The Benefits of Being Bilingual: Working Memory in Bilingual Turkish-Dutch Children

Whether bilingual children outperform monolingual children on
visuospatial and verbal working memory tests was investigated.
In addition, relations among bilingual proficiency, language use
at home, and working memory were explored. The bilingual
Turkish–Dutch children (n = 68) in this study were raised in
families with lower socioeconomic status (SES) and had smaller
Dutch vocabularies than Dutch monolingual controls (n = 52).
Having these characteristics, they are part of an under-researched
bilingual population. It was found that the bilingual Turkish–Dutch
children showed cognitive gains in visuospatial and verbal working
memory tests when SES and vocabulary were controlled, in
particular on tests that require processing and not merely storage.
These findings converge with recent studies that have revealed
bilingual cognitive advantages beyond inhibition, and they support
the hypothesis that experience with dual language management
influences the central executive control system that regulates
processing across a wide range of task demands. Furthermore,
the results show that bilingual cognitive advantages are found in
socioeconomically disadvantaged bilingual populations and suggest
that benefits to executive control are moderated by bilingual
proficiency.