In Hong Kong, most students from primary and secondary schools can be regarded as Cantonese-English bilinguals who can operate in both languages at a different level of proficiency. While the abilities to speak, write, read, and comprehend two languages are clearly language skills, recent research has demonstrated that bilinguals outperform those who know only one language (i.e., monolinguals) in attention-demanding tasks. The goal of the proposed study is to examine how this "bilingual advantage" in attention tasks is modulated by bilinguals' language proficiencies.

        The Stroop task offers a good example. When individuals read aloud the ink color of a color name (e.g., RED) that is printed in a nonmatching color (e.g., green) (i.e., incongruent trials), they need to suppress the irrelevant word and then access the relevant color. No such suppression need occur for congruent trials where the color and the word match (i.e., RED in red). The Stroop effect (slower and less accurate color naming for incongruent than congruent trials) reflects how well one can control attention and ignore irrelevant information. The smaller the Stroop effect, the better their attentional control abilities. Bilinguals often show a smaller Stroop effect than monolinguals. This bilingual advantage has often been reported in children and older adults, although relatively fewer findings have been demonstrated in adolescents who typically have better attentional control.

        Previous studies tended to contrast between monolinguals and bilinguals, confound some demographic characteristics of their samples, focus on a limited range of ages, group together bilinguals who differed in their language proficiencies and fail to clearly tease apart the advantages of bilingualism in various components of attentional control (e.g., goal maintenance vs. conflict resolution). The proposed study will address all these concerns.

        Given that bilinguals in Hong Kong have varied levels of language proficiencies, we will examine the effect of language proficiency on attentional control across a wide age range of Cantonese-English bilingual children and adolescents. After taking into account their nonverbal intelligence and other demographics (e.g., socioeconomic status), we will track the age-related changes in the relationship between proficiency in Chinese/English and attention performance. To pinpoint the specific component of attention control systems that is influenced by bilinguals' language proficiencies, we will increase the sensitivity of our measures by using two Stroop tasks with different attentional demands and modeling response-time data down to the level of their distributions. Results will enrich our theoretical understanding of bilingual advantages in attention control.

*********************************************************************

招募研究學校

各位校長、老師：

香港廣東話/英語雙語學生的語言能力與專注力的關係研究

(簡稱＜學生雙語能力與專注力研究＞)

        香港中文大學教育學院現正進行一項關於雙語學生的語言能力對其專注力影響的研究，研究對象為本港幼稚園、小學及中學學生。是次計劃獲研究資助局提供經費（優配研究金，#455010），研究對象學校以分層隨機抽樣方式選出。本學院現誠邀　貴校參與本研究。

        研究實驗包括兩個測試部份，小組測試（大概三十五鐘）和個人測試（共兩節，每節約五十分鐘）。我們的研究員會到訪　貴校進行測試。確實時間及地點將會儘量因應參與學生的上課時間及個別情況，與　貴校作出彈性安排和配合。在小組測試部份，同班的參與學生會在班房內同時接受測試。在個人測試部份，參與學生會在研究員的帶領下個別完成測試項目。如有需要，我們樂意提供所有實驗材料供　貴校參考。

        另外，學生於完成第二部份的測試後，會收到一份關於其個人背景和語言學習履歷的問卷，此問卷需由家長代為填寫。同時我們亦需從　貴校收集參與學生的學業成績紀錄。所有參與學生的個人及研究所得資料絕對保密及僅作研究用途，實驗數據亦會以不記名方式處理。經過整理後，我們會向學校提供有關學生的專注力、記憶力、非語言智商及語言能力的資料。

        再次感謝　貴校對本港教育發展及促進的支持。如蒙答允或有任何查詢，請致電6038-6594與梁靄喬小姐聯絡。

香港中文大學教育學院

計劃負責人

謝志成