (M = 5.09; SD = 0.71).

Regarding language groups, 16 of the children were monolingual while 14 were

bilingual. Both bilingual and monolingual children were spread across the different

preschools. In order to be placed in the bilingual group, parents needed to report that their

child was currently, on average, exposed to a second language at least 15 percent of all time.

Previous studies have used between 20 and 40 percent as the cut off limit (eg. Poulin-Dubos

et al., 2011; Namazi & Thordardottir, 2010). Cut off was lowered in this particular study

due to the relatively large amount of children exposed to a second language 15 percent of the

time (n = 4). As these particular children reportedly themselves at times initiated

conversation in the second language, they were included in the bilingual group instead of the

monolingual group. Children exposed to a second language more seldom (e.g. 1-10 % of the

time; n = 3), practically never initiated conversation in the second language, and were placed

in the monolingual group.

The bilingual children were on average exposed to the second language 26.80

percent of the time (SD = 11.90; ranging from 15 to 50 percent). All participating bilingual

children were early bilinguals, but only five had learned the second language from birth. The

remaining eight bilinguals had learned the second language later on (age of acquisition

ranging from 1.00 to 5.33; M = 2.42; SD = 1.46).

All bilingual children were proficient in Swedish. However, they differed from each

other regarding which second language they were proficient in (e.g. English, Kurdish,

Turkish, Amharic, Farsi, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Somali and Syriac). While most (n = 11)

were literally bilingual, three trilingual children were included in the bilingual group, as

trilinguals show the same advantage (Poarch & van Hell, 2012b).

Lastly, ten children (two bilinguals and eight monolinguals) had great difficulties

navigating the touch pad used in the experiment. This led to partial attrition, where these

participants' RT performances could not be used. Thus, in analyses of RT, participants

consisted of twelve bilingual children (seven female and five male) and eight monolingual

children (two female and six male). Mean total age here was 5.25 (SD = 0.68; ages ranging

from 3.75 to 6.42).

Procedure The children's parents were given written information about the study. This included

information regarding confidentiality and how data would be stored and used, as well as

information regarding the concrete test procedure with the children and regarding the

possibility of both parents and children to terminate participation. If parents provided their

written informed consent and thereby chose to sign up their child to the study, they were

requested to fill out a questionnaire where they provided demographic information and

information about their child’s language development (see Appendix). While one preschool

administered the questionnaire to the parents in paper versions, the other preschools were

provided with an Internet link to forward to parents.

The registered children were asked personally if they would like to participate in the

study, and were promised a small toy after experiment participation. In the case of children

recruited from preschools, the study took place at preschool in a quiet place. In the case of


children recruited through personal contacts, the study took place in their home in a quiet

place.

As the children were to later click on schematic faces on a computer screen to

provide answers regarding identified facial expressions in the experiment, each child began

participation by practicing identifying the emotions of two schematic faces; one sad and one

happy. Practice was conducted by the researcher holding up laminated paper version of the

schematic faces, one at a time, and asking the child to identify the emotion in the face. If no

answer was given, the researcher gave the child the correct answer. Practice was deemed

successful when the child could correctly identify the emotions of both schematic faces.

The child was then instructed that they would see pictures of girls’ faces (one at a

time) on the screen and that they were to look at a face closely and try to figure out the

emotion in the face. They were told that they would hear a short story at the same time.

They were further told that they would then see two schematic face pictures on the screen

(the schematic pictures were, however, not named in dialogue with the child; instead, the

researcher held up the laminated paper versions to refer to the schematic faces). They were

to use the touch pad to click on the schematic face that best fit the feeling they had identified

in the girl’s face.

Second, the child got four practice trials, with the purpose of practicing navigating

the touch pad and get an idea of how the experiment worked. While no feedback was given

regarding whether the child responded correctly, appraisal for effort was given. Before

moving to the experiment trials, the child was reminded to choose the schematic picture that

best fit the feeling they saw in the girl’s face.

The child was then presented with 32 experiment trials, which followed the same

structure as the practice trials. Each trial consisted of the child seeing an actress displaying

either a happy face or a sad face, while at the same time hearing a sentence (the story). The

sentence contained either happy lexical content or sad lexical content, though vocal tone was

held neutral. Exposure time for a picture was identical to the length of the sound stimulus

that was matched to that picture. When the sound was over, the picture disappeared from

screen and was replaced by the two schematic faces. These were placed next to each other

on screen, though they switched places with each other in a randomized order across trials

(i.e. moving from the left side to the right side and vice versa). The child got one point for

each correct answer (maximum 16 per condition). RT was automatically measured in

milliseconds (ms) from onset of the schematic faces on screen, until the moment when the

child clicked on one of the schematic faces.

