Impact of early second-language acquisition on the development of first language and verbal short-term and working memory

ABSTRACT

The present study aimed at investigating whether L2 learning affects phonological short-term and working memory and first language (L1) development. The performance of a group of 31 4- to-5-year-old sequential bilinguals attending an International School on tasks assessing phonological short-term and working memory and linguistic performance in L1 was compared to that of a group of 31 age-matched monolinguals. The bilingual group outperformed monolinguals on two simple and one complex span task assessing phonological short-term and working memory, respectively. They performed as monolinguals on measures assessing articulatory skills, phonological abilities, naming and grammatical processing in L1. However, bilingual participants performed worse than monolinguals on a test of lexical comprehension. These results are discussed in light of current models of cognitive development.

KEYWORDS:

• Bilingualism
• second-language acquisition
• language development
• phonological short-term memory
• verbal working memory
• bilingual education

Notes on Contributors

Andrea Marini is Assistant Professor in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Udine and Senior Researcher in the Research Institute ‘E. Medea’ and Scuola Provinciale Superiore di Sanità ‘Claudiana’ in Italy. He is author of books, books chapters, and scientific articles focusing on (1) the neuropsychology of language in both adults and children, (2) the analysis of the relationship between language and cognitive functioning, (3) the cognitive neuroscience of bilingualism, and (4) the phylogenetic evolution and ontogenetic development of language.

Nadezda Eliseeva was born in Russia, in 1988. She received the Specialist and Master’s degree in Philology from Omsk state university in 2011 and 2014 respectively. She has six years of teaching experience including English classes with children and Russian as a foreign language at the universities. She is currently an international Ph.D. student at the Department of Languages and Literatures, Communication, Education, and Society at the University of Udine, Italy. Her research interests include psycholinguistics, developmental linguistics, bilingualism, cognitive development in language impaired populations.

Franco Fabbro is full Professor of Developmental Neuropsychiatry at the University of Udine, Udine, Italy and Scientific Director of the IRCCS E. Medea Research Institute, Polo Regionale Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy. He has been Chief of the Aphasia Committee of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP) and associate/consulting Editor of several scientific Journals, such as the Journal of Neurolinguistics, and Folia Phoniatrica & Logopaedica. He is also author of a number of books and articles in peer-reviewed Journals.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from IRCCS ‘E. Medea’ (Ricerca Corrente 2014, Italian Ministry of Health) to A.M. and Erasmus Mundus Action 2 Program (‘International Academic Mobility Network with Russia – IAMONET-RU’; project) to N.E.