The impact of bilingualism on working memory in pediatric epilepsy

Autor: Jack J. Lin, Michael Muhonen, Lauren E. Barrett, Amy L. Veenstra, Grace Mucci, Mary L. Zupanc, Jonathan E. Romain, Jeffrey D. Riley
Rok vydání: 2016
Předmět:
Male
Bilingualism
Multilingualism
Neuropsychological Tests
Neurodegenerative
Developmental psychology
Executive Function
Behavioral Neuroscience
Epilepsy
0302 clinical medicine
Quality of life
Ethnicity
Child
Neuroscience of multilingualism
Pediatric
05 social sciences
Wechsler Scales
Neuropsychology
Memory
Short-Term
Mental Health
Neurology
Neurological
Female
Psychology
Adolescent
Clinical Sciences
Context (language use)
Affect (psychology)
Basic Behavioral and Social Science
Article
050105 experimental psychology
03 medical and health sciences
Memory
Clinical Research
Behavioral and Social Science
medicine
Humans
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Socioeconomic status
Retrospective Studies
Trail Making Test
Neurology & Neurosurgery
Working memory
Neurosciences
medicine.disease
Brain Disorders
Short-Term
Socioeconomic Factors
Neurology (clinical)
Executive functioning
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Zdroj: Epilepsy & Behavior. 55:6-10
ISSN: 1525-5050
DOI: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2015.11.025
Popis: Impairments in executive skills broadly span across multiple childhood epilepsy syndromes and can adversely affect quality of life. Bilingualism has been previously shown to correlate with enhanced executive functioning in healthy individuals. This study seeks to determine whether the bilingual advantage in executive functioning exists in the context of pediatric epilepsy. We retrospectively analyzed neuropsychological data in 52 children with epilepsy and compared executive function scores in monolingual versus bilingual children with epilepsy, while controlling for socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Bilingual children performed significantly better on the Working Memory scale than did monolingual children. There were no significant differences on the remaining executive function variables. The bilingual advantage appears to persist for working memory in children with epilepsy. These findings suggest that bilingualism is potentially a protective variable in the face of epilepsy-related working memory dysfunction.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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