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Cognitive skills differentially influence narrative macrostructure in bilinguals' L1 and L2
Freideriki Tselekidou1,2, Elizabeth Stadtmiller3, Assunta Süss1
1Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin, Germany.
Journal of Child Language
|December 26, 2024
Summary
Cognitive skills impact bilingual preschoolers' story complexity differently across languages. While shifting abilities influenced Russian narratives, visual memory affected German stories, advancing understanding of bilingual oral narratives.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Bilingualism Research
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Narrative macrostructure, encompassing story structure and complexity, is crucial for language development.
- Bilingual children's cognitive development and language skills are intertwined, but specific cognitive influences on narrative skills require further investigation.
- Understanding how cognitive functions relate to narrative abilities in bilinguals is essential for educational and clinical practices.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the influence of specific cognitive skills on the narrative macrostructure (story structure and story complexity) of Russian-German bilingual preschoolers.
- To examine whether cognitive effects on narrative macrostructure differ between the two languages of bilingual children.
- To control for demographic factors and language proficiency in assessing cognitive impacts on oral narratives.
Main Methods:
- Utilized the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) to assess story structure (SS) and story complexity (SC).
- Administered nonverbal cognitive subtasks: Figure Ground (shifting), Form Completion (visual memory), and Attention Divided (inhibition).
- Recruited 38 Russian-German bilingual children aged 4.5 to 5.1 years, controlling for sex and socioeconomic status.
Main Results:
- No cognitive skills significantly influenced story structure (SS) in either language.
- Cognitive skills differentially impacted story complexity (SC): Figure Ground (shifting) affected Russian SC, while Form Completion (visual memory) affected German SC.
- Attention Divided (inhibition) did not show a significant impact on SC in either language.
Conclusions:
- Cognitive functions, specifically shifting and visual memory, play a differential role in the oral narrative complexity of bilingual preschoolers across their languages.
- The findings highlight language-specific cognitive influences on narrative development in bilingual children.
- This research contributes to a nuanced understanding of the interplay between cognition and language in early bilingualism.
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