Bilingualism and cognitive‐linguistic development: Evidence from a word association task and a sorting task

Abstract

This article reports the results of a study on the influence of bilingualism on the level of cognitive‐linguistic development of ethnic minority children. Subjects were monolingual Dutch children, and bilingual Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese children living in The Netherlands. A word association task and a sorting task were administered. Both tasks were analysed with respect to the semantic‐episodic distinction on the assumption that relatively more semantic responses in the association task and more semantic classifications in the sorting task point to a higher level of cognitive‐linguistic development. The association task was also analysed for the relative numbers of paradigmatic and syntagmatic responses, the former also indicating a higher level of development. The main finding is that there were no differences between the four groups on the variables studied. Therefore, it was concluded that bilingualism did not affect cognitive‐linguistic development negatively.