| Title |
Two is better than one: bilingual education promotes the flexible mind
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Psychological Research, May 2014
|
| DOI | 10.1007/s00426-014-0575-3 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Ingrid K. Christoffels, Annelies M. de Haan, Laura Steenbergen, Wery P. M. van den Wildenberg, Lorenza S. Colzato |
| Abstract |
The interest in the influence of bilingualism on our daily life is constantly growing. Speaking two languages (or more) requires people to develop a flexible mindset to rapidly switch back and forth between languages. This study investigated whether and to what extent attending bilingual education benefits cognitive control. We tested two groups of Dutch high-school students who either followed regular classes in Dutch or were taught in both English and Dutch. They performed on a global-local switching paradigm that provides well-established measures of cognitive flexibility and attentional processing style. As predicted, the bilingually educated group showed smaller switching costs (i.e., greater cognitive flexibility) and a decreased global precedence effect than the regular group. Our findings support the idea that bilingual education promotes cognitive flexibility and a bias towards a more focused "scope" of attention. |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 139 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 1 | <1% |
| Malaysia | 1 | <1% |
| Spain | 1 | <1% |
| Netherlands | 1 | <1% |
| Unknown | 135 | 97% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Bachelor | 39 | 28% |
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 23 | 17% |
| Student > Master | 18 | 13% |
| Researcher | 10 | 7% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 9 | 6% |
| Other | 13 | 9% |
| Unknown | 27 | 19% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology | 52 | 37% |
| Social Sciences | 15 | 11% |
| Linguistics | 14 | 10% |
| Business, Management and Accounting | 7 | 5% |
| Arts and Humanities | 6 | 4% |
| Other | 14 | 10% |
| Unknown | 31 | 22% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 8. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 10 April 2018.
All research outputs
#4,097,254
of 22,758,963 outputs
Outputs from Psychological Research
#154
of 964 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#40,790
of 226,326 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Psychological Research
#1
of 10 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,758,963 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 81st percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 964 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.6. This one has done well, scoring higher than 84% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 10 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than all of them