The Bilingual Advantage in Children’s Executive Functioning Is Not Related to Language Status: A Meta-Analytic Review

Abstract

There is considerable debate about whether bilingual children have an advantage in executive functioning relative to monolingual children. In the current meta-analysis, we addressed this debate by comprehensively reviewing the available evidence. We synthesized data from published studies and unpublished data sets, which equated to 1,194 effect sizes from 10,937 bilingual and 12,477 monolingual participants between the ages of 3 and 17 years. Bilingual language status had a small overall effect on children’s executive functioning ( g = .08, 95% confidence interval = [.01, .14]). However, the effect of language status on children’s executive functioning was indistinguishable from zero ( g = −.04) after we adjusted for publication bias. Further, no significant effects were apparent within the executive-attention domain, in which the effects of language status have been hypothesized to be most pronounced ( g = .06, 95% confidence interval = [−.02, .14]). Taken together, available evidence suggests that the bilingual advantage in children’s executive functioning is small, variable, and potentially not attributable to the effect of language status.