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Effects of SES on Executive Attention in Malay–English bilingual children in Singapore*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2015

CARISSA KANG ,
FELIX THOEMMES  and
BARBARA LUST
CARISSA KANG*
Affiliation:
Human Development, Cornell University
FELIX THOEMMES
Affiliation:
Human Development, Cornell University
BARBARA LUST
Affiliation:
Human Development, Cornell University
*
Address for Correspondence: Carissa Kang, Department of Human Development, Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853[email protected]
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Abstract

Thirty-four 4 to 6-year-old Malay–English bilinguals (both balanced and dominant) characterized as low SES on income and parental education were tested on the child-Attentional Network Task (ANT) (Rueda, Rothbart, McCandliss, Saccomanno & Posner, 2004) measuring executive attention. Although SES measures fell below the Singapore median, Malay children's performance on the child-ANT remained high when compared to other age-matched monolingual and bilingual children previously tested with the child-ANT (Yang, Yang & Lust, 2011), and Chinese–English Singaporean bilinguals (Yang, Yang & Kang, 2014). None of the three SES measures – father's and mother's education, and income – significantly correlated with child-ANT components. Regression analyses confirmed that none of the SES measures significantly predicted performance on the child-ANT. Both balanced and dominant bilinguals displayed high executive control. We consider the possibility that cultural variations, (e.g., simultaneous and pervasiveness of bilingualism in Singapore, or pervasive code-switching), may ameliorate potential negative effects of SES on executive control development.

Keywords

bilingualismcognitive developmentexecutive attentionsocioeconomic statusculturechild multilingualism questionnaireMalay
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 19 , Issue 5 , November 2016 , pp. 1042 - 1056
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

We thank Prof. Yang Hwajin at the Singapore Management University for providing us with research assistants and support for the Singapore component of our project and her Research Assistants, Celestine Tan and Zhi Ting Chow for their assistance with data collection in Singapore. We thank Prof. Yang Sujin, who developed the research paradigm focusing on the cognitive advantages of bilingualism using the child-Attention Network Task. We thank Qi Wang for insightful directions on the cross-cultural study of SES.

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