Past studies examining the cognitive function of bilingual school-aged children have pointed to enhancements in areas of executive control relative to age-matched monolingual children. The majority of these studies has tested children from a middle-class background and compared performance of bilinguals as a discrete group against monolinguals.…

A large linguistic distance exists between spoken Arabic and the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) the literary language (a diglosia). Novice readers, therefore, struggle with the complex orthography of Arabic as well as the mastering of MSA. Here, we tested whether structured activities in MSA would advance kindergarteners' MSA aptitude by the end of…

In the Netherlands, Turkish-Dutch children constitute a substantial group of children who learn to speak Dutch at the age of four after they learned to speak Turkish. These children are generally academically less successful. Academic success appears to be affected by both language proficiency and working memory skill. The goal of this study was…

Difficulties in second language (L2) learning are often associated with recognizable learning difficulties in native language (L1), such as in dyslexia. However, some individuals have low L2 proficiency but intact L1 reading skills. These L2 learners experience frequent tip-of-the-tongue states while naming in L1, which indicates that they have a…

The present study investigates the possible influence of foreign language learning on individuals' divergent thinking abilities. Unlike the large body of research devoted to unfolding the effect of bilingualism on cognitive functions, foreign language learning has gained little attention. This study aimed at bringing into attention the distinctive…