Correlation between Executive Functions and Activity Regulation Functions in Monolingual and Bilingual Younger Schoolchildren at the Beginning of School Education

The problem of the effects of bilingualism on a person’s ability to process significant amounts of information does not cease to be relevant in world psychology. Although the relationship between language status and executive functions is confirmed, the results remain contradictory. The executive functions responsible for managing individual actions, activities and behavior include inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, working memory, and attention control. The authors of this article attempted to examine the advantages and difficulties of monolingual and bilingual younger schoolchildren at the beginning of school education by identifying the connection between the activity regulation functions (brain functional block I) and the executive functions (brain functional block III) in an educational situation. The study sample consisted of 150 younger schoolchildren aged 7-8.4 years ( M = 7.7; SD = 0.39), including 75 children (33 boys and 42 girls) with balanced bilingualism (i.e., speaking both Udmurt and Russian) and 75 children (38 boys and 37 girls) who were monolingual (i.e., speaking only Russian). The study was based on the methods of neuropsychological examination of children aged 6-9 years using computerized tests of the Psychologist’s Toolkit Software: Practice - Moscow State University. The results revealed both the advantages of bilingualism in terms of executive functions productivity indicators and the difficulties of the bilingual children concerning individual indicators of inhibitory control (e.g., making mistakes without self-correction) and cognitive flexibility (e.g., using phrases in verbal associations) with the need to control them in an educational situation. Different development trajectories of individual components of the executive functions in younger schoolchildren at the beginning of school education were established: the activity regulation functions were associated with the functions of programming, regulation and control of non-verbal activity in the monolinguals, but with the speech function in the bilinguals. The identified neuropsychological patterns make it possible to predict conscious control of purposeful behavior and activities of monolingual and bilingual younger schoolchildren in the educational process and can be used in correctional work using methods aimed at regulating general mental activity, ensuring the development of executive functions of students with learning difficulties.