My research focuses on the cognitive processes that underpin learning such as working memory, phonological awareness, and executive functions. I am interested in how these processes develop in typical multilingual children, as well as in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. My current research explores the structure of executive functions in childhood and how these processes are affected by environmental factors such as bilingualism and socioeconomic status. Phone: (+352) 46 66 44 9779 Address: ECCS
University of Luxembourg
Campus Walferdange, Bât. VI, 0.09
International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders
Background: Recent evidence suggests that Specific Language Impairment (SLI) might be secondary t... more Background: Recent evidence suggests that Specific Language Impairment (SLI) might be secondary to general cognitive processing limitations in the domain of executive functioning. Previous research has focused almost exclusively on monolingual children with SLI and offers little evidence-based guidance on executive functioning in bilingual children with SLI. Studying bilinguals with SLI is important, especially in the light of increasing evidence that bilingualism can bring advantages in certain domains of executive functioning.
Aims: This study seeks to determine whether executive functioning represents an area of difficulty for bilingual language-minority children with SLI and if so, which specific executive processes are affected.
Methods and procedures: This cross-cultural research was conducted with bilingual children from Luxembourg and monolingual children from Portugal who all had Portuguese as their first language. The data from 81 eight-year-olds from the following three groups was analyzed: (1) 15 Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilinguals from Luxembourg with an SLI diagnosis; (2) 33 typically developing Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilinguals from Luxembourg; (3) 33 typically developing Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Portugal. Groups were matched on first language, ethnicity, chronological age and socioeconomic status, and they did not differ in nonverbal intelligence. Children completed a battery of tests tapping: expressive and receptive vocabulary, syntactic comprehension, verbal and visuospatial working memory, selective attention and interference suppression.
Results: The bilingual SLI group performed equally well to their typically developing peers on measures of visuospatial working memory but had lower scores than both control groups on tasks of verbal working memory. On measures of selective attention and interference suppression, typically developing children who were bilingual outperformed their monolingual counterparts. For selective attention, performance of the bilingual SLI group did not differ significantly from the controls. For interference suppression the bilingual SLI group performed significantly less well than typically developing bilinguals but not monolinguals.
Conclusions and implications: This research provides further support to the position that SLI is not a language-specific disorder. The study indicates that although bilingual children with SLI do not demonstrate the same advantages in selective attention and interference suppression as typically developing bilinguals, they do not lag behind typically developing monolinguals in these domains of executive functioning. This finding raises the possibility that bilingualism might represent a protective factor against some of the cognitive limitations that are associated with SLI in monolinguals.
Este estudo investigou o funcionamento executivo e o desempenho em leitura de 106 crianças Brasil... more Este estudo investigou o funcionamento executivo e o desempenho em leitura de 106 crianças Brasileiras de 6 a 8 anos de uma ampla diversidade social, das quais aproximadamente metade vivia abaixo da linha da pobreza. Foi dado um enfoque especial à exploração do perfil de funcionamento executivo das crianças que apresentaram desempenho em leitura abaixo da média, de acordo com avaliação dos professores. Estas crianças foram criteriosamente pareadas a sujeitos controle em relação à idade, sexo, tipo de escola (privada ou pública), local de domicílio (Salvador/BA ou São Paulo/ SP) e nível socioeconômico. As crianças responderam a uma bateria de 12 tarefas de funções executivas que abordam os conceitos de flexibilidade cognitiva, memória operacional, inibição e atenção seletiva. Cada domínio executivo foi avaliado por diversas tarefas. A análise de componentes principais extraiu quatro fatores que foram classificados como “Memória operacional/ Flexibilidade cognitiva”, “Supressão de interferência” , “Atenção seletiva” e “Resposta inibitória”. Diferenças individuais nos componentes de funcionamento executivo contribuíram de maneira diferente para o desempenho precoce em leitura. O fator Memória operacional/ Flexibilidade cognitiva foi o melhor preditor de leitura. Comparações entre grupos nos escores fatoriais demonstraram que as crianças com dificuldades de leitura apresentaram um desempenho inferior em Memória Operacional/Flexibilidade, mas não nos demais componentes das funções executivas, quando comparadas com os leitores eficientes. Esses resultados corroboram a visão de que a capacidade de memória operacional fornece a base de sustentação para o desenvolvimento de habilidades de leitura, estendendo-a à população de leitores iniciantes do português no Brasil. O estudo sugere que déficits em memória operacional/ flexibilidade cognitiva podem representar um fator que contribui para dificuldades de leitura em leitores iniciantes. Tal achado é de extrema importância para desenvolvimento de intervenção para crianças em situação de risco para fracasso escolar.
