The Relationship Between Cognitive Flexibility, Bilingualism and Language Production: Evidence from Narrative Abilities in Senior Preschoolers from the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

Abstract

Bilingualism remains one of the key agents of influence on cognitive and language development of a child. Recently, this phenomenon became the focus of research attention. On the one hand, it can be explained by the active migration processes occurring on a global level. On the other hand, the influence of bilingualism over childrens cognitive and language development is still quite a divisive issue. This study is aimed to explore, which phenomenon is more associ-ated with the language development, - the fact of a childs bilingualism or his/her level of execu-tive functions development. 380 children from a bilingual Russian region participated in this re-search. The final sample consisted of 279 6-7-year-old subjects without deviations in their cogni-tive and language development. There were 181 monolingual children and 98 bilinguals. Age, gender and non-verbal intelligence were controlled. Average age equaled to 6.65 years (SD = 0.37). The study demonstrated that the differences revealed in the language development of mono- and bilingual children were related mostly to lexical and grammatical aspects and didnt intervene with the macrostructure of the narrative. In regard to the influence of executive functions, the role of cognitive flexibility turned out to be an essential element from the perspective of the difference in mono- and bilingual childrens language development. As a whole, the study results allow drawing a conclusion that the development of cognitive flexibility contributes to a more efficient simultaneous mastering of two languages.

Keywords

• narratives
• bilingualism
• language development
• narrative’s microstructure
• narrative’s macrostructure
• executive functions
• preschool age