Bilingualism in Development: Language, Literacy, and Cognition

"Bilingualism in Development explores language and cognitive development in bilingual children, focusing on the preschool years. It begins by defining what we mean by bilingualism and what the standards are for considering children to be bilingual. Then it examines how children who learn two languages early in childhood develop both linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive skills." "The author presents her own theoretical framework for cognitive development and language processing, which she uses to interpret the differences between the performance of bilingual and monolingual children. Basing her discussion on research conducted with children of different backgrounds, the author examines the following developmental abilities: language acquisition, metalinguistic ability, literacy, and problem solving. The studies - which used various types of methodology - show that bilingualism has a significant impact on children's ability to selectively attend to relevant information. These findings are related to a number of issues regarding the education and social circumstances of bilingual children. The author considers the implications of her theory for language acquisition and cognitive development of all children."--BOOK JACKET.