Assessing Executive Functions of Turkish-German Bilinguals, Turkish Speaking Children with S/LI and Turkish Speaking Monolingual Children

Abstract

Specific language impairment has been found to be as sociated with dysfunction in executive functions whereas bilingual children are thought to be superior at these skills compared to monolingual children. The present study in vestigated executive functions in three groups of children: Turkish-German bilinguals, Turkish speaking children with S/LI and Turkish speaking monolingual children. Groups were matched on first language and chronological age. EF performance tapping conflict inhibition/attentional control, inhibition, short term memory, working memory, monitoring and updating were compared among groups. Children with S/LI scored at a lower level compared to other two groups on all executive functions tasks used in this study. Bilingual children outperformed the other groups on most of the tasks measuring working memory and inhibition.