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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 19, 2025

Examining Bilingual Language Control Using the Stroop Task

Examining Bilingual Language Control Using the Stroop Task

Published on: February 26, 2020

Quebec-based parents' concerns regarding their children's multilingual development.

Erin Quirk¹, Melanie Brouillard¹, Alexa Ahooja²

¹Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

International Journal of Multilingualism

|July 26, 2024

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Parents raising multilingual children have concerns about language exposure and fluency, and less so about cognitive effects. Factors like heritage language transmission and parental attitudes influence concern levels.

Keywords:

heritage languages intergenerational language transmission language attitudes multilingual development multilingualism parental concerns trilingualism

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Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Sociolinguistics
Child Development

Background:

Parental concerns regarding children's multilingual development are common but under-researched, particularly in multilingual communities.
Existing knowledge lacks detail on the specific nature and intensity of these parental concerns.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the nature and strength of concerns among parents of young children (0-4 years) undergoing multilingual development.
To identify factors associated with heightened parental concerns about childhood multilingualism.

Main Methods:

A pre-registered, questionnaire-based study involving 821 parents in Quebec raising multilingual infants and toddlers.
Factor analysis was used to analyze Likert-scale responses assessing parental concerns.

Main Results:

Parents reported two main types of concerns: (1) impact of multilingualism on cognition and (2) exposure to and fluency in multiple languages.
Overall concern strength was moderate to weak, with cognition concerns being less pronounced than exposure-fluency concerns.
Stronger concerns were linked to heritage language transmission, raising three or more languages, developmental issues, and less positive parental attitudes.

Conclusions:

Findings enhance understanding of parental concerns in multilingual contexts, highlighting a greater focus on language acquisition than cognitive effects.
Identified factors provide a basis for developing targeted support strategies for multilingual families.
The study underscores the importance of parental attitudes in shaping concerns about childhood multilingualism.