This study examined executive functioning and reading achievement in 106 6- to 8-year-old Brazili... more This study examined executive functioning and reading achievement in 106 6- to 8-year-old Brazilian children from a range of social backgrounds of whom approximately half lived below the poverty line. A particular focus was to explore the executive function profile of children whose classroom reading performance was judged below standard by their teachers and who were carefully matched to controls on chronological age, sex, school type (Private or Public), domicile (Salvador/BA or São Paulo/SP), and socioeconomic status. Children completed a battery of 12 executive function tasks that were conceptually tapping cognitive flexibility, working memory, inhibition, and selective attention. Each executive function domain was assessed by several tasks. Principal component analysis extracted four factors that were labeled “Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility”, “Interference Suppression”, “Selective Attention”, and “Response Inhibition”. Individual differences in executive functioning components made differential contributions to early reading achievement. The Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility factor emerged as the best predictor of reading. Group comparisons on computed factor scores showed that the struggling readers presented limitations in Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility, but not in other executive function components, compared to more skilled readers. These results validate the account that working memory capacity provides a crucial building block for the development of early literacy skills and extends it to a population of early readers of Portuguese from Brazil. The study suggests that deficits in working memory/cognitive flexibility might represent one contributing factor to reading difficulties in early readers which might have important implications for interventions for children at risk of school failure.
This cross-cultural study investigates the impact of background experience on four verbal and vis... more This cross-cultural study investigates the impact of background experience on four verbal and visuo-spatial working memory (WM) tasks. Eighty-four children from low income families were recruited from the following groups: (1) Portuguese immigrant children from Luxembourg impoverished in terms of language experience; (2) Brazilian children deprived in terms of scholastic background; (3) Portuguese children from Portugal with no disadvantage in either scholastic or language background. Children were matched on age, gender, fluid intelligence, and socioeconomic status and completed four simple and complex span tasks of WM and a vocabulary measure. Results indicate that despite large differences in their backgrounds and language abilities, the groups exhibited comparable performance on the visuo-spatial tasks dot matrix and odd-one-out and on the verbal simple span task digit recall. Group differences emerged on the verbal complex span task counting recall with children from Luxembourg and Portugal outperforming children from disadvantaged schools in Brazil. The study suggests that whereas contributions of prior knowledge to digit span, dot matrix, and odd-one-out are likely to be minimal, background experience can affect performance on counting recall. Implications for testing WM capacity in children growing up in poverty are discussed.
Objective: The study explores the psychometric properties of the Brazilian-Portuguese version of ... more Objective: The study explores the psychometric properties of the Brazilian-Portuguese version of the Working Memory Rating Scale (WMRS-Br) in a population of 355 young children from diverse socioeconomic status and schooling backgrounds.
Method: Public and private school teachers completed the WMRS-Br and children were assessed on a range of objective cognitive measures of fluid intelligence, working memory, and attention.
Results: Reliability and validity of the WMRS-Br were excellent across the public and private school sample. The WMRS-Br manifested substantial links with objective measures of working memory and medium links with selective attention, switching, and interference suppression. Confirmatory factor analyses suggest that a shorter version of the scale provides an adequate fit to the data.
Conclusion: The WMRS-Br represents a valid screening tool in a Latin American context that has the potential to improve the early detection of working memory deficits in children growing up in poverty.
Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, Dec 28, 2012
PURPOSE:
This study explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and w... more PURPOSE:
This study explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language minority children.
METHOD:
Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first- and second-language vocabulary (comprehension and production), executive-loaded working memory (counting recall and backward digit recall), and verbal short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition). Cross-linguistic task performance was compared within individuals. The language minority children were also compared with multilingual language majority children from Luxembourg and Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Brazil without an immigrant background matched on age, sex, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal reasoning.
RESULTS:
Results showed that (a) verbal working memory measures involving numerical memoranda were relatively independent of test language and cultural status; (b) language status had an impact on the repetition of high- but not on low-wordlike L2 nonwords; (c) large cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects emerged for productive vocabulary; (d) cross-cultural effects were less pronounced for vocabulary comprehension with no differences between groups if only L1-words relevant to the home context were considered.
CONCLUSION:
The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed.
This study explores whether the cognitive advantage associated with bilingualism in executive fun... more This study explores whether the cognitive advantage associated with bilingualism in executive functioning extends to young children challenged by poverty and if so, which specific processes are most affected. Forty Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilingual children from low-income immigrant families in Luxembourg and 40 matched monolingual children from Portugal completed visuo-spatial tests of working memory, abstract reasoning, selective attention, and interference suppression. Two broad cognitive factors of executive functioning labeled representation (abstract reasoning and working memory) and control (selective attention and interference suppression) emerged from principal components analysis. Whereas there were no group differences in representation, the bilinguals performed significantly better than the monolinguals in control. These results demonstrate first, that the bilingual advantage is neither confounded with nor limited by socioeconomic and cultural factors and second, that separable aspects of executive functioning are differentially affected by bilingualism. The bilingual advantage lies in control but not in visuo-spatial representational processes.
