LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 21:8 August 2021
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Working Memory in Bilingual Versus Trilingual Children from
Urban High Socioeconomic Indian Families

Kamlam Gopalkrishnan Iyer, M.Phil., Ph.D. and
S. Venkatesan, M.Phil., Ph.D.

Abstract

Linguistically rich country like India has children speaking multiple languages. This is more prevalently observed in the urban Indian metropolitans. Though bilinguals have cognitive gains, trilingual children and their cognitive gains need to be evaluated. A sample of 55 children aged 6 to 8 years, with 27 in bilingual and 28 in trilingual groups, was recruited through purposive non-probability sampling technique from parental reports of their functional linguistic use. They were assessed for background measures of developmental level, intellectual functioning, and socioeconomic status. Working memory tasks comprising of verbal and visuospatial components were conducted on the sample. Results depicted a significant difference between the groups with bilingual children outperforming the trilingual children. Evidence concordant and discordant to these findings are discussed. Recommendations are provided to implore further studies for multilingual homes and formal education set-ups.

Keywords: Working memory, Children, Cognitive, Multilingual, Urban High Socioeconomic families, Language, Typical

India is a land of multiple cultures with language diversity. Each state boasts of different language and culture. Multilingualism cannot be avoided in an urban Indian city. Bilingualism is at the grass-root level in India (Mohanty, 2006). A metropolitan city of India would inevitably be a mixture of cosmopolitan inhabitants. This makes multilingualism an everyday necessity of such a population.

One of India's fastest-growing metropolitan urban cities is Bangalore (World Urbanization Prospectus, n.d.). Known as the "Silicon Valley of India," Kannada, English, Telugu, Tamil, and Hindi, Marathi languages are included in the list of spoken languages (Maps of India, n.d.). Thus, urban bilingualism was 55.70%, and urban trilingualism in Karnataka was 73.84% as per the census 2011. The percentage of bilinguals and trilinguals in Karnataka has been more than the national average (Mallikarjun, 2019).

Many factors could be enlisted for multilingualism in families of Bangalore. Urban private schools which encourage children to learn from multiple languages from their pre-primary levels of education, high inter-state mobility owing to change in locations in the IT industry and other similar sectors, mixed state marriages are some of the reasons many children from these families are also multilingual.

Much evidence has been reported linking executive functioning (EF) skills to a "bilingual brain" (Ramirez & Kuhl, 2017). A significant advantage is noted in terms of attentional control, inhibitory capacity, and cognitive flexibility exhibited by bilinguals across the life span (Bialgstok, 2015, Mindt et al., 2008; Engel de Abreu, 2011). Several disadvantages have been noted, such as achievement of conversational proficiency vis-à-vis higher-order cognitive proficiency levels in languages, vocabulary size and semantics of the second language in bilinguals and losing ground of both the languages when immersed in a non-native language environment such as schools (Mindt et al., 2008; Thomas & Collier, 2002).

Most of the current evidence in language development or acquisition, vocabulary development, and cognitive abilities is compared with monolingual and bilingual peers only (Mieszkowsha et al., 2017). Nevertheless, these are studies conducted in the west, where few places have as much language diversity as the Indian subcontinent.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Kamlam

Dr. Iyer Kamlam Gopalkrishnan, M.Phil., Ph.D.
Consultant Child & Adolescent Neuropsychologist
Kamlam's Clinic, D-327, Ittina Abha Apts., Marathahalli
Bangalore - 560037
iyerkamlam@gmail.com
Ph: 9632685294

Dr. S. Venkatesan, M.Phil., Ph.D.
Formerly Dean-Research, HOD & Professor
Department of Clinical Psychology
All India Institute of Speech & Hearing (AIISH)
Mysore 570006
psyconindia@gmail.com
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