Cognitive Processing in Bilingual and Monolingual Children

With regard to the effect of bilingualism on cognitive processing and especially intelligence، two different approaches including additive and subtractive bilingualism can be introduced. The present study aimed to investigate the differences bilingual and monolingual children possess in terms of their cognitive processes in general and intelligence in particular. In order to achieve the purpose of the study، 25 children aged between 8 and 10 years old studying at a primary school in Tehran were selected and took the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). The test was performed separately for each child. Bilingual children had proficiency in Azari and Persian، whereas; monolingual children were only proficient in Persian. An independent samples t-test was run to compare the performances of the two groups the results of which indicated that there was no significant difference between the means of the two groups on the test and thus the null hypothesis was not rejected. Based on the findings of this study، it seems that monolingual and bilingual children do not have any significant difference in terms of cognitive processing (intelligence).