Referential communication and executive function skills in bilingual children

This is an experimental study of the relationship between executive function skills (cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control and working memory) and language experience in young bilingual children with unbalanced exposure to two languages, investigating these children's ability to make referential choices appropriate to their listener's information needs.

For more details as well as the main findings, see here.

This project was funded by the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2012-633; £161K, 2012-2015).

Collaborators: Dr. Ludovica Serratrice (Co-I), Sanne Berends and Furzana Shah (RAs).

Outputs: (available from the links at the top of the page)

• De Cat, C. (2015) The cognitive underpinnings of referential abilities. In L. Serratrice & S. Allen (Eds.), The Acquisition of Reference. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• De Cat, C., Gusnanto, A., & Serratrice, L. (2018). Identifying a threshold for the executive function advantage in bilingual children. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1-33. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263116000486 or main paper and supplementary material This paper won the Albert Valdman award for outstanding publication in SSLA for the year 2018 
• Serratrice, L. and De Cat, C. (2020) Individual differences in the production of referential expressions: the effect of language proficiency, language exposure and executive function in bilingual and monolingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 23(2): 371 - 386.  Doi: 10.1017/S1366728918000962 (Preprint available at: https://psyarxiv.com/w74zk/)
• De Cat, Cécile  (2021). Predicting language proficiency in bilingual children. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 42(2): 279-325. doi:10.1017/S0272263119000597 
• An on-line calculator of the Bilingual Profile Index (quantifying children's bilingual experience) (trial version) THIS HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED

Presentations:

• De Cat, C., Berends, S. and Serratrice, L. "Do all young bilingual children benefit from a cognitive advantage?" Paper presented at the International Congress for the Study of Child Language (Amsterdam, 16th of July 2014)
• De Cat, C. and Serratrice, L. "Referential communication in bilingual and monolingual children" (Invited talk at the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM), Reading, 26th of November 2014)
• De Cat, C., Berends, S. and Serratrice, L. "Are there executive function advantages for bilingual children?" Paper presented at the International Symposium on Bilingualism (Rutgers University, 23rd of May 2015)
• Serratrice, L. and De Cat, C. "Inhibitory control, WM and language proficiency in the referential choices of monolingual and bilingual children". Poster presented at BUCLD (Boston, November 2016).
• De Cat, C. and Serratrice, L. "The Bilingual Profile Index: a new, gradient measure of language experience". Poster presented at BUCLD (Boston, November 2016)
• Serratrice, L. and De Cat, C. "Bilingual children’s referential choices: The role of inhibitory control, working memory and language experience" Paper presented at the International Symposium on Bilingualism (Limerick, 14th of June 2017)
• De Cat, C. "Quantifying bilingual language experience: which measure best predicts proficiency?" Paper presented at EuroSLA (Muenster, September 2018)