The effects of language background and parental education on measures of cognitive ability
Subtitle
An analysis of the WPPSI-IV cognitive profiles of monolingual, simultaneous bilingual, and sequential bilingual German children aged 4 to 7 years
Publication date
2024-05-24
Document type
Forschungsartikel
Author
Organisational unit
ISSN
Series or journal
Children
Periodical volume
11
Periodical issue
6
Peer-reviewed
✅
Part of the university bibliography
✅
Keyword
German language
Monolinguals
Simultaneous bilinguals
Sequential bilinguals
WPPSI- IV
Cognitive profile
Abstract
Background: The present study investigated the possible effects of language background (monolinguals, simultaneous bilinguals, and sequential bilinguals) and parental education (no/low, medium, high, and highest parental education) on measures of cognitive ability provided by the Wechsler Primary and Preschool Scale—Fourth Edition (WPPSI-IV). Methods: Statistical analyses were based on a sample of 290 children (130 females, 160 males). Three multivariate variance analyses were conducted to identify possible effects. In cases of statistically significant main effects, post hoc analyses were additionally performed to identify group differences. Results: The results indicated that simultaneous bilinguals performed more similarly to monolinguals than sequential bilinguals. On average, sequential bilinguals achieved significantly lower scores on the Verbal Comprehension Index (VCI), the Vocabulary Acquisition Index (VAI), and the associated subtests than monolinguals and simultaneous bilinguals. Significantly lower average scores on VAI and the associated subtests were found for simultaneous bilinguals compared to monolinguals. Children with parents having no, a lower, or a medium educational level achieved significantly lower scores on VCI, VAI, and the FSIQ than children with parents having a high or highest educational level on average. Conclusions: The present findings suggest that the WPPSI-IV represents a suitable and reliable test battery for the assessment of cognitive skills in children with different language backgrounds and parental educational levels.
Description
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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