Tonér Signe, Kallioinen Petter, Lacerda Francisco
Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
Front Psychol. 2021 May 17;12:664501. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.664501. eCollection 2021.
Associations between language and executive functions (EFs) are well-established but previous work has often focused more on EFs than on language. To further clarify the language-EF relationship, we assessed several aspects of language and EFs in 431 Swedish children aged 4-6, including selective auditory attention which was measured in an event-related potential paradigm. We also investigated potential associations to age, socioeconomic status (SES), bi-/multilingualism, sex and aspects of preschool attendance and quality. Language and EFs correlated weakly to moderately, indicating that relying on measures of vocabulary alone may overestimate the strength of the language-EF relationship. Contrary to predictions, we found no correlations between selective attention and EFs. There were however correlations between morphosyntactic accuracy and selective auditory attention which is in line with previous work and suggests a specific link between morphosyntax and the ability to suppress irrelevant stimuli. In Sweden, socioeconomic differences are rather small and preschool is universally available, but nevertheless, aspects of parental SES predicted children's performance on all measures. Bi-/multilingual children performed lower on language also when controlling for SES, highlighting the need for interventions to reduce inequalities in educational outcomes already in preschool. A female advantage was found for both language and EFs, whereas preschool attendance and quality were not significantly related to outcome measures. Future work should include longitudinal studies of language and EF development, include children from diverse SES backgrounds and contribute toward a theoretical framework that further clarifies the language-EF relationship.
语言与执行功能（EFs）之间的关联已得到充分证实，但以往的研究往往更关注执行功能而非语言。为了进一步阐明语言与执行功能的关系，我们对431名4至6岁的瑞典儿童的语言和执行功能的多个方面进行了评估，包括在事件相关电位范式中测量的选择性听觉注意力。我们还研究了与年龄、社会经济地位（SES）、双语/多语能力、性别以及学前教育参与情况和质量方面的潜在关联。语言和执行功能之间的相关性较弱至中等，这表明仅依靠词汇量的测量可能会高估语言与执行功能关系的强度。与预测相反，我们发现选择性注意力与执行功能之间没有相关性。然而，形态句法准确性与选择性听觉注意力之间存在相关性，这与之前的研究一致，并表明形态句法与抑制无关刺激的能力之间存在特定联系。在瑞典，社会经济差异相当小，学前教育普遍可及，但尽管如此，父母社会经济地位的各个方面仍能预测儿童在所有测量指标上的表现。双语/多语儿童在控制社会经济地位后，语言表现也较低，这凸显了在学前阶段就需要采取干预措施来减少教育成果方面的不平等。在语言和执行功能方面均发现了女性优势，而学前教育参与情况和质量与测量结果没有显著关系。未来的研究应包括对语言和执行功能发展的纵向研究，纳入来自不同社会经济背景的儿童，并为进一步阐明语言与执行功能关系的理论框架做出贡献。
