Additive‐Bilingual (Immersion) Education: Cognitive and Language Development *

Abstract

The superior control of cognitive processing demonstrated by children in the early stages of additive bilingualism may enhance symbolic reasoning abilities. The developmental interdependence of LI and L2 may allow additive‐bilingual children to maintain normal native‐language development. This study examined the development of a Grade 2 additive‐bilingual (Spanish‐immersion) program class as compared to a monolingual classroom on measures of nonverbal problem‐solving and native‐language development. Theprogramwas the independent variable in two comparisons. In the first comparison, nonverbal problem‐solving was the dependent variable, as measured by Raven's (1977) Coloured Progressive Matrices (CPM). As hypoth‐esized, a repeated measures ANCOVA of the results of fall and spring administrations of the CPM indicated significant differences in favor of the Spanish‐immersion group, F(1, 35)=5.85, p=.O2. In the second comparison, native‐language development was the dependent variable as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test‐R (PPVT‐R). A parametric independent

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