In total, the experiment trials consisted of eight various sentences containing happy

lexical content and eight various sentences containing sad lexical content. Each sentence

was presented twice during the experiment; once in a congruent experimental condition (i.e.

in combination with a facial expression matching the sentence’s content) and once in an

incongruent condition (i.e. in combination with a facial expression at odds with the

sentence’s content). As such, 16 pictures of happy faces and 16 pictures of sad faces were

included in the experiment.

Sentences were presented in a randomized order throughout the experiment.

Furthermore, the first time one specific sentence was presented, it was randomized whether

the sentence would be presented in a congruent or incongruent condition. The second time

that same sentence was presented, it was presented in the condition opposite of the one it

had been presented in the first time. If, for instance, the sentence “My dog ran away” was

randomly assigned to be presented in a congruent condition (i.e. together with a sad face) the


first time that sentence was presented, the same sentence was automatically presented in an

incongruent condition (i.e. together with a happy face) the second time that particular

sentence was presented. Lastly, through a pool of 32 faces, the software randomly selected

one of the faces that would fit whichever condition was about to be presented; incongruent

or congruent.

Material The questionnaire given to parents, was a modified version of the Experience and

Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q; Marian, Blumenfeld, & Kaushanskaya, 2007). The

original LEAP-Q has been examined through two subsequent studies using factor analysis.

Results showed consistent factors across studies, indicating internal validity. Furthermore,

each factor has been examined regarding internal consistency. While Cronbach's alpha was

only .31 and .50, respectively, for two of the factors and could not be concluded for two

other factors, it varied between .77 and .92 for the four remaining factors. Criterion-based

validity has been established using multiple regression and correlation analyses between

self-reported language abilities and objective behavioral language performance in various

domains. With few exceptions, self reports correlate to actual performance (r varying

between .34 and .74; Marian et al., 2007).

While the LEAP-Q overall is a valid and reliable questionnaire, it is a self evaluation

questionnaire for adults, and it does not exist in Swedish. For the purpose of the current

study, it was adapted to a version where parents could fill in information about their children

(Örnkloo, 2014). The modified questionnaire was made available in English as well as in

Swedish. The online version of the questionnaire was built in the program Mod_Survey

(Palmius, 2004).

As for the children's task, stimuli were presented using E-Prime 2.0 software

(Psychology Software Tools, 2012). The audio recorded sentences were based on those used

by Morton and Trehub (2001) when comparing children and adults on ability to attend to

vocal tone when this is congruent or incongruent, respectively, to lexical content. The same

sentences were also used by Morton et al. (2003) when examining the sources of children's

lexical bias, and by Yow and Markman (2011) in their investigation of monolingual and

bilingual children's abilities to attend to vocal tone in congruent and incongruent conditions.

Only 18 of the original 20 sentences were used in the current study. Furthermore, of

these 18 sentences, two were used in the practice trials. This means that 16 of the sentences

were used in the experimental trials (see Table 1), rendering 32 experimental presentations

instead of the 40 that Morton and Trehub (2001) and Yow and Markman (2011) used. This

adjustment was made since some of the participants in the current study were very young

and could possibly lose focus fast. Furthermore, the sentences were translated into Swedish

and some were adjusted to better fit Swedish cultural conditions. A back translation was

done by a colleague fluent in both Swedish and English.


Table 1

Sixteen of the original sentences used by Morton and Harper, and the sixteen adjusted sentences used in the current study's experimental trials, here back translated

Original Happy lexical content

Adjusted Happy lexical content

1. My mommy gave me a treat. 2. My soccer team just won the

championship. 3. I got an ice cream for being good. 4. I came in first place in a race today. 5. Dad gave me a new bike for my birthday. 6. I am having a party and all my best

friends are coming. 7. My teacher says that I’m the smartest in

the class. 8. I had my favourite cake for desert.

1. My mom gave me candy. 2. My team won the soccer game. 3. I got an ice cream because I was nice. 4. I won a running competition today. 5. My dad gave me a bike for my birthday. 6. I am going to have a party, and all my

best friends are going. 7. My teacher told me I am excellent.

8. I had my favorite cake for desert.

Sad lexical content Sad lexical content

1. My dog ran away from home. 2. My bike is broken so I can’t go riding with

my friends. 3. I lost my baseball glove today. 4. I lost my sticker collection. 5. I am not allowed to go outside and play

with my friends. 6. My best friend doesn’t like me anymore. 7. I fell off my bike and everyone made fun

of me. 8. I lost the toy that my grandmother gave

me for Christmas.

