Inhibitory Control as a Evaluative Measure in Studies of Academic Performance and Bilingualism

There is a lot of literature in psychology that is focused on key stages of development. Part of it is to understand the basics of child development and how we learn in general, and the other portion is to eventually develop programs and interventions to make sure children develop to their full potential and aren’t left behind from the very beginning in this marathon we call life. An expert researcher who has made many findings in this field is Dr. Martha Ann Bell. Dr. Bell came to Loyola Chicago to present in our class earlier this semester on her paper, “Relations between frontal EEG maturation and inhibitory control in preschool in the prediction of children's early academic skills.” 

Dr. Bell was a wonderful presenter, and you could tell she really was passionate about the research she was doing. She went through her findings and showed how inhibitory control(IC) was a possible mediator variable in academic performance between the ages of 10 months to 6 years old. Inhibitory control is the ability to inhibit your natural desires/inclinations in order to complete another task, which is crucial for young children in order to sit still and pay attention to their teachers teaching them new information. Dr. Bell wondered if how well the young children could exhibit IC at younger ages would determine their academic performance in later years. One of the limitations of the scope of her research that Dr. Bell clearly stated in her presentation, was that originally very specific demographic data was not taken as well as there are many other factors that can affect a child’s development besides the time they are being evaluated in preschool and kindergarten for her studies. One of the possibilities many reasons for the results of Dr. Bell’s research comes from a study I saw while I was at the Society for Neuroscience annual conference here in Chicago this past week. 

On the last day I met a women named Sally Sade who was researching bilingualism’s effect on young children’s development and cognitive abilities. Sade’s research was in the preliminary phases but the research had IC as one of the evaluative measures of a child’s executive functioning abilities. Sade’s research is still ongoing, but as of now her results have shown that although bilingual kids perform the same overall, their brains are more efficient at switching between tasks. So this study made me think of Dr. Bell’s study and if one of the reasons a kid may have higher IC could possibly be because they are bilingual and have to stop the process of another language occurring in their brain in order to use the other language, especially if they are from the same language family(Spanish and French both being Latin languages for example). I believe in the future these studies could tie into one another and maybe it will lead to more of a push and support for bilingualism in the United States from a young age, which is very common in many countries around the world besides the United States.

References

Sally Sade, Scott Rathwell, Bryan Kolb, Claudia Gonzalez, Robbin Gibb

bioRxiv 2024.10.04.616691; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.10.04.616691 

Whedon, M., Perry, N. B., & Bell, M. A. (2020). Relations between frontal EEG maturation and inhibitory control in preschool in the prediction of Children’s early academic skills. Brain and Cognition, 146, 105636. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2020.105636