Bilingualism and performance on two widely used developmental neuropsychological test batteries.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 25922937.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0125867 and PMC identifier 4414566.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The present study investigated the effect of bilingualism on the two widely used developmental neuropsychological test batteries Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Fourth Edition (WISC-IV) and A Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment, Second Edition (NEPSY-II) in children. The sample consisted of 100 Finland-Swedish children in two age groups. About half (n = 52) of the participants were early simultaneous bilinguals, and the other half (n = 48) were monolinguals. As no Finland-Swedish versions of the tests are available at the moment, both tests were translated and adapted to suit this population. The results revealed no difference in the performance between bilingual and monolingual children. This speaks against a cognitive advantage in bilingual children and indicates that development of separate norms for monolingual and bilingual children is not needed for clinical use.
Medical subject headings
- Cognition
- Multilingualism
- Neuropsychological Tests