1. My dog ran away from home. 2. My bike is broken, so I can’t bike with

my friends. 3. I lost my ball today. 4. I lost my stickers. 5. I don’t have time to go out and play with

my friends. 6. My best friend is angry at me. 7. I fell off my bike and hurt myself.

8. I lost a Christmas present I got from grandma.

All sentences were read by one and the same person. Importantly, happy and sad

lexical content sentences did not differ from each other regarding sentence length (t14 = 0.79,

p = .44; happy lexical content: M = 1994.38 ms, SD = 400.81; sad lexical content: M =

2181.50 ms, SD = 537.17), preventing a systematic bias in exposure time for certain trials.

The woman recording the sentences was a radio talker used to reporting in an objective tone

of voice, and she was here instructed to hold a neutral tone. Furthermore, a panel of five

colleagues judged the sentences on basis of vocal tone. Those sentences that were not

deemed to be neutral were re-recorded.

As all sentences were read in a female voice, only pictures of females were used in

the presentations (in order not to trigger attention from moving from the task to the

potentially salient discrepancy of a female voice in combination with a male face). Pictures

were taken, with permission, from the Radboud Faces Database (RaFD; Langner, Dotsch,

Bijlstra, Wigboldus, Hawk, & van Knippenberg, 2010). The pictures in this database have

been validated and the overall agreement between pictures' intended emotional display and

test participants' identification of emotion is 82 percent. An even higher agreement rate is

found for happy facial expressions (98 percent) and sad facial expressions (85 percent;

Langner et al., 2010).

Lastly, the schematic faces used by children to give their answers regarding the

emotion of the presented face, were validated in adult populations in three different

countries. Four faces for each emotion were used in the validation process, and the faces


that participants most accurately labeled correctly, and that had the least mixed labels

attached to them, were used in the current study.

Data analysis Most analyses in the current study were straightforward and do not need further

presentation. However, the positive skew normally found in RT data distributions (Wheelan,

2008), must be addressed. When dealing with RT data, RTs can reflect the process of

interest as well as other processes; while fast RTs can reflect guessing, slow RTs can reflect

fatigue or loss of focus (Wheelan, 2008).

While the risk of type I errors is minimal if one decides to simply perform an

ANOVA on such data without further preparation (Ratcliff, 1993), such a procedure can

reduce statistical power (Wilcox, 1998). There are three common ways to deal with the

problem of skewed data and outliers in RT distributions; eliminating data outside of certain

cut off points, data transformation that normalizes the distribution and simply reporting the

median instead of the mean (Ratcliff, 1993; Wheelan, 2008). Using cut off points is the

approach that best maintains power (Ratcliff, 1993), and was the approach chosen in the

current study.

However, if the compared conditions differ from each other regarding the parameters

of the long right tail in the distributions (tau), power will be reduced due to the mistake of

eliminating a higher degree of genuine RTs in one of the conditions (Ratcliff, 1993).

Researchers typically choose to eliminate RTs above and below ± 2 SD or ± 3 SD around the

grand mean (Lachaud & Renaud, 2011). However, choosing cut off points around the grand

mean does not take into account that the amount of variation can differ among the various

subdistributions (Lachaud & Renaud, 2011) – thus risking the aforementioned situation

where genuine RTs in one condition are eliminated, while genuine RTs in another are

preserved.

In the current study, two approaches were undertaken in order to reduce the risk of

such a bias. First, the filtering of RTs was done already at the level of distribution by

condition and by participant. Such an approach increases reliability of the results (Lachaud

& Renaud, 2011). The filtering itself was done using cut off points based on median

absolute deviation (MAD). The measure of MAD is robust and less sensitive to outliers than

the SD, thus reducing the risk of eliminating genuine RTs (Lachaud & Renaud, 2011; Leys,

Ley, Klein, Bernard, & Licata, 2013). In the current study, RTs above and below 3 MAD

were eliminated. Such a cut off level is considered to be conservative, reducing the risk of

eliminating genuine RTs (Miller, 1991). After elimination of outliers using these

approaches, each participant's RTs were aggregated into means for each condition and those

means were used in the subsequent analyses of groups and conditions. The aggregated

means only included RTs from trials in which the child had answered correctly.


Results

Background Variables Age. T-tests were performed in order to investigate whether the two language groups

differed from each other regarding age distribution. Age distribution in the entire bilingual

group (M = 5.29, SD = 0.72) and in the entire monolingual group (M = 4.92, SD = 0.68)

were not different from each other (t27 = 1.40, p = .17). Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of

normality showed that both groups consisted of children with normally distributed ages (age

distribution for monolinguals: K-S = 0.10, p = .20; age distribution for bilinguals: K-S =

0.13, p = .20).

Comparing only those children included in analyses of RT performance, a t-test

revealed that age distribution in this group of bilinguals (M = 5.41, SD = 0.60) and age

distribution in this group of monolinguals (M = 5.00, SD = 0.77) did not differ from each

other (t18= 1.34, p = .20). Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of normality showed that both groups

consisted of normally distributed ages (age distribution for monolinguals: K-S = 0.25 p =

.15; age distribution for bilinguals: K-S = 0.17, p = .20).

Gender. A Chi-square analysis on gender distribution in the language groups,

showed that the relative distributions of girls and boys were equal across language groups

(2(1, N = 30) = 2.04; p = .15). A Chi-square analysis on gender distributions in the

language groups when only including those children included in the RT analyses, showed a

similar result. Girls and boys were equally distributed across language groups (2(1, N = 20)

= 2.16; p = .14).

Educational level of parents. Mann Whitney U-tests were employed to test whether

educational level of parents differed between language groups. First, looking at the entire

bilingual group and the entire monolingual group, educational level did not differ between

groups, neither when looking at educational level of the parent with the most education (U =

96.50, p =.74) nor when looking at the average educational level of both parents (U = 96.50,

p = .76).

Second, looking at the bilinguals and monolinguals included in the RT analyses, a

similar result was found. Educational level did not differ between groups, neither when

looking at educational level of the parent with the most education (U = 32.00, p = .23) nor

when looking at the average educational level of both parents (U = 43.50, p = 1.00).

Main Analyses of Language Groups' Effect on Test Performance Number of correct responses. A two-way 2x2 mixed ANOVA was performed.

Levene's test showed violations to the assumption of homogeneity of variance. In this

particular analysis, alpha level was set to .01 to reduce the risk of type I error that can

accompany such a violation (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2014). Results showed a significant main

effect of condition (F1,28 = 39.04, p < .01; ηp2 = .58), where children more frequently

answered correctly in the congruent condition (M = 13.31, SE = 0.51, CI(95%)= 12.49-

15.51) than in the incongruent condition (M = 6.9, SE = 0.89, CI(95%) = 4.13-9.44).

However, no main effect of language group was found (F1,28 = 0.29, ns; descriptive statistics

in Table 2), nor was there any interaction effect between language group and condition (F1,28

= 0.29, ns).

Further examining the effects of condition, two one sample t-tests were performed,

showing that children's number of correct responses in the congruent condition were higher

than chance performance (t29 = 10.29; p = <.01; d = 1.88). Number of correct responses in

the incongruent condition did not differ from chance performance (t29 = 1.23; p = .23).

Reaction time. Another two-way 2x2 mixed ANOVA was performed. Results


showed a trend towards better performance in the incongruent condition (M = 3276.07, SE =

275.59, CI(95%) = 2467.39-3976.56) than in the congruent condition (M = 3503.18, SE =

230.31, CI(95%) = 2709.62-3970.81; F1,17 = 3.41, p = .08, ηp2 = .17). No main effect of

language group was found (F1,17 = 0.19, ns; descriptive statistics in table 2), and no

interaction effect between language group and condition was found (F1,17 = 0.78, ns).

Table 2 Mean number of correct responses out of 16 per condition, and mean RT measured in ms (SD in parentheses)

Condition Language group Mean correct responses Mean RT

Congruent Incongruent Congruent

Incongruent

Monolinguals

Bilinguals

12,63 (3,48) 7,06 (3,75) 14 (1,57)

6,79 (5,87)

3626,97 (826,19) 3395,55 (1054,79) 3248,90 (953,07) 3221,97 (1284,28)


Discussion The current study examined whether the bilingual advantage in interference

suppression generalizes to attending to happy and sad facial expressions when these are

congruent or incongruent, respectively, to happy and sad lexical content. The hypotheses

stated that all children would perform better in the congruent condition than in the

incongruent one and that bilinguals would outperform monolinguals in the incongruent

condition but not in the congruent condition.

In line with the first hypothesis, all children correctly identified a larger number of

facial expressions in the congruent condition than in the incongruent condition. This main

effect of condition was a large one. Furthermore, compared to chance performance, all

children performed better in the congruent condition. In the incongruent condition, children

performed at chance level. While there was no statistically significant difference in RT

between the congruent and the incongruent condition, results showed a trend towards better

performance in the incongruent condition. The effect size was moderate.

As bilinguals were only hypothesized to outperform monolinguals in one of the

conditions but not in overall performance, it is not surprising that no main effects of

language group was found. However, contrary to what was hypothesized, there was no

interaction effect between language group and condition. This means that no bilingual

advantage was found in the incongruent condition.

