Abstract
Cognitive control refers to the ability to perform goal-directed behaviors in the
presence of other compelling actions or in the face of habitual practices. Cognitive
control functions play a critical role in children's language processing and literacy
development. In recent years, many clinicians have expanded their assessment and treatment
to target specific cognitive skills. Our goal is to provide a review of recent findings
on cognitive control functions in children with different language status (i.e., monolingual
and bilingual children with and without language impairment). While children with
language impairment show performance deficits in specific cognitive functions (e.g.,
working memory updating and interference control), typically developing bilingual
children often outperform their monolingual peers in cognitive control tasks. However,
the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive control has been controversial.
Several factors that influence these variations are discussed. Given the findings
on the joint impact of bilingualism and language impairment on cognitive control functions,
we identify conditions in which bilingualism attenuates the negative effects of the
language deficit and conditions in which language impairment has a stronger effect
than bilingualism. Critical issues of bilingual assessment, suggestions, and future
directions are discussed.
Keywords
cognitive control - specific language impairment - bilingualism - language proficiency
