The impact of bilingualism on working memory in pediatric epilepsy

Abstract 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 bili...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Epilepsy & behavior 2016-02, Vol.55, p.6-10
Main Authors: Veenstra, Amy L, Riley, Jeffrey D, Barrett, Lauren E, Muhonen, Michael G, Zupanc, Mary, Romain, Jonathan E, Lin, Jack J, Mucci, Grace
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Bilingualism
Child
Epilepsy
Epilepsy - psychology
Ethnic Groups
Executive Function
Executive functioning
Female
Humans
Male
Memory, Short-Term
Multilingualism
Neurology
Neuropsychological Tests
Retrospective Studies
Socioeconomic Factors
Trail Making Test
Wechsler Scales
Working memory
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Abstract 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.
ISSN:1525-5050
1525-5069
DOI:10.1016/j.yebeh.2015.11.025