This paper reports a latent variable study exploring the specific links between executive process... more This paper reports a latent variable study exploring the specific links between executive processes of working memory, phonological short-term memory, phonological awareness, and proficiency in first (L1), second (L2), and third (L3) languages in 8- to 9-year-olds experiencing multilingual education. Children completed multiple L1-measures of complex span, verbal short-term storage, and phonological awareness, and tests of proficiency in a range of linguistic domains (vocabulary, grammar, and literacy) in Luxembourgish (L1), German (familiar L2) and French (unfamiliar L3). Results indicate that executive processing abilities, phonological short-term memory, and phonological awareness operate as distinct but related constructs that manifest differential associations with native and second language proficiency in multilingual children: Phonological short-term memory was uniquely linked to vocabulary in L1 and the structurally similar L2; executive processes were related to grammar across languages, reading comprehension, and spelling; and phonological awareness made specific contributions to word decoding, spelling, and language proficiency in the structurally dissimilar L3. Phonological processing abilities appear to be critical for acquiring the sound structure of a new language, whereas executive processes share more general links with higher-order linguistic abilities in second language learners.
This research investigates whether early childhood bilingualism affects working memory performanc... more This research investigates whether early childhood bilingualism affects working memory performance in 6- to 8-year-olds, followed over a longitudinal period of three years. The study tests the hypothesis that bilinguals might exhibit more efficient working memory abilities than monolinguals, potentially via the opportunity a bilingual environment provides to train cognitive control by combating interference and intrusions from the non-target language. Forty-four bilingual and monolingual children, matched on age, sex, and socioeconomic status, completed assessments of working memory (simple span and complex span tasks), fluid intelligence, and language (vocabulary and syntax). The data showed that the monolinguals performed significantly better on the language measures across the years whereas no language group effect emerged on the working memory and fluid intelligence tasks after verbal abilities were considered. The study suggests that the need to manage several language systems in the bilingual mind affects children’s language skills whilst having little impact on the development of working memory abilities.
"This study investigates the relationship between working memory and language in young children g... more "This study investigates the relationship between working memory and language in young children growing
up in a multilingual environment. The aim is to explore whether mechanisms of short-term storage and
cognitive control hold similar relations to emerging language skills and to investigate if potential links are
mediated by related cognitive abilities. A sample of 119 Luxembourgish 6-year-olds completed several
assessments of working memory (complex and simple span), native and foreign vocabulary, syntax, reading,
rhyme awareness, and fluid intelligence. Results showed that short-term storage and cognitive control
manifested differential links with developing language abilities: Whereas verbal short-term storage was
specifically linked to vocabulary; cognitive control manifested unique and robust links with syntax and early
reading development. The study suggests that in young children the working memory system is composed of
separate but interacting components corresponding to short-term storage and cognitive control that can be
distinguished by the roles they play in supporting language acquisition."
The present study investigates how working memory and fluid intelligence are related in young chi... more The present study investigates how working memory and fluid intelligence are related in young children and how these links develop over time. The major aim is to determine which aspect of the working memory system—short-term storage or cognitive control—drives the relationship with fluid intelligence. A sample of 119 children was followed from kindergarten to second grade and completed multiple assessments of working memory, short-term memory, and fluid intelligence. The data showed that working memory, short-term memory, and fluid intelligence were highly related but separate constructs in young children. The results further showed that when the common variance between working memory and short-term memory was controlled, the residual working memory factor manifested significant links with fluid
intelligence whereas the residual short-term memory factor did not. These findings suggest that in young children cognitive control mechanisms rather than the storage component of
working memory span tasks are the source of their link with fluid intelligence.
Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 2008
Purpose: This study evaluated the impact of socioeconomic factors on children’s
performance on t... more Purpose: This study evaluated the impact of socioeconomic factors on children’s
performance on tests of working memory and vocabulary.
Method: Twenty Brazilian children, aged 6 and 7 years, from low-income families,
completed tests of working memory (verbal short-term memory and verbal complex
span) and vocabulary (expressive and receptive). A further group of Brazilian
children from families of higher socioeconomic status matched for age, gender, and
nonverbal ability also participated in the study.
Results: Children from the low socioeconomic group obtained significantly lower
scores on measures of expressive and receptive vocabulary than their higher income
peers but no significant group differences were found on the working memory
measures.
Conclusion: Measures of working memory provide assessments of cognitive abilities
that appear to be impervious to substantial differences in socioeconomic background.
