Impact du bilinguisme sur les processus exécutifs d'enfants issus de l'immigration en Italie: rôle de la flexibilité cognitive?

Advanced executive skills have been found in bilingual speakers as compared to monolingual controls, but this specificity has rarely been investigated in immigrant children. Our purpose is to evaluate the different dimensions of executive functions in immigrant native bilingual children. Assessment of inhibition, working memory and cognitive flexibility was carried out on bilingual children Arab – Italian (n=15) and a matched monolingual group (age, gender and intellectual functioning). Despite having significantly lower socio-economic status, bilingual children’s performance did not differ from their peers. After controlling for the difference between the two groups, it turns out that native bilingual children performed significantly better on cognitive flexibility tasks. These results join a growing body of research that shows a positive effect of bilingual experience even for children with a low socio economic background.