A study of primary school pupils who spoke English or Italian- half of whom also spoke Gaelic or Sardinian- found that the bilingual children were significantly more successful in the tasks set for them. The Gaelic-speaking children were, in turn, more successful than the Sardinian speakers.<\/p>\n The differences were linked to the mental alertness required to switch between languages, which could develop skills useful in other types of thinking.<\/strong> The further advantage for Gaelic-speaking children may have been due to the formal teaching of the language and its extensive literature.<\/p>\n In contrast, Sardinian is not widely taught in schools on the Italian island and has a largely oral tradition, which means there is currently no standardised form of the language.<\/p>\n Dr Fraser Lauchlan, an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde’s School of Psychological Sciences & Health, led the research. It was conducted with colleagues at the University of Cagliari in Sardinia, where he is a Visiting Professor.<\/p>\n Dr Lauchlan said: “Bilingualism is now largely seen as being beneficial to children but there remains a view that it can be confusing, and so potentially detrimental to them.<\/p>\n “Our study has found that it can have demonstrable benefits, not only in language but in arithmetic, problem solving and enabling children to think creatively<\/strong>. We also assessed the children’s vocabulary, not so much for their knowledge of words as their understanding of them. Again, there was a marked difference in the level of detail and richness in description from the bilingual pupils.<\/p>\n “We also found they had an aptitude for selective attention- the ability to identify and focus on information which is important, while filtering out what is not- which could come from the ‘code-switching’ of thinking in two different languages.”<\/p>\n In the study, a total of 121 children in Scotland and Sardinia- 62 of them bilingual- were set tasks in which they were asked to reproduce patterns of coloured blocks, to repeat orally a series of numbers, to give clear definitions of words and to resolve mentally a set of arithmetic problems. The tasks were all set in English or Italian and the children taking part were aged around nine.<\/p>\n During the research, Dr Lauchlan’s post at the University of Cagliari was funded by the Sardinian Regional Government (Regione Autonoma della Sardegna).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the University of Strathclyde press release via EurekAlert!: Bilingual children outperform children who speak only one language in problem-solving skills and creative thinking, according to research led at the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,9],"tags":[77,160,74,25,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5293"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5293"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5343,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5293\/revisions\/5343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/Languages2.jpg\" "\\"languages\\"")
Bilingual children outperform children who speak only one language in problem-solving skills and creative thinking<\/strong>, according to research led at the University of Strathclyde.<\/p>\n