THE INFLUENCE OF BILINGUALISM ON LEXICAL ACCESS AND CATEGORIZATION PROCESS IN PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN. - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2024

THE INFLUENCE OF BILINGUALISM ON LEXICAL ACCESS AND CATEGORIZATION PROCESS IN PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN.

Résumé

tudies have highlighted that bilingualism appears to facilitate communication (Dieguez & Hemmerle, 2014; Bialystok, 2017) and has beneficial effects on the emergence and development of cognitive abilities (Kail, 2015). Children who just start using two languages, frequently switch between languages, namely code switching. They used words from both languages and these seem to play an important part on language acquisition process. Bialystok & Martin (2004) have shown that bilinguals develop the ability to inhibit one language while using the other, thus accelerating cognitive development which includes perception, attention, memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, programming, planning. Other studies (Bialystok et al., 2008) have also demonstrated that exposure to two linguistic systems may enhance flexibility and cognitive inhibition capacities in bilingual individuals, which can confer an advantage during categorization tasks requiring changes in categorization criteria and the suppression of irrelevant information or responses. The aim of the present study is to examine whether bilingual children aged between 6 and 8 years-old could access to lexico-semantic store more easily than monolinguals. Firstly, drawing upon existing theories and empirical evidence, it is posited that bilingualism potentially enhances access to the lexico-semantic store due to the necessity of engaging with and navigating two linguistic systems. By investigating this phenomenon in young children, this study aims to ascertain whether these purported advantages in lexical access are discernible at an early developmental stage. Secondly, this research is predicated on the hypothesis that bilingual children, within this age range, exhibit a heightened comprehension of words and their meanings across both languages. It is conjectured that the comparatively facile access to the lexico-semantic store could serve as an indicator of an early and robust development of linguistic competencies in bilingual children, suggesting a more advanced level of language comprehension and cognitive engagement compared to their monolingual counterparts. In this study, 20 French-Arabic Bilingual children and 20 French Monolingual children aged between 6 to 8 years-old (all participants lived in France and were recruited in primary school: grades 1 and 2) performed a verbal Fluency Task (Cardebat et al., 1990; Abdelgafar & Moawad, 2015). The verbal fluency task is a short test of verbal functioning. It consists of two tasks: category fluency (semantic fluency) and letter /lexical fluency (phonemic or lexical fluency). Participants are given 2 min to produce as many words as possible within a semantic category (category fluency) or starting with a given letter (letter fluency). The participant's score in each task is the number of unique correct words. The results of the study show for the categorical fluency task an advantage for a bilingual for accessing categorical lexico-semantic storage. No difference was observed in the lexical fluency task.

Domaines

Psychologie
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Dates et versions

hal-04426375 , version 1 (30-01-2024)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-04426375 , version 1

Citer

Samira Samira Bouayed, Annamaria Lammel, Louise Goyet. THE INFLUENCE OF BILINGUALISM ON LEXICAL ACCESS AND CATEGORIZATION PROCESS IN PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN.. InPACT Conferences 2024, InPACT, Apr 2024, Porto, Portugal. ⟨hal-04426375⟩
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