Lexical-Semantic Production and Inhibitory Control Skills in Monolingual (Kannada) and Bilingual (Kannada-English) Children

Abstract

The study aimed to evaluate lexical semantic production and inhibitory control skills in monolingual and bilingual children. A total of 240 children in the age range of 8 to 10 years with one year age interval belonged to monolingual and bilingual groups participated in the study. Timed picture naming task was used to assess lexical semantic production. Two subtasks namely verbal inhibition and nonverbal motor inhibition was used to examine the inhibitory control skills in all the participants. Response accuracy and reaction times were the two parameters measured in each task. The results of the present study revealed that the age and gender did not have any significant effect on the performance of these tasks. Further, the result showed that there was a significant difference between monolingual and bilingual children in picture naming, where monolinguals named more number of pictures accurately with faster reaction time. In both subtasks of inhibition bilinguals were fast in inhibiting the verbal and nonverbal responses. To conclude better picture naming skills observed in monolinguals and enhanced inhibitory control skills noted in bilinguals are discussed in the study