Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

4-2014

Abstract

We examined the relationship between phonological awareness (PA) and executive attention among Chinese-English bilingual children in the process of learning to read. Seventy-four bilingual children (mean age 67.5 months) completed phonological tasks assessing onset and rime awareness and the Attention Network Test (ANT), a nonverbal measure of executive attention (Rueda et al., 2004). Hierarchical analyses revealed bidirectional relations between PA and executive attention, with PA predicting executive attention and vice versa. The predictive relation of PA to executive attention was more pronounced for English onset and Chinese rime awareness. Evidence of cross-linguistic transfer of PA skills suggests concurrent contributions of bilinguals’ multiple PA skills to cognitive advantages in executive attention. Further analysis revealed that orienting attention was strongly related to both English and Chinese PA skills, whereas executive control attention was associated with English PA only. These results offer new insight into the phonological skills relevant to aspects of attentional control in bilingual children.

Keywords

Executive attention, Phonological awareness, Attention Network Test (ANT)

Discipline

Cognitive Psychology | Multicultural Psychology

Research Areas

Psychology

Publication

Cognitive Development

Volume

30

First Page

65

Last Page

80

ISSN

0885-2014

Identifier

10.1016/j.cogdev.2013.11.003

Publisher

Elsevier

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2013.11.003

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