Returning to effects of condition, the trend towards better RT performance in the

incongruent condition contradicts the better performance in number of correct responses in

the congruent condition. However, while the difference in performance regarding number of

correct responses was statistically significant, the difference in performance regarding RT

was not. The effect of condition on number of correct responses was also larger than the

effect of condition on RT performance. Furthermore, RT performance should be interpreted

cautiously, as sample size was particularly small in the RT analyses and as RT does not seem

to be a valid outcome measure in this study (a discussion on RT interpretation will follow

later in the discussion).

Focusing on performance regarding number of correct responses in the incongruent

condition, bilinguals in the current study did not perform worse than bilinguals in Yow and

Markman's study (2011) did. Yow and Markman (2011) also found a chance level

performance by bilinguals when lexical content was incongruent with paralanguage.

However, their monolingual participants performed significantly below chance level,

demonstrating a strong lexical bias. As the current study's participants had a mean age of

five (and even included some six-year-olds) instead of four as Yow and Markman's (2011)

had, it may not be surprising that the current monolingual sample showed neither a strong

lexical bias nor consistent attention to paralanguage. After all, the lexical bias seems to

diminish gradually with age (at least in relation to vocal tone; Morton & Trehub, 2001) and

ability to read facial expressions develops with age (Baudouin et al., 2008; Durand et al.,

2007). Furthermore, facial expressions might be easier to read than vocal tone (Russel et al.,

2003).

If the relatively good performance by the current monolingual sample (not below

chance level) is in line with what can be expected at this age, then the current sample of

bilinguals should have performed even better if there was in fact a bilingual advantage to

this task. There are many possible reasons why the current study could not find a bilingual

advantage. Such reasons will be explored below, followed by a discussion on how the

present results relate to the research field of bilingualism in general and to child emotional


development in general.

The Study's Limitations and Strengths The sample and its effect on internal and statistical conclusion validity. First, a

discussion of the study's limitations and strengths is in order, as these affect the probability

of finding a difference between groups if there was one. Beginning with an examination of

internal validity, selection can of course be hypothesized to pose a problem as the study was

quasiexperimental and vulnerable to the influence of extraneous variables.

As recently mentioned, a higher age probably leads to better performance in studies

like this (Baudouin et al., 2008; Durand et al., 2007). Furthermore, there could be an effect

of gender as female children seem to have a small advantage in reading facial expressions

(Chaplin & Aldao, 2013). However, these variables were included in the study and have in

fact been outruled as extraneous variables. Specifically, the groups did not differ in age

distributions or in gender distributions.

An advantage in EF can also be seen in people with high SES (Calvo & Bialystok,

2014; Morton & Harper, 2007). While the language groups did not differ from each other

regarding parental educational level, this is only one aspect of SES. Due to ethical concerns,

information about parental income level or occupation was not collected. Thus, SES cannot

be outruled as a potential confounder. If the bilinguals come from homes with lower SES

compared with the monolinguals, a bilingual advantage could have been confounded by the

monolinguals' hypothetical SES advantage. However, the risk for selection bias in SES

would have been larger if all bilinguals and all monolinguals had been entirely separated by

different preschools in different areas. Instead, bilinguals and monolinguals were spread

across the preschools.

Continuing with an examination of the statistical conclusion validity, important

limitations of the study was the small sample and the fact that this sample was

heterogeneous. Importantly, the bilingual group was very heterogeneous. Bilingualism

itself is a heterogeneous concept, as bilinguals can differ from each other in proficiency, for

instance as a result of differences in age of second language acquisition or frequency of

second language exposure (Marian et al., 2007). To illustrate the diversity in the bilingual

population, one bilingual might have been exposed minimally to a second language from

birth, while another might have been exposed to a second language 50 percent of the time

since the age of three. While both may be considered bilingual, they have quite different

linguistic experiences.

While all participating bilinguals were early bilinguals, only five had learned the

second language from birth. Very recently, Struys et al. (2015) showed that bilinguals who

have learned their second language from birth seem to outperform other bilinguals in the

incongruent condition of the Simon task. Thus, as only a minority of the bilingual children

in the current study had learned both languages from birth, this can explain why the

bilingual group as a whole did not show an advantage.

Furthermore, the bilingual children were heterogeneous regarding how long they

had been exposed to a second language. There is not much research done on the effects of

length of language exposure, as this is confounded by age of acquisition (Hull & Vaid,

2007). However, it does seem like children who have only managed two languages for a

brief amount of time do not have the same controlled attention advantage as children who

have managed two languages for a long time (Kapa & Colombo, 2013; Poarch & van Hell,

2012a; Luk et al., 2011). Lastly, the cut off limit regarding exposure to a second language,

was very low at 15 percent exposure time. Ideally, higher demands on second language


exposure frequency and on age of acquisition would have been stated in the study. This was,

however, not possible due to recruitment difficulties.