As these measures are highly sensitive to language ability and learning in general,
they appear to provide useful methods for diagnosing specific learning difficulties that
are independent of environmental opportunity.
International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders
Background: Recent evidence suggests that Specific Language Impairment (SLI) might be secondary t... more Background: Recent evidence suggests that Specific Language Impairment (SLI) might be secondary to general cognitive processing limitations in the domain of executive functioning. Previous research has focused almost exclusively on monolingual children with SLI and offers little evidence-based guidance on executive functioning in bilingual children with SLI. Studying bilinguals with SLI is important, especially in the light of increasing evidence that bilingualism can bring advantages in certain domains of executive functioning.
Aims: This study seeks to determine whether executive functioning represents an area of difficulty for bilingual language-minority children with SLI and if so, which specific executive processes are affected.
Methods and procedures: This cross-cultural research was conducted with bilingual children from Luxembourg and monolingual children from Portugal who all had Portuguese as their first language. The data from 81 eight-year-olds from the following three groups was analyzed: (1) 15 Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilinguals from Luxembourg with an SLI diagnosis; (2) 33 typically developing Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilinguals from Luxembourg; (3) 33 typically developing Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Portugal. Groups were matched on first language, ethnicity, chronological age and socioeconomic status, and they did not differ in nonverbal intelligence. Children completed a battery of tests tapping: expressive and receptive vocabulary, syntactic comprehension, verbal and visuospatial working memory, selective attention and interference suppression.
Results: The bilingual SLI group performed equally well to their typically developing peers on measures of visuospatial working memory but had lower scores than both control groups on tasks of verbal working memory. On measures of selective attention and interference suppression, typically developing children who were bilingual outperformed their monolingual counterparts. For selective attention, performance of the bilingual SLI group did not differ significantly from the controls. For interference suppression the bilingual SLI group performed significantly less well than typically developing bilinguals but not monolinguals.
Conclusions and implications: This research provides further support to the position that SLI is not a language-specific disorder. The study indicates that although bilingual children with SLI do not demonstrate the same advantages in selective attention and interference suppression as typically developing bilinguals, they do not lag behind typically developing monolinguals in these domains of executive functioning. This finding raises the possibility that bilingualism might represent a protective factor against some of the cognitive limitations that are associated with SLI in monolinguals.
Este estudo investigou o funcionamento executivo e o desempenho em leitura de 106 crianças Brasil... more Este estudo investigou o funcionamento executivo e o desempenho em leitura de 106 crianças Brasileiras de 6 a 8 anos de uma ampla diversidade social, das quais aproximadamente metade vivia abaixo da linha da pobreza. Foi dado um enfoque especial à exploração do perfil de funcionamento executivo das crianças que apresentaram desempenho em leitura abaixo da média, de acordo com avaliação dos professores. Estas crianças foram criteriosamente pareadas a sujeitos controle em relação à idade, sexo, tipo de escola (privada ou pública), local de domicílio (Salvador/BA ou São Paulo/ SP) e nível socioeconômico. As crianças responderam a uma bateria de 12 tarefas de funções executivas que abordam os conceitos de flexibilidade cognitiva, memória operacional, inibição e atenção seletiva. Cada domínio executivo foi avaliado por diversas tarefas. A análise de componentes principais extraiu quatro fatores que foram classificados como “Memória operacional/ Flexibilidade cognitiva”, “Supressão de interferência” , “Atenção seletiva” e “Resposta inibitória”. Diferenças individuais nos componentes de funcionamento executivo contribuíram de maneira diferente para o desempenho precoce em leitura. O fator Memória operacional/ Flexibilidade cognitiva foi o melhor preditor de leitura. Comparações entre grupos nos escores fatoriais demonstraram que as crianças com dificuldades de leitura apresentaram um desempenho inferior em Memória Operacional/Flexibilidade, mas não nos demais componentes das funções executivas, quando comparadas com os leitores eficientes. Esses resultados corroboram a visão de que a capacidade de memória operacional fornece a base de sustentação para o desenvolvimento de habilidades de leitura, estendendo-a à população de leitores iniciantes do português no Brasil. O estudo sugere que déficits em memória operacional/ flexibilidade cognitiva podem representar um fator que contribui para dificuldades de leitura em leitores iniciantes. Tal achado é de extrema importância para desenvolvimento de intervenção para crianças em situação de risco para fracasso escolar.
