title: The language and social background questionnaire: Assessing degree of bilingualism in a diverse population.
abstract: Research examining the cognitive consequences of bilingualism has expanded rapidly in recent years and has revealed effects on aspects of cognition across the lifespan. However, these effects are difficult to find in studies investigating young adults. One problem is that there is no standard definition of bilingualism or means of evaluating degree of bilingualism in individual participants, making it difficult to directly compare the results of different studies. Here, we describe an instrument developed to assess degree of bilingualism for young adults who live in diverse communities in which English is the official language. We demonstrate the reliability and validity of the instrument in analyses based on 408 participants. The relevant factors for describing degree of bilingualism are: (1) the extent of non-English language proficiency and use at home, and (2) non-English language use socially. We then use the bilingualism scores obtained from the instrument to demonstrate their association with: (1) performance on executive function tasks, and (2) previous classifications of participants into categories of monolinguals and bilinguals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada.
authors.forename: John A E
authors.initials: JAE
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada.
authors.forename: Lorinda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mak
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada.
authors.forename: Aram
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Keyvani Chahi
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada. ellenb@yorku.ca.
authors.forename: Ellen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bialystok
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D056344:Executive Function; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Bilingualism; LSBQ; Language and social background questionnaire; Latent-factor-analysis