

Twice Blessed: Language and Cognition - colins_pride
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13489730

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whacked_new
This doesn't seem to evidence that bilingualism is a critical factor in
faster/earlier development of executive functions. Language just happens to be
a very suitable vehicle for it -- because babies desperately try to synthesize
the information around them, they have no choice but to attune to the sounds
and try to make sense of them.

It is possible that language is _the_ most suitable vehicle, but it remains a
vehicle and not the principle component. You could possibly get the same
outcome, if for every interaction with the baby, the father and the mother
have habitually different behaviors. Dad always uses his left hand, mom always
uses right. Dad always wears blue, mom always wears red. This is has similar
executive control / perspective taking demands. Language is just a more
flexible and ubiquitous version of this kind of categorical differentiation.

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tokenadult
Or, turning this around, and I say this based on the behavior of many
immigrant families I know, failure to maintain home bilingualism may be
because of a weakness of executive functioning on the part of the parents. It
takes a bit of discipline to set up cuing situations at home so that children
learn to use both languages, when they know that one language suffices for
communicating with the parents.