This study examined executive functioning and reading achievement in 106 6- to 8-year-old Brazili... more This study examined executive functioning and reading achievement in 106 6- to 8-year-old Brazilian children from a range of social backgrounds of whom approximately half lived below the poverty line. A particular focus was to explore the executive function profile of children whose classroom reading performance was judged below standard by their teachers and who were carefully matched to controls on chronological age, sex, school type (Private or Public), domicile (Salvador/BA or São Paulo/SP), and socioeconomic status. Children completed a battery of 12 executive function tasks that were conceptually tapping cognitive flexibility, working memory, inhibition, and selective attention. Each executive function domain was assessed by several tasks. Principal component analysis extracted four factors that were labeled “Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility”, “Interference Suppression”, “Selective Attention”, and “Response Inhibition”. Individual differences in executive functioning components made differential contributions to early reading achievement. The Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility factor emerged as the best predictor of reading. Group comparisons on computed factor scores showed that the struggling readers presented limitations in Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility, but not in other executive function components, compared to more skilled readers. These results validate the account that working memory capacity provides a crucial building block for the development of early literacy skills and extends it to a population of early readers of Portuguese from Brazil. The study suggests that deficits in working memory/cognitive flexibility might represent one contributing factor to reading difficulties in early readers which might have important implications for interventions for children at risk of school failure.
This cross-cultural study investigates the impact of background experience on four verbal and vis... more This cross-cultural study investigates the impact of background experience on four verbal and visuo-spatial working memory (WM) tasks. Eighty-four children from low income families were recruited from the following groups: (1) Portuguese immigrant children from Luxembourg impoverished in terms of language experience; (2) Brazilian children deprived in terms of scholastic background; (3) Portuguese children from Portugal with no disadvantage in either scholastic or language background. Children were matched on age, gender, fluid intelligence, and socioeconomic status and completed four simple and complex span tasks of WM and a vocabulary measure. Results indicate that despite large differences in their backgrounds and language abilities, the groups exhibited comparable performance on the visuo-spatial tasks dot matrix and odd-one-out and on the verbal simple span task digit recall. Group differences emerged on the verbal complex span task counting recall with children from Luxembourg and Portugal outperforming children from disadvantaged schools in Brazil. The study suggests that whereas contributions of prior knowledge to digit span, dot matrix, and odd-one-out are likely to be minimal, background experience can affect performance on counting recall. Implications for testing WM capacity in children growing up in poverty are discussed.
Objective: The study explores the psychometric properties of the Brazilian-Portuguese version of ... more Objective: The study explores the psychometric properties of the Brazilian-Portuguese version of the Working Memory Rating Scale (WMRS-Br) in a population of 355 young children from diverse socioeconomic status and schooling backgrounds.
Method: Public and private school teachers completed the WMRS-Br and children were assessed on a range of objective cognitive measures of fluid intelligence, working memory, and attention.
Results: Reliability and validity of the WMRS-Br were excellent across the public and private school sample. The WMRS-Br manifested substantial links with objective measures of working memory and medium links with selective attention, switching, and interference suppression. Confirmatory factor analyses suggest that a shorter version of the scale provides an adequate fit to the data.
Conclusion: The WMRS-Br represents a valid screening tool in a Latin American context that has the potential to improve the early detection of working memory deficits in children growing up in poverty.
Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, Dec 28, 2012
PURPOSE:
This study explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and w... more PURPOSE:
This study explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language minority children.
METHOD:
Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first- and second-language vocabulary (comprehension and production), executive-loaded working memory (counting recall and backward digit recall), and verbal short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition). Cross-linguistic task performance was compared within individuals. The language minority children were also compared with multilingual language majority children from Luxembourg and Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Brazil without an immigrant background matched on age, sex, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal reasoning.
RESULTS:
Results showed that (a) verbal working memory measures involving numerical memoranda were relatively independent of test language and cultural status; (b) language status had an impact on the repetition of high- but not on low-wordlike L2 nonwords; (c) large cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects emerged for productive vocabulary; (d) cross-cultural effects were less pronounced for vocabulary comprehension with no differences between groups if only L1-words relevant to the home context were considered.
CONCLUSION:
The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed.
This study explores whether the cognitive advantage associated with bilingualism in executive fun... more This study explores whether the cognitive advantage associated with bilingualism in executive functioning extends to young children challenged by poverty and if so, which specific processes are most affected. Forty Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilingual children from low-income immigrant families in Luxembourg and 40 matched monolingual children from Portugal completed visuo-spatial tests of working memory, abstract reasoning, selective attention, and interference suppression. Two broad cognitive factors of executive functioning labeled representation (abstract reasoning and working memory) and control (selective attention and interference suppression) emerged from principal components analysis. Whereas there were no group differences in representation, the bilinguals performed significantly better than the monolinguals in control. These results demonstrate first, that the bilingual advantage is neither confounded with nor limited by socioeconomic and cultural factors and second, that separable aspects of executive functioning are differentially affected by bilingualism. The bilingual advantage lies in control but not in visuo-spatial representational processes.
