The development of visuospatial working memory and task switching in 5-8-year-old children and potential effects of bilingualism

Abstract

The present longitudinal study experimentally investigated the impact of bilingualism on cognitive development, focusing specifically on task switching and visuospatial working memory. The sample consisted of Dutch-Turkish bilingual and Dutch monolingual children, all born and raised in the Netherlands. For the task switching measure, 28 bilingual and 40 monolingual children participated, while the visuospatial working memory task included 21 bilinguals and 40 monolinguals. Task switching ability was assessed using a non-verbal task developed with E-Prime 2.0 (Psychology Software Tools, Pittsburgh, PA, United States), and visuospatial working memory was measured using the Dot Matrix Task from the Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA; Alloway, 2007). Data were analysed using a mixed-design ANOVA with repeated measures. Based on previous research, a bilingual advantage in cognitive skills was hypothesised. Results showed that both groups improved over time on both tasks. However, monolingual children demonstrated greater gains in task switching ability, while no significant differences were found between the groups in visuospatial working memory. These findings highlight the need for further longitudinal research with larger sample sizes. Suggestions for methodological improvements are also discussed.