Resumen de Die kognitiven auswirkungen der zweisprachigkeit

Erich Huber, David Lasagabaster Herrarte

• The relationship between bilingualism and its cognitive effects has always been very controversial. Nevertheless, there is ample evidence in the literature that allows us to state that what seems irrefutable is that bilingualism should not be automatically associated with holding back the subject's cognitive development. To the contrary, under certain conditions, it has been shown that its effects can be clearly beneficial. This research study was completed in the Basque Country, where both Basque and Spanish are official languages and therefore taught at school from kindergarten. However, the availability of three different linguistic models leads to the existence of different degrees of bilingualism regarding Basque students. As a result of this situation, it is hypothesized that the degree of bilingualism, in accordance with the threshold level hypothesis (CUMMINS, