{"id":1278,"date":"2014-05-02T22:47:05","date_gmt":"2014-05-03T02:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=1278"},"modified":"2017-09-06T13:33:54","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T17:33:54","slug":"parenting-tips-how-bilingualism-can-save-you-from-the-terrible-twos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2014\/05\/02\/parenting-tips-how-bilingualism-can-save-you-from-the-terrible-twos\/","title":{"rendered":"Parenting Tips: How Bilingualism Can Save You From the Terrible Twos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Leash<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cLook at Mommy!\u201d \u201cCome with Daddy!\u201d Kids in the terrible two\u2019s and even three\u2019s just don\u2019t seem to listen. Their world appears to be full of distractions. One moment they are giving you their undivided attention as you ask them to sit still, the next they are waddling off as fast as possible in the crowded supermarket. Their attention seems almost hopelessly uncontrollable. They dart from one toy to the next, and eventually you wonder how on earth their teacher gets them to focus for even a minute in school. Is there any way to reduce the distractions of these problematic preschoolers? A cure is bilingualism. Being bilingual means that you have the ability to speak in two or even several languages. Now, I\u2019m not saying popular children\u2019s shows teaching simple phrases from another language, such as Dora the Explorer, may have the most influence on your child\u2019s attentional control, but actually being fairly fluent in multiple languages has a positive effect on preschooler\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

There are certain processes that come to us easily, such as tying a shoe, turning on the television, and even reading. These are automatic processes, meaning they have been practiced over and over again until they require little cognitive effort. The opposite, controlled processes, are much slower and take a lot of effort to perform. This occurs often when you are learning a new skill such as riding a bike when you are little, or how to use that fancy coffee maker you just bought. Automatic processes and controlled processes are two pathways of cognition that are linked to attention, which monitors them. Attentional control allows you to inhibit the automatic pathway, permitting the controlled process to occur first.<\/p>\n

How is this tested? Preschoolers still have limited forms of expression. They also do not have the best grasp on language, which is demonstrated by those hilarious moments when you catch them trying to read a book upside down or excitedly exclaim \u201cI run-ed over there!\u201d This is why a traditional Stroop Task is challenging, since it involves a higher level of reading and language.<\/p>\n

The traditional Stroop task tests individuals on words and colors, where the participant must say the color of the word rather than the word itself. Congruent trials involve matching both the color of the ink to the meaning of the word (for example, RED would be written in red ink). Incongruent trials are the opposite, where the meaning of the word and the color do not associate with each other (for example, RED would be written in blue ink). Since the ages 2 and 3 are still quite inexperienced with the skills necessary to perform this task, new, modified versions of the Stroop task have been developed.<\/p>\n

The Day\/Night task is simple, only consisting of two symbols. The child is presented with a picture of a sun and a moon. In incongruent trials, the child must say the opposite time of day associated with the symbol. A sun would correspond with \u201cnight,\u201d and a moon would correspond with \u201cday.\u201d In a congruent task, the child would respond to a sun with \u201cday\u201d and a moon with \u201cnight.\u201d Interestingly, in previous research, this task did not demonstrate any differences in attention between bilingual and monolingual children.<\/p>\n

The researchers developed another task, the Bivalent Shape Task, which is a computerized test involving three images of basic shapes, such as circles and squares. There are two images constantly at the bottom of the screen, which correspond to buttons, allowing children to manually respond. Pressing a button removes any language barriers as well as any problems with literacy.\u00a0 One image is, for example, a red circle, and the other is a blue square. Then a third, larger image is shown in the middle of the screen, which determines if the trial is incongruent or congruent. The children were asked to match the shape of the big image to one of the images below. In congruent trials, the color would also match the appropriate shape below (for example, a red circle matches the red circle below). In incongruent trials, the color of the big image would match one shape, while the shape of the big image would match the other (for example a blue circle matches the blue square in color, but the red circle in shape).<\/p>\n

How do these experiments link the automatic and controlled pathways? In the traditional Stroop task, processing the actual word is automatic, while processing for the color is controlled. However, in the Night\/Day task, saying the time of day corresponding to the symbol presented would be automatic, since that information is well known. In the Bivalent Shape Task, processing for color would be the automatic process, while processing for shape requires a little more time. In these trials, attentional control keeps you from blurting out the wrong, incongruent answer before you even have time to fully process for a more difficult task. Therefore, these individuals have better accuracy on incongruent trials since they can inhibit the automatic processes well enough to perform controlled processes.<\/p>\n

Healthy children of preschool age who were monolingual and both Spanish and English speaking were tested. They first learned how to do each task and familiarize themselves with the computers until they were experts. Then, the testing began\u2026<\/p>\n

What they found was quite fascinating. In the Day\/Night task, both bilingual and monolingual children were pretty good with the congruent trials. However, both were equally bad at the incongruent trials. But the data from the Bivalent Shape Task is the most exciting. In the congruent trials, both performed well, however, in the incongruent task, bilinguals performed significantly better than the monolinguals. Interestingly, the bilinguals performed statistically no differently than the congruent task.\u00a0 Therefore, we can assume that the bilingual children have better control over their attention.<\/p>\n

Bilingual children can not only benefit from the useful skill of being able to speak multiple languages, but also have better attentional control than children who are monolingual. Therefore, they can better inhibit automatic information, and focus in on controlled processes. This is useful in school when children are learning new materials, or maybe even in the supermarket when you turn your back for just one second\u2026<\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

Esposito, A. G., Baker-Ward, L. & Mueller, S. T. (2013). Interference suppression vs. response inhibition: An explanation for the absence of a bilingual advantage in preschoolers\u2019 Stroop task performance. Cognitive Development, 28, 354-363.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To read the original article, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  \u201cLook at Mommy!\u201d \u201cCome with Daddy!\u201d Kids in the terrible two\u2019s and even three\u2019s just don\u2019t seem to listen. Their world appears to be full of distractions. One moment they are giving you their undivided attention as you ask them to sit still, the next they are waddling off as fast as possible in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5072,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80216,313,80217],"tags":[150202,149745],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5072"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1278"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3811,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions\/3811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}