A low frequency of second language exposure and a high age of second language

acquisition, could indicate low second language proficiency. It is important to remember that

when second language proficiency is low, coactivation of languages only happens when the

bilingual is exposed to their non-dominant language (Poarch & van Hell, 2012b; van Hell &

Tanner, 2012). Furthermore, if children are not exposed to this non-dominant language very

often, less coactivation of languages is a natural consequence. This means that low

proficiency bilinguals do not have to manage the same amount of language competition as

high proficiency bilinguals. The implications for the current study is that, since many of the

participating bilinguals had a low second language proficiency, it is not surprising that the

current bilingual group showed no interference suppression advantage.

Heterogeneity is not just a problem specifically in the bilingual group, but the entire

group of children was heterogeneous regarding age. Again, in order to get an acceptable

sample size, the age span needed to be wide. As the exact developmental progression of

children's ability to read facial expressions when these conflict with lexical content is

unknown (Morton & Trehub, 2001), it could be that a bilingual advantage only shows in a

specific age window. Since so few children from each age group participated, effects of age

could not be examined.

Parental reports of language experience and proficiency as potentially

problematic. Categorization of monolinguals and bilinguals was conducted on the grounds

of parental reports on second language exposure frequency, frequency of conversation

initiation in the second language and age of acquisition. However, it can be hypothesized

that parental reports are inadequate. If this is the case, then the categorization of

monolinguals and bilinguals has been conducted on insufficient grounds. For instance, one

parent might underestimate the frequency of second language exposure while another might

overestimate it. If differences between monolinguals and bilinguals are to be explored,

children's language experiences and proficiency must first be accurately measured.

The original LEAP-Q has been validated, meaning that adults can accurately self-

report their own language proficiency. As the children in the current study were very young

and therefore often accompanied by their parents when not in preschool, it is possible that

parental reports can in fact accurately indicate child language proficiency. However, it

remains problematic that the modified version of the LEAP-Q used in the current study has

not been validated.

RT as a problematic outcome measure. First, as children used a computer touch

pad instead of using touch screen or simply pressing a key to provide an answer, RTs were

longer than normal. However, all children got to practice using the touch pad.

A more important discussion on RT concerns the long exposure time for the stimulus

presentations. As each presentation was as long as one sentence, children had the

opportunity to decide on an answer even before a stimulus presentation was finished.

Therefore, it would not be correct to assume that the measurement of RT was in fact a valid

reflection of genuine decision making processes. As results showed a trend of better RT

performance in the incongruent condition, the interference from the lexical content are not

reflected in RT results, even though the incongruent condition was very difficult as evident

by number of correct responses. While Yow and Markman (2011) did find a difference in

RT between their incongruent and congruent condition, no RT difference between language

groups was found in their incongruent condition, even though their bilingual children had a


greater number of correct responses in this condition. Hence, it seems to be difficult to

consistently find an interference effect reflected in RT in this type of task where exposure

time is long.

Choosing the Correct Emotion in the Incongruent Condition - a Valid Test of

Interference Suppression? The fact that all children found the incongruent condition to be

more difficult as seen by number of correct responses, and that all children performed at

chance level in this condition, reinforces the idea that it placed high demands on children's

cognitive abilities. It was indeed difficult to consistently override the lexical bias even when

instructed to do so. However, as bilinguals in general have been found to outperform

monolinguals in such incongruent conditions placing demands on interference suppression,

it is natural to question whether the current study did in fact succeed in placing demands on

interference suppression specifically.

The current study differed from that of Yow and Markman's (2011), where

differences between language groups was found regarding reading paralinguistic cues.

While Yow and Markman (2011) operationalized paralanguage as vocal tone, the current

study focused on facial expressions. It could be a complicating factor that the children

received input through two different modalities. Thus, while children could hold the verbal

content in the phonological loop, they could simultaneously hold the image of the facial

expression in the visuospatial sketchpad.

Following this, the current study's internal validity can be discussed. If the children

could in fact attend to both stimuli and have both active in working memory when choosing

a response, could it be that the task placed demands on response inhibition instead of

interference suppression? It could be argued that, as children did not actively have to select

only one stimulus to attend to, they instead needed to suppress answering in a habitual way

(e.g. in line with their lexical bias). As mentioned earlier, response inhibition and

interference suppression are two dissociated EF (Brydges et al., 2012; Luk et al., 2010), and

bilingual children do not seem to have an advantage in response inhibition (Bialystok et al.,

2009; Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008; Esposito et al., 2013; Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008) –

which could explain the absence of such an advantage in the current study.

