Cognitive Development in Children of a Permanent Resident in Japan

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K13128
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Educational psychology
• Research Institution: Tokyo Gakugei University
• Principal Investigator: MATSUI Tomoko 東京学芸大学, 国際教育センター, 教授 (20296792)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): GONDO Keiko 共立女子大学, 家政学部, 教授 (90299967)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 定住外国人子弟 / 言語発達 / 認知発達

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of bilingual experiences on the cognitive development of socioeconomically disadvantaged minority children in Japan. We compared the performance of 17 low-socio-economic status (SES) Brazilian 5-year-olds, who were Portuguese-Japanese bilinguals, to 17 age-matched middle-SES Japanese monolinguals on measures of executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM). Despite the bilinguals’ lower SES and verbal ability, there were no mono-bilingual differences in measures of EF. However, the monolingual children outperformed the bilingual children on measures of ToM. The results suggest that bilingualism had protective effects on the Brazilian children’s EF, but such effects did not extend to their ToM development in the face of syntactic delay.

Free Research Field

発達心理学