The well achieving, but slow responding, bidialectally literate of Norway
Göran Söderlund & Øystein A. Vangsnes
Western Norway University of Applied Sciences & UiT The Arctic University of Norway
This study presents the results of a comparative psychometric study of two groups of Norwegian pupils, one whose language of
instruction is the majority variety of Norwegian, Bokmål, and one whose language of instruction is the minority variety Nynorsk. Over the last decades, a solid body of research into the developmental aspects of bilingualism has revealed that bilingual children enjoy some specific advantages over monolingual peers. This is particularly so for better cognitive control and executive functions, superior general language processing and less susceptibility to semantic interference, and improved metalinguistic awareness. Here we investigate whether such positive bilingual effects are also valid for Nynorsk users, who arguably master a particular form of bilingualism, namely bidialectal literacy.
Three age groups were tested across language: 1st graders (age 6; N=193/2), 5th graders (age 10; n=78/2), and 8th graders (age 13; n=190/2). The test battery consisted of 1) a spanboard visuo-spatial working memory task, 2) an Eriksen Flanker Task, 3) a day-night Stroop task, 4) a (short) lexical decision task (5th and 8th grade only). On the assumption that Nynorsk children acquire Bokmål simultaneously due to extracurricular exposure, whereas the converse does not hold for Bokmål pupils, the hypothesis was that whereas the 1st graders would perform the same, an effect of different language stimulation would manifest itself on cognitive tasks after eight years of schooling.
The results were partly according to expectations. In the first grade, there were no differences between the two language groups, but in the 8th grade differences were found. The differences were however not the ones we expected: whereas measures of accuracy did not distinguish the two groups, the Bokmål group were faster than the Nynorsk group on the flanker, Stroop and lexical decision tasks. In the 5th grade tendencies of faster response times in the Bokmål group could be seen. Still, despite this inferior performance on cognitive tasks the Nynorsk group scored higher on standardized national tests in arithmetic and at the same level in reading and English. From this we conclude that although bidialectal literacy may yield longer response times it does not affect school achievement.