However, while it is possible to divide attention between the visual and the verbal

stimulus, this was not what the children were instructed to do. The children were explicitly

and repeatedly instructed to provide an answer in line with the facial expression. As

attention can be controlled to favor selection of one modality over another and maintain

attention there (Talsma, Kok, Slagter, & Cipriani, 2008), someone who has well developed

abilities of controlled attention would probably succeed in such a selection. Furthermore,

even if attention would initially be divided, it would at some point need to be directed

towards the mental representation in the visuospatial sketchpad in order to achieve the goal

of providing an answer in line with the facial expression. The key element in interference

suppression tasks, is that controlled attention must be employed in face of the simultaneous

presence of two conflicting stimuli where one needs to be ignored if the task is to be

resolved in an accurate way (Bunge et al., 2002). Such a paradigm is, after all, present in the

current study.

It could, then, be argued that the children simply did not understand or remember the

instructions. If so, they might have failed at recognizing which stimulus was the target

stimulus and therefore had trouble consistently overriding the lexical bias. It is of course not

possible to be entirely certain that all children understood or remembered the instructions.

While Morton et al. (2003) measured how well children had understood their congruent-


incongruent vocal tone task, the current study did not. However, even when children do

understand and remember instructions, they still find these type of tasks difficult (Morton et

al., 2003).

The Result in the Context of the Research Field of Child Bilingualism Does bilingualism help children attend to facial expressions when these conflict with

lexical content, even if young children normally have a strong lexical bias? The current

study cannot reject the null hypothesis of no difference between language groups in this sort

of task. Furthermore, as this is yet an unexplored area, the answer to such a question lays in

future research. While Yow and Markman (2011) did find a difference between language

groups regarding vocal tone in emotionally ambiguous situations, this has not yet been

replicated. As such, it cannot yet be stated with much confidence that the bilingual

advantage does generalize to affecting children's emotional development regarding reading

facial expression specifically or paralanguage in general in emotionally ambiguous

situations.

Though a bilingual advantage has been found in many interference suppression tasks

(Bialystok et al., 2009; Bialystok & Senman, 2004; Bialystok & Viswanathan, 2009; Carlson

& Meltzoff, 2008; Esposito et al., 2013; Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008; Poulin-Dubois et

al., 2011; Yang, Yang, & Lust, 2011; Yow and Markman, 2011), it does not necessarily mean

that the advantage generalizes to situations where attention needs to be maintained at facial

expressions. Whether or not it does, could lead to a better understanding of how the

bilingual advantage works. If it is present in some domains but not in others, does that mean

that some moderating variable affects the relationship between bilingualism and the

advantage in interference suppression? As the mechanisms behind the bilingual advantage

are still under debate (Kapa & Colombo, 2013), such knowledge could contribute to a better

understanding of what causes the bilingual advantage. Furthermore, as the current study

demonstrates heterogeneity in the bilingual sample and fails to find a bilingual advantage,

this could lead to a better understanding of which specific bilingual experiences, at which

intensity, do in fact lead to a bilingual advantage.

As discussed, the heterogeneity of ages and second language proficiency in

participants makes it hard to draw any conclusions from this study. What is clear, is that a

lot of earlier research has pointed towards a bilingual advantage in interference suppression

(Bialystok et al., 2009; Bialystok & Senman, 2004; Bialystok & Viswanathan, 2009; Carlson

& Meltzoff, 2008; Esposito et al., 2013; Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008; Poulin-Dubois et

al., 2011; Yang, Yang, & Lust, 2011; Yow and Markman, 2011) and also to an advantage in

other domains such as metalinguistic awareness, working memory and abstract and symbolic

representation (Adesope et al., 2010). Regardless of whether the bilingual experience also

strengthens children's abilities to read paralanguage or specifically facial expressions in

emotionally ambiguous situations, bilingualism has already been seen to come with many

advantages – especially when a child learns the language from an early age and gets the

opportunity to become proficient in both languages (Bialystok et al., 2009; Hull & Vaid,

2007; Kapa och Colombo, 2013; Kroll & Bialystok, 2013; Luk, DeSa, & Bialystok, 2011;

Olsen et al., 2015; Struys et al., 2015).

The Result in the Context of the Research Field of Child Emotional Development While the current study had a focus on the effects of bilingualism on reading facial

expressions in emotionally ambiguous situations, a bonus result regards how the entire

group of children performed in the incongruent condition. As mentioned, monolinguals and

bilinguals performed at chance level in this study, though the monolinguals in Yow and


Markman's (2011) study performed significantly below chance level – indicating a strong

lexical bias.

The better performance by the current study's monolinguals have been discussed in

relation to their older age and in relation to that it might be more easy to read facial

expressions than vocal tone. However, while the developmental process of how the lexical

bias in relation to vocal tone diminishes with age, has been studied, it is not yet known how

the lexical bias in relation to facial expressions diminishes (Morton & Trehub, 2001). It is

therefore difficult to know for sure whether the performance of children in the current

incongruent condition was age appropriate or not. Thus, the current study could lead to a

hypothesis of the lexical bias to start diminishing at the age of five, as this was the mean age

of the children and as the children relied equally on lexical content as on facial expressions

at this age.

Conclusions and Future Directions In sum, the current experiment placed demands on interference suppression, an EF

that bilinguals have repeatedly proved to outperform monolinguals in. Such a bilingual

advantage was, however, not found in the current study. It might be that the advantage only

generalizes to some domains but not to all domains. Whether or not the advantage

generalizes to the development of ability to read paralanguage in emotionally ambiguous

situations, such knowledge could lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms behind

the bilingual advantage.

The current study was limited in its statistical conclusion validity, as there was great

heterogeneity in participants. As this study implicates that not all bilingual experiences may

lead to a bilingual advantage in interference suppression, future research should aim at

further investigating which specific experiences lead to an advantage in interference

suppression and in which domains.

Furthermore, this study can be viewed as a pilot in researching interference

suppression in the specific situation of reading facial expressions in emotionally ambiguous

situations. Future similar studies should either control for the effects of second language

proficiency and second language age of acquisition or recruit a more homogeneous sample

to begin with, both regarding bilingualism and age of participants. Future studies should

also better control for SES.


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Appendix

Modified version of the LEAP-Q

Please answer to the following questions.

1. Please list all the languages that your child knows in order of dominance, i.e. the

language that your child knows best, second best, etc. (if your child knows more than

five languages, list the five languages that your child knows best).

1. ______________________________________

2. ______________________________________

3. ______________________________________

4. ______________________________________

5. ______________________________________

2. Please list all the languages that your child knows in order of acquisition, i.e. your

child's first language, second language, etc. (if your child knows more than five

languages, please sort the five languages that you listed in the question above).

1. ______________________________________

2. ______________________________________

3. ______________________________________

4. ______________________________________

5. ______________________________________

3. Please list what percentage of the time your child is currently and on average exposed

to each language (the total should be 100 percent). Use the same order as in question 1.

Language

1 _____ %

Language

2 _____ %

Language

3 _____ %

Language

4 _____ %

Language

5 _____ %

4. When playing, in what percentage of the total time does your child use each language

(the total should be 100 percent)? Use the same order as in question 1.

Language

1 _____ %


Language

2 _____ %

Language

3 _____ %

Language

4 _____ %

Language

5 _____ %

5. In what percentage of the total time does your child start a conversation in each

language (the total should be 100 percent)? Use the same order as in question 1.

Language

1 _____ %

Language

2 _____ %

Language

3 _____ %

Language

4 _____ %

Language

5 _____ %

6. How old was your child when he/she started to learn his/her first second language (if it

was from birth, please write 0 year(s) and 0 month(s))?

___ year(s) ___ month(s)

7. In which environment(s) does your child usually come in contact with each language?

Use the same order as in question 1.

Language

1

Language

2

Language

3

Language

4

Language

5

In the country where you

reside □ □ □ □ □

At home with the family □ □ □ □ □

At daycare □ □ □ □ □

At friends' homes □ □ □ □ □

8. On a scale from 0 to 10 (where 0 = not at all and 10 = very much), how much do the

following factors contribute or did contribute to your child's language learning?

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Interaction with friends □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

Interaction with family and relatives □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

Interaction with daycare staff □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □


Through various media such as TV,

computer, movies, radio, etc. □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

9. Your child's daycare: _________________________________

10. Your child's family name: _________________________________

11. Your child's given name: _________________________________

12. Your child's birth year and birth month (YY-MM): ___ ___-___ ___

13. Your child's gender:

□ Boy

□ Girl

□ Other / I do not want to answer

14. You are the child's:

□ Mother

□ Father

□ Other, please specify: _______________________

15. What year were you born? _________

16. What year was the child's other parent born? _________

17. What is your highest completed education level?

□ No formal education

□ Elementary school or lower

□ High school

□ Professional training

□ College or university

□ I don't know


18. What is the child's other parent’s highest completed education level?

□ No formal education

□ Elementary school or lower

□ High school


□ Professional training

□ College or university

□ I don't know


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