This paper reports a latent variable study exploring the specific links between executive process... more This paper reports a latent variable study exploring the specific links between executive processes of working memory, phonological short-term memory, phonological awareness, and proficiency in first (L1), second (L2), and third (L3) languages in 8- to 9-year-olds experiencing multilingual education. Children completed multiple L1-measures of complex span, verbal short-term storage, and phonological awareness, and tests of proficiency in a range of linguistic domains (vocabulary, grammar, and literacy) in Luxembourgish (L1), German (familiar L2) and French (unfamiliar L3). Results indicate that executive processing abilities, phonological short-term memory, and phonological awareness operate as distinct but related constructs that manifest differential associations with native and second language proficiency in multilingual children: Phonological short-term memory was uniquely linked to vocabulary in L1 and the structurally similar L2; executive processes were related to grammar across languages, reading comprehension, and spelling; and phonological awareness made specific contributions to word decoding, spelling, and language proficiency in the structurally dissimilar L3. Phonological processing abilities appear to be critical for acquiring the sound structure of a new language, whereas executive processes share more general links with higher-order linguistic abilities in second language learners.
This research investigates whether early childhood bilingualism affects working memory performanc... more This research investigates whether early childhood bilingualism affects working memory performance in 6- to 8-year-olds, followed over a longitudinal period of three years. The study tests the hypothesis that bilinguals might exhibit more efficient working memory abilities than monolinguals, potentially via the opportunity a bilingual environment provides to train cognitive control by combating interference and intrusions from the non-target language. Forty-four bilingual and monolingual children, matched on age, sex, and socioeconomic status, completed assessments of working memory (simple span and complex span tasks), fluid intelligence, and language (vocabulary and syntax). The data showed that the monolinguals performed significantly better on the language measures across the years whereas no language group effect emerged on the working memory and fluid intelligence tasks after verbal abilities were considered. The study suggests that the need to manage several language systems in the bilingual mind affects children’s language skills whilst having little impact on the development of working memory abilities.
"This study investigates the relationship between working memory and language in young children g... more "This study investigates the relationship between working memory and language in young children growing
up in a multilingual environment. The aim is to explore whether mechanisms of short-term storage and
cognitive control hold similar relations to emerging language skills and to investigate if potential links are
mediated by related cognitive abilities. A sample of 119 Luxembourgish 6-year-olds completed several
assessments of working memory (complex and simple span), native and foreign vocabulary, syntax, reading,
rhyme awareness, and fluid intelligence. Results showed that short-term storage and cognitive control
manifested differential links with developing language abilities: Whereas verbal short-term storage was
specifically linked to vocabulary; cognitive control manifested unique and robust links with syntax and early
reading development. The study suggests that in young children the working memory system is composed of
separate but interacting components corresponding to short-term storage and cognitive control that can be
distinguished by the roles they play in supporting language acquisition."
The present study investigates how working memory and fluid intelligence are related in young chi... more The present study investigates how working memory and fluid intelligence are related in young children and how these links develop over time. The major aim is to determine which aspect of the working memory system—short-term storage or cognitive control—drives the relationship with fluid intelligence. A sample of 119 children was followed from kindergarten to second grade and completed multiple assessments of working memory, short-term memory, and fluid intelligence. The data showed that working memory, short-term memory, and fluid intelligence were highly related but separate constructs in young children. The results further showed that when the common variance between working memory and short-term memory was controlled, the residual working memory factor manifested significant links with fluid
intelligence whereas the residual short-term memory factor did not. These findings suggest that in young children cognitive control mechanisms rather than the storage component of
working memory span tasks are the source of their link with fluid intelligence.
Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 2008
Purpose: This study evaluated the impact of socioeconomic factors on children’s
performance on t... more Purpose: This study evaluated the impact of socioeconomic factors on children’s
performance on tests of working memory and vocabulary.
Method: Twenty Brazilian children, aged 6 and 7 years, from low-income families,
completed tests of working memory (verbal short-term memory and verbal complex
span) and vocabulary (expressive and receptive). A further group of Brazilian
children from families of higher socioeconomic status matched for age, gender, and
nonverbal ability also participated in the study.
Results: Children from the low socioeconomic group obtained significantly lower
scores on measures of expressive and receptive vocabulary than their higher income
peers but no significant group differences were found on the working memory
measures.
Conclusion: Measures of working memory provide assessments of cognitive abilities
that appear to be impervious to substantial differences in socioeconomic background.
As these measures are highly sensitive to language ability and learning in general,
they appear to provide useful methods for diagnosing specific learning difficulties that
are independent of environmental opportunity.
Uploads
Papers by Pascale Engel de Abreu
Aims: This study seeks to determine whether executive functioning represents an area of difficulty for bilingual language-minority children with SLI and if so, which specific executive processes are affected.
Methods and procedures: This cross-cultural research was conducted with bilingual children from Luxembourg and monolingual children from Portugal who all had Portuguese as their first language. The data from 81 eight-year-olds from the following three groups was analyzed: (1) 15 Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilinguals from Luxembourg with an SLI diagnosis; (2) 33 typically developing Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilinguals from Luxembourg; (3) 33 typically developing Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Portugal. Groups were matched on first language, ethnicity, chronological age and socioeconomic status, and they did not differ in nonverbal intelligence. Children completed a battery of tests tapping: expressive and receptive vocabulary, syntactic comprehension, verbal and visuospatial working memory, selective attention and interference suppression.
Results: The bilingual SLI group performed equally well to their typically developing peers on measures of visuospatial working memory but had lower scores than both control groups on tasks of verbal working memory. On measures of selective attention and interference suppression, typically developing children who were bilingual outperformed their monolingual counterparts. For selective attention, performance of the bilingual SLI group did not differ significantly from the controls. For interference suppression the bilingual SLI group performed significantly less well than typically developing bilinguals but not monolinguals.
Conclusions and implications: This research provides further support to the position that SLI is not a language-specific disorder. The study indicates that although bilingual children with SLI do not demonstrate the same advantages in selective attention and interference suppression as typically developing bilinguals, they do not lag behind typically developing monolinguals in these domains of executive functioning. This finding raises the possibility that bilingualism might represent a protective factor against some of the cognitive limitations that are associated with SLI in monolinguals.
Method: Public and private school teachers completed the WMRS-Br and children were assessed on a range of objective cognitive measures of fluid intelligence, working memory, and attention.
Results: Reliability and validity of the WMRS-Br were excellent across the public and private school sample. The WMRS-Br manifested substantial links with objective measures of working memory and medium links with selective attention, switching, and interference suppression. Confirmatory factor analyses suggest that a shorter version of the scale provides an adequate fit to the data.
Conclusion: The WMRS-Br represents a valid screening tool in a Latin American context that has the potential to improve the early detection of working memory deficits in children growing up in poverty.
This study explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language minority children.
METHOD:
Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first- and second-language vocabulary (comprehension and production), executive-loaded working memory (counting recall and backward digit recall), and verbal short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition). Cross-linguistic task performance was compared within individuals. The language minority children were also compared with multilingual language majority children from Luxembourg and Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Brazil without an immigrant background matched on age, sex, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal reasoning.
RESULTS:
Results showed that (a) verbal working memory measures involving numerical memoranda were relatively independent of test language and cultural status; (b) language status had an impact on the repetition of high- but not on low-wordlike L2 nonwords; (c) large cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects emerged for productive vocabulary; (d) cross-cultural effects were less pronounced for vocabulary comprehension with no differences between groups if only L1-words relevant to the home context were considered.
CONCLUSION:
The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed.
up in a multilingual environment. The aim is to explore whether mechanisms of short-term storage and
cognitive control hold similar relations to emerging language skills and to investigate if potential links are
mediated by related cognitive abilities. A sample of 119 Luxembourgish 6-year-olds completed several
assessments of working memory (complex and simple span), native and foreign vocabulary, syntax, reading,
rhyme awareness, and fluid intelligence. Results showed that short-term storage and cognitive control
manifested differential links with developing language abilities: Whereas verbal short-term storage was
specifically linked to vocabulary; cognitive control manifested unique and robust links with syntax and early
reading development. The study suggests that in young children the working memory system is composed of
separate but interacting components corresponding to short-term storage and cognitive control that can be
distinguished by the roles they play in supporting language acquisition."
intelligence whereas the residual short-term memory factor did not. These findings suggest that in young children cognitive control mechanisms rather than the storage component of
working memory span tasks are the source of their link with fluid intelligence.
performance on tests of working memory and vocabulary.
Method: Twenty Brazilian children, aged 6 and 7 years, from low-income families,
completed tests of working memory (verbal short-term memory and verbal complex
span) and vocabulary (expressive and receptive). A further group of Brazilian
children from families of higher socioeconomic status matched for age, gender, and
nonverbal ability also participated in the study.
Results: Children from the low socioeconomic group obtained significantly lower
scores on measures of expressive and receptive vocabulary than their higher income
peers but no significant group differences were found on the working memory
measures.
Conclusion: Measures of working memory provide assessments of cognitive abilities
that appear to be impervious to substantial differences in socioeconomic background.
As these measures are highly sensitive to language ability and learning in general,
they appear to provide useful methods for diagnosing specific learning difficulties that
are independent of environmental opportunity.
Aims: This study seeks to determine whether executive functioning represents an area of difficulty for bilingual language-minority children with SLI and if so, which specific executive processes are affected.
Methods and procedures: This cross-cultural research was conducted with bilingual children from Luxembourg and monolingual children from Portugal who all had Portuguese as their first language. The data from 81 eight-year-olds from the following three groups was analyzed: (1) 15 Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilinguals from Luxembourg with an SLI diagnosis; (2) 33 typically developing Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilinguals from Luxembourg; (3) 33 typically developing Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Portugal. Groups were matched on first language, ethnicity, chronological age and socioeconomic status, and they did not differ in nonverbal intelligence. Children completed a battery of tests tapping: expressive and receptive vocabulary, syntactic comprehension, verbal and visuospatial working memory, selective attention and interference suppression.
Results: The bilingual SLI group performed equally well to their typically developing peers on measures of visuospatial working memory but had lower scores than both control groups on tasks of verbal working memory. On measures of selective attention and interference suppression, typically developing children who were bilingual outperformed their monolingual counterparts. For selective attention, performance of the bilingual SLI group did not differ significantly from the controls. For interference suppression the bilingual SLI group performed significantly less well than typically developing bilinguals but not monolinguals.
Conclusions and implications: This research provides further support to the position that SLI is not a language-specific disorder. The study indicates that although bilingual children with SLI do not demonstrate the same advantages in selective attention and interference suppression as typically developing bilinguals, they do not lag behind typically developing monolinguals in these domains of executive functioning. This finding raises the possibility that bilingualism might represent a protective factor against some of the cognitive limitations that are associated with SLI in monolinguals.
Method: Public and private school teachers completed the WMRS-Br and children were assessed on a range of objective cognitive measures of fluid intelligence, working memory, and attention.
Results: Reliability and validity of the WMRS-Br were excellent across the public and private school sample. The WMRS-Br manifested substantial links with objective measures of working memory and medium links with selective attention, switching, and interference suppression. Confirmatory factor analyses suggest that a shorter version of the scale provides an adequate fit to the data.
Conclusion: The WMRS-Br represents a valid screening tool in a Latin American context that has the potential to improve the early detection of working memory deficits in children growing up in poverty.
This study explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language minority children.
METHOD:
Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first- and second-language vocabulary (comprehension and production), executive-loaded working memory (counting recall and backward digit recall), and verbal short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition). Cross-linguistic task performance was compared within individuals. The language minority children were also compared with multilingual language majority children from Luxembourg and Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Brazil without an immigrant background matched on age, sex, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal reasoning.
RESULTS:
Results showed that (a) verbal working memory measures involving numerical memoranda were relatively independent of test language and cultural status; (b) language status had an impact on the repetition of high- but not on low-wordlike L2 nonwords; (c) large cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects emerged for productive vocabulary; (d) cross-cultural effects were less pronounced for vocabulary comprehension with no differences between groups if only L1-words relevant to the home context were considered.
CONCLUSION:
The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed.
up in a multilingual environment. The aim is to explore whether mechanisms of short-term storage and
cognitive control hold similar relations to emerging language skills and to investigate if potential links are
mediated by related cognitive abilities. A sample of 119 Luxembourgish 6-year-olds completed several
assessments of working memory (complex and simple span), native and foreign vocabulary, syntax, reading,
rhyme awareness, and fluid intelligence. Results showed that short-term storage and cognitive control
manifested differential links with developing language abilities: Whereas verbal short-term storage was
specifically linked to vocabulary; cognitive control manifested unique and robust links with syntax and early
reading development. The study suggests that in young children the working memory system is composed of
separate but interacting components corresponding to short-term storage and cognitive control that can be
distinguished by the roles they play in supporting language acquisition."
intelligence whereas the residual short-term memory factor did not. These findings suggest that in young children cognitive control mechanisms rather than the storage component of
working memory span tasks are the source of their link with fluid intelligence.
performance on tests of working memory and vocabulary.
Method: Twenty Brazilian children, aged 6 and 7 years, from low-income families,
completed tests of working memory (verbal short-term memory and verbal complex
span) and vocabulary (expressive and receptive). A further group of Brazilian
children from families of higher socioeconomic status matched for age, gender, and
nonverbal ability also participated in the study.
Results: Children from the low socioeconomic group obtained significantly lower
scores on measures of expressive and receptive vocabulary than their higher income
peers but no significant group differences were found on the working memory
measures.
Conclusion: Measures of working memory provide assessments of cognitive abilities
that appear to be impervious to substantial differences in socioeconomic background.
As these measures are highly sensitive to language ability and learning in general,
they appear to provide useful methods for diagnosing specific learning difficulties that
are independent of environmental opportunity.