Bilingualism, working memory, and relative clause comprehension in children

Article Article scientifique Article Bilingualism, working memory, and relative clause comprehension in children eng 2025-07-17 author Solaimani Ehsan 0000-0003-3869-4071 author Baumeister Franziska 0000-0003-3837-8351 author Jeker Bentea Anamaria 0000-0001-6346-461X 645666 author Chondrogianni Vicky 0000-0002-8580-5662 author Delage Hélène 0000-0003-0754-5110 Université de Genève 705153 Section de psychologie (PSICO) author Wolfer Pauline 0000-0003-3770-2551 929025 author Durrleman Stéphanie 0000-0003-1883-5703 87461 Stéphanie Durrlemann 10.1075/lab.24037.sol 1879-9264 http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/lab.24037.sol Bilingualism has sometimes been associated with cognitive boosts, particularly in working memory (WM). However, it remains unclear whether such benefits extend to the comprehension of syntactically complex structures. We investigated this through a gamified character-selection task assessing comprehension of subject-relative clauses and object-relative clauses among monolingual ( n = 31) and bilingual ( n = 28) French-speaking children, as well as monolingual ( n = 45) and bilingual ( n = 43) German-speaking children aged 3 to 12. We examined whether comprehension correlated with verbal WM, measured through a nonword repetition task, and interference resolution ability, assessed through a Simon task and an analysis of comprehension errors. The results indicated no bilingual advantage: object-relative clauses were more difficult than subject-relative clauses across all groups and languages. While interference-related errors — misinterpreting object-relative clauses as subject-relative clauses more frequently than vice versa — surfaced in all groups, verbal WM correlated with object-relative comprehension only in French. These findings are discussed in relation to current theories of bilingualism and WM in language comprehension. Dewey 150 108 Section de psychologie 71 false 1301 Troubles du langage : évaluation et remédiation Linguistic approaches to bilingualism d655df1c-a0ee-44c9-81c3-92724bfbaa46 Article (Published version) Public Solaimani_et_al_2025.pdf 1273564 application/pdf 91cf0bc082fcdbd37238c08ae3c561e073ddda816a78b7c23fce23456a4fa07a openAccess Faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l'éducation / Section de psychologie

Title	Published in	Access level	OA Policy	Year	Views	Downloads

Bilingualism, working memory, and relative clause comprehension in children	Linguistic approaches to bilingualism			2025	25	100

Archive ouverte UNIGE

Wolfer, Pauline