Veenstra Amy L, Riley Jeffrey D, Barrett Lauren E, Muhonen Michael G, Zupanc Mary, Romain Jonathan E, Lin Jack J, Mucci Grace
Department of Pediatric Psychology, CHOC Children's Hospital, USA.
Department of Neurology, University of California Irvine, USA.
Epilepsy Behav. 2016 Feb;55:6-10. doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2015.11.025. Epub 2015 Dec 22.
Impairments in executive skills broadly span across multiple childhood epilepsy syndromes and can adversely affect quality of life. Bilingualism has been previously shown to correlate with enhanced executive functioning in healthy individuals. This study sought to determine whether the bilingual advantage in executive functioning exists in the context of pediatric epilepsy. We retrospectively analyzed neuropsychological data in 52 children with epilepsy and compared executive function scores in monolingual versus bilingual children with epilepsy while controlling for socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Bilingual children performed significantly better on the Working Memory Index than did monolingual children. There were no significant differences on the remaining executive function variables. The bilingual advantage appears to persist for working memory in children with epilepsy. These findings suggest that bilingualism is potentially a protective variable in the face of epilepsy-related working memory dysfunction.
执行技能障碍广泛存在于多种儿童癫痫综合征中，并且会对生活质量产生不利影响。先前研究表明，双语能力与健康个体的执行功能增强相关。本研究旨在确定在小儿癫痫背景下是否存在执行功能方面的双语优势。我们回顾性分析了52例癫痫患儿的神经心理学数据，并在控制社会经济地位和种族的同时，比较了单语和双语癫痫患儿的执行功能得分。双语儿童在工作记忆指数上的表现明显优于单语儿童。在其余执行功能变量上没有显著差异。双语优势似乎在癫痫患儿的工作记忆中持续存在。这些发现表明，面对与癫痫相关的工作记忆功能障碍时，双语能力可能是一个保护性变量。
