This paper suggests that bilingualism can increase the child's metalinguistic awareness and promote an analytic orientation to linguistic input. (Author/AM)

Studies of bilingual children have debated the effect of bilingualism on cognitive development. This study examines the relationship between cognitive processes and balanced bilingual skills. It finds there may be a threshold level of bilingual competence to be attained before bilingualism can positively influence cognitive functioning. (CHK)

Bilingualism, to be cognitively and academically beneficial, must be based on adequately developed first language skills. Two hypotheses, developmental interdependence and threshold, are integrated into a bilingual education model which treats background, child input, and educational treatment to explain educational outcomes. (Author/MH)

This paper attempts to clarify some of the issues raised in the author's earlier paper, "A Theoretical Perspective on the Relationship between Bilingualism and Thought" (Working Papers on Bilingualism, No. 1), as a response to Gerald Neufeld's critique, which appeared in No. 2 of the same series. The present paper argues that Neufeld mistakenly…

An attempt is made in the present paper to resolve inconsistencies between the results of recent studies which have reported that bilingualism is associated with positive cognitive consequences and earlier studies which suggested that bilingualism might adversely affect cognitive and scholastic progress. Because recent studies involved balanced…

A discussion of the effect of an immersion program on the majority language child. Research is reviewed on the "threshold hypothesis" and "the developmental interdependence hypothesis." Recent studies of the cognitive and academic effects of bilingualism are critically examined in the light of these hypotheses. A bibliography…

Studies conducted with middle-class balanced bilinguals in "additive" environments, where both languages are prestigious, have generally reported that bilinguals showed a higher level of cognitive performance than monolinguals. In these studies, bilinguals showed higher levels of general intellectual skills, higher levels of divergent thinking, a…

The proposed theoretical framework emphasizes the interaction between sociocultural, linguistic, and school program factors in explaining the academic and cognitive development of bilingual children. It is theorized that bilingualism that is cognitively and academically beneficial can be achieved only on the basis of adequately developed first…