The role of educational setting in the development of verbal aspect and executive functions: evidence from Greek-German bilingual children δημοφιλές

Ifigeneia Dosi*, Despina Papadopoulou**
Democritus University of Thrace*
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki**

 The present study aims at exploring: (a) the role of the educational settingin the acquisition of aspect and executive functions (i.e. updating) skills, (b)the acquisition of the aspectual features in Greek-German bilingualchildren and (c) the impact of updating on the acquisition of aspect.Imperfective aspect has been found to be acquired later than perfectivein previous studies. Moreover, a bilingual educational setting seems toenhance not only cognitive but also linguistic abilities. The participantsof the present study are Greek-German bilingual children, who attend abilingual or a Greek dominant educational setting. They were tested intwo baseline tasks, two linguistic tasks and an executive function,updating, task. Thefindings reveal that bilinguals who attend amonolingual educational setting performed similarly to the monolingualcontrol group on aspect, whereas bilinguals who attend a bilingualeducational setting scored lower than the monolinguals. In the updatingtask, the students of the bilingual educational setting scored higher thanthe other groups. Overall, ourfindings suggest that the bilingualeducational setting seems to boost executive function (updating) skills,while the acquisition of aspect is affected by vocabulary knowledge.