The bilingual advantage in children: a meta-analytic review

There is considerable debate about whether bilingual children are advantaged in executive functioning relative to monolingual children. The current meta-analysis addressed this debate by comprehensively reviewing the available evidence. Here, we synthesized data from published studies and unpublished datasets, which equated to 1209 effect sizes from 10,672 bilingual and 12,289 monolingual participants aged 3- to 17-years. Consistent with the bilingual advantage hypothesis, bilingual language status had a small effect on children’s executive functions (g =.08, 95% CI [.01, .14]). However, this effect was indistinguishable from zero after adjusting for bias (g=-.04, 95 % CI [-.12, .05]). Further, no significant effects were apparent within the executive attention, where the effects of language status are thought to be most pronounced (g =.08, 95% CI [.01, .14]). Results, therefore, suggest that the bilingual advantage in children’s executive control is small, variable, and potentially not attributable to the effect of language status.