Attention and inhibition in bilingual children: evidence from the dimensional change card sort task. Bialystok, E. & Martin, M. M Dev Sci, 7(3):325–339, 2004.
abstract   bibtex   
In a previous study, a bilingual advantage for preschool children in solving the dimensional change card sort task was attributed to superiority in inhibition of attention (Bialystok, 1999). However, the task includes difficult representational demands to encode and interpret the task stimuli, and bilinguals may also have profited from superior representational abilities. This possibility is examined in three studies. In Study 1, bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on versions of the problem containing moderate representational demands but not on a more demanding condition. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that bilingual children were more skilled than monolinguals when the target dimensions were perceptual features of the stimulus and that the two groups were equivalent when the target dimensions were semantic features. The conclusions are that bilinguals have better inhibitory control for ignoring perceptual information than monolinguals do but are not more skilled in representation, confirming the results of the original study. The results also identify the ability to ignore an obsolete display feature as the critical difficulty in solving this task.
@Article{Bialystok2004,
  author      = {Ellen Bialystok and Michelle M Martin},
  journal     = {Dev Sci},
  title       = {Attention and inhibition in bilingual children: evidence from the dimensional change card sort task.},
  year        = {2004},
  number      = {3},
  pages       = {325--339},
  volume      = {7},
  abstract    = {In a previous study, a bilingual advantage for preschool children
	in solving the dimensional change card sort task was attributed to
	superiority in inhibition of attention (Bialystok, 1999). However,
	the task includes difficult representational demands to encode and
	interpret the task stimuli, and bilinguals may also have profited
	from superior representational abilities. This possibility is examined
	in three studies. In Study 1, bilinguals outperformed monolinguals
	on versions of the problem containing moderate representational demands
	but not on a more demanding condition. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated
	that bilingual children were more skilled than monolinguals when
	the target dimensions were perceptual features of the stimulus and
	that the two groups were equivalent when the target dimensions were
	semantic features. The conclusions are that bilinguals have better
	inhibitory control for ignoring perceptual information than monolinguals
	do but are not more skilled in representation, confirming the results
	of the original study. The results also identify the ability to ignore
	an obsolete display feature as the critical difficulty in solving
	this task.},
  institution = {Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Canada. ellenb@yorku.ca},
  keywords    = {Attention; Child, Preschool; Concept Formation; Discrimination Learning; Female; Humans; Intelligence Tests; Language; Language Development; Male; Multilingualism; Problem Solving; Semantics; Speech Perception; Time Factors; Verbal Behavior; Verbal Learning},
  language    = {eng},
  medline-pst = {ppublish},
  pmid        = {15595373},
  timestamp   = {2011.03.12},
}

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