Nearly half the world's people are bilingual, but many have no clear understanding of what--aside from being fluent in more than one language--bilingualism means. This lively introduction by linguist Penelope Gardner-Chloros covers everything a bilingual (or curious monolingual) individual might want to know. The book discusses how bilingualism…

The study aimed at assessing Problems of Curriculum Relevance in Enhancing Children's Cognitive Development in Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Ethiopia. An explanatory sequential research design was employed through a multistage random sampling technique to collect primary data from the participants (N[subscript i]=260) through questionnaires…

Purpose: This study investigates false belief (FB) understanding in children who are hard of hearing (CHH) compared with children with normal hearing (CNH) at ages 5 and 6 years and at 2nd grade. Research with this population has theoretical significance, given that the early auditory-linguistic experiences of CHH are less restricted compared with…

Very little research has been conducted on the effects of CLIL on L1 competence development. This article compares CLIL and non-CLIL learners' levels of attainment in Spanish Language and Literature in seven public schools in the South of Spain. Learners' verbal intelligence and motivation were previously matched in order to homogenise the sample.…

Language acquisition involves learning not only grammatical rules and a lexicon but also what people are intending to convey with their utterances: the semantic/pragmatic component of language. In this article we separate the contributions of linguistic development and cognitive maturity to the acquisition of the semantic/pragmatic component of…

Self-regulation emerges throughout early childhood, and predicts later success in socially and cognitively challenging situations. Vygotsky proposed that symbols, particularly words, serve as mental tools to be used in service of self-regulation. Cross-sectional research indicates a positive but inconsistent association between language and…

There is strong evidence that developments in children's theory of mind (ToM) at 3-4 years are related to developments in language and executive function. However, these relationships might exist for 2 reasons. First, language and executive function might be necessary for the mature ToM abilities that children are in the process of developing.…

In this study the authors investigated whether training preschool children in the use of mental state lexicon plays a significant role in bringing about advanced conceptual understanding of mental terms and improved performance on theory-of-mind tasks. A total of 70 participants belonging to two age groups (3 and 4 years old) were randomly…

A unique hallmark of human language is that it uses signals that are both learnt and symbolic. The emergence of such signals was therefore a defining event in human cognitive evolution, yet very little is known about how such a process occurs. Previous work provides some insights on how meaning can become attached to form, but a more foundational…

The ideas of Vygotsky [Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). "Thinking and speech." In "The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky," (Vol. 1). New York: Plenum. (Original work published 1934.)] have been increasingly influential in accounting for social-environmental influences on the development of social understanding (SU). In the first part of this article, I…

Failures are better documented than successes in bilingual education programs. A theory is needed powerful enough to predict success while accounting for reported failures. Most important is the effect of bilingualism on cognitive development. Use of the first language should complement the second, particularly in problem solving and question…

The linguistic relativity hypothesis is the view that the language a person speaks influences his perception of the world. This hypothesis is frequently misunderstood to be a question of the influence of language on culture, when in reality it emphasizes the influence of language on the cognition of its speakers. This distinction between culture…

Research on the effects of bilingualism on cognitive development is reviewed, and two complementary models of bilingualism are developed to account for research results. It is suggested that research since 1960 shows a positive relationship between bilingualism and cognitive development, at least for some types of bilingualism. The advantage or…

This proposed study will examine the underlying causalities of the U-shaped developmental trend in metaphoric production and the causes which make up the linearly increasing trend. Seven hypotheses will be tested in the study. Ninety children, all from middle-class families and attending nursery and public schools in Austin (Texas), with ages…

Examined role of linguistic demarcation of numerals on cognitive representations of numbers with Caucasian children, 5-7 years old. Theorized that the linguistic paradigm does not always support the idea that language affects number concepts and that children's performance is shaped by other constraints. Results suggest that the task reflects…