Do Spanish-English bilingual children outperform monolingual English-speaking children on executive function tasks in early childhood? A propensity score analysis.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Marc Goodrich ◽  
Natalie A. Koziol ◽  
HyeonJin Yoon ◽  
Sergio Leiva
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Executive Function ◽  
Propensity Score ◽  
Propensity Score Analysis ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Score Analysis ◽  
English Speaking

scholarly journals Do Bilingual Children Have an Executive Function Advantage? Results From Inhibition, Shifting, and Updating Tasks

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 356-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Genesis D. Arizmendi ◽  
Mary Alt ◽  
Shelley Gray ◽  
Tiffany P. Hogan ◽  
Samuel Green ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Executive Function ◽  
Bayes Factor ◽  
Second Graders ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Bilingual Advantage ◽  
School Aged Children ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Potential Factors

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine differences in performance between monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual second graders (aged 7–9 years old) on executive function tasks assessing inhibition, shifting, and updating to contribute more evidence to the ongoing debate about a potential bilingual executive function advantage. Method One hundred sixty-seven monolingual English-speaking children and 80 Spanish–English bilingual children were administered 7 tasks on a touchscreen computer in the context of a pirate game. Bayesian statistics were used to determine if there were differences between the monolingual and bilingual groups. Additional analyses involving covariates of maternal level of education and nonverbal intelligence, and matching on these same variables, were also completed. Results Scaled-information Bayes factor scores more strongly favored the null hypothesis that there were no differences between the bilingual and monolingual groups on any of the executive function tasks. For 2 of the tasks, we found an advantage in favor of the monolingual group. Conclusions If there is a bilingual advantage in school-aged children, it is not robust across circumstances. We discuss potential factors that might counteract an actual advantage, including task reliability and environmental influences.

scholarly journals Effects of improved drinking water quality on early childhood growth in rural Uttar Pradesh, India: A propensity-score analysis

PLoS ONE ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. e0209054 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mira Johri ◽  
Marie-Pierre Sylvestre ◽  
Georges Karna Koné ◽  
Dinesh Chandra ◽  
S. V. Subramanian
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Propensity Score ◽  
Propensity Score Analysis ◽  
Uttar Pradesh ◽  
Drinking Water Quality ◽  
Childhood Growth ◽  
Score Analysis

Bilingual Advantage Propensity Score Analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Marc Goodrich ◽  
Natalie Koziol ◽  
HyeonJin Yoon ◽  
Sergio Leiva
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Propensity Score ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Propensity Score Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Attentional Focus ◽  
School Level ◽  
Bilingual Advantage ◽  
Score Analysis ◽  
Confounding Variables

Despite much research examining whether bilingual individuals demonstrate superior executive function (EF) skills compared to monolinguals, the purported bilingual advantage remains controversial (e.g., Bialystok, 2017; Paap et al., 2015). One potential reason for discrepant findings across studies examining the bilingual advantage is the difficulty in matching monolingual and bilingual groups on important confounding variables that are related to EF. To address this limitation of prior research, we used a propensity score matching approach to evaluate the presence of the bilingual advantage in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort of 2011. Consistent with recent theories of EF development (Doebel, 2020), we hypothesized that before matching, we would observe bilingual advantages on report- but not performance-based measures of EF. However, we expected that after matching bilingual and monolingual children on a comprehensive set of covariates there would be no group differences in EF. We matched bilingual Spanish-English and monolingual English kindergarteners on a comprehensive set of child- and school-level covariates, and conducted a sensitivity analysis to evaluate whether results were sensitive to unobserved confounds. After matching groups (n = 252 matched pairs of monolingual and bilingual children), bilinguals had greater teacher-rated inhibitory control and attentional focus than did monolinguals; however, only the effect for inhibitory control was robust to unobserved confounds. In contrast, no effects of bilingualism were observed for performance-based measures of working memory or cognitive flexibility. Results are discussed in the context of recent theoretical models of EF development in early childhood (Doebel, 2020).

Efficacy of variceal embolisation in patients with TIPS implantation: a propensity score analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (01) ◽  
pp. E2-E89
Author(s):  
M Giesler ◽  
D Bettinger ◽  
M Rössle ◽  
R Thimme ◽  
M Schultheiss
Keyword(s):  
Propensity Score ◽  
Propensity Score Analysis ◽  
Score Analysis

Challenging the Link Between Early Childhood Television Exposure and Later Attention Problems: A Multiverse Approach

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew McBee ◽  
Rebecca Brand ◽  
Wallace E. Dixon
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Propensity Score Analysis ◽  
Harmful Effect ◽  
Attention Problems ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
Score Analysis ◽  
Television Exposure ◽  
Influential Paper

In 2004, Christakis and colleagues published an influential paper claiming that early childhood television exposure causes later attention problems (Christakis, Zimmerman, DiGiuseppe, & McCarty, 2004), which continues to be frequently promoted by the popular media. Using the same NLSY-79 dataset (n = 2,108), we conducted two multiverse analyses to examine whether the finding reported by Christakis et al. was robust to different analytic choices. We evaluated 848 models, including logistic regression as per the original paper, plus linear regression and two forms of propensity score analysis. Only 166 models (19.6%) yielded a statistically significant relationship between early TV exposure and later attention problems, with most of these employing problematic analytic choices. We conclude that these data do not provide compelling evidence of a harmful effect of TV on attention. All material necessary to reproduce our analysis is available online via Github (https://github.com/mcbeem/TVAttention) and as a Docker container (https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/mmcbee/rstudio_tvattention)

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