ERIC Number: EJ897832
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0009-3920
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Cognitive Flexibility in Drawings of Bilingual Children
Adi-Japha, Esther; Berberich-Artzi, Jennie; Libnawi, Afaf
Child Development, v81 n5 p1356-1366 Sep-Oct 2010
A. Karmiloff-Smith's (1990) task of drawing a nonexistent object is considered to be a measure of cognitive flexibility. The notion of earlier emergence of cognitive flexibility in bilingual children motivated the current researchers to request 4- and 5-year-old English-Hebrew and Arabic-Hebrew bilingual children and their monolingual peers to draw a flower and a house that do not exist (N = 80). Bilinguals exhibited a significantly higher rate of interrepresentational flexibility in their drawings (e.g., "a giraffe flower," "a chair-house," found in 28 of 54 drawings), whereas the level of complex intrarepresentational change was similar across groups. Interrepresentational drawings were previously reported only for children older than 7 years. The specific mechanisms by which bilinguals' language experience may lead to interrepresentational flexibility are discussed.
Descriptors: Semitic Languages, Monolingualism, English, Language Enrichment, Bilingualism, Freehand Drawing, Cognitive Ability, Language Skills, Young Children, Comparative Analysis
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
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Audience: N/A
Language: English
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