Cognitive Advantages of Bilingual Children Related to Labeling Ability

Abstract

This study is concerned with the effects of bilingualism and monolingualism on the cognitive ability of children to label and relabel objects. Three different tests were developed to examine this ability in coordinate and compound bilingual children and in monolingual children. A specially designed reading readiness questionnaire was used to control sample homogeneity. Forty-nine preschool bilingual and monolingual children were tested individually. The major findings show that the average performance of the coordinate bilingual subjects in the naming and in the relabeling tests was significantly better than that of the monolingual subjects. It was also found that success in an object constancy test was significantly correlated with relabeling skills. Furthermore, subjects who showed an inclination toward object classification rather than context and action classification were more flexible in dealing with words as symbols. A major implication of this study is that early bilingualism is advantageous to the conceptualization of the notion of symbols.

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