Language aptitude and cognitive abilities in mono/bilinguals

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the hypothesis suggested by previous field studies that language aptitude would be more differentiated from intelligence/cognitive abilities for bilinguals than for monolinguals and that, therefore, the correlation between language aptitude and intelligence would be greater for monolinguals than for bilinguals.;There were 164 fifth and sixth grade New York public and parochial school students who served as subjects. Approximately half were English/Spanish bilinguals (81) and half were English monolinguals; there were 85 males and 79 females.;Various measures of cognitive ability such as the Raven's Progressive Matrices, the Degree of Reading Power, the Metropolitan Achievement Tests, as well as various measures of language aptitude such as three (3) subtests of the Pimsleur Language Battery and two (2) subtests of the Modern Language Aptitude Test were gotten for each subject. Measures of Spanish proficiency were obtained for bilingual subjects.;Correlations between language aptitude measures and cognitive ability measures were calculated and compared for the bilingual and monolingual groups. There was no difference in the magnitude of the correlations between the bilinguals and monolinguals. This was so even after the data was analyzed by controlling for several possible intervening variables such as type of school, SES, and parental education. It appears that the relationship between language aptitude and intelligence may be identical for monolinguals and bilinguals.;Possible reasons for the failure to confirm the hypothesis were discussed and possible areas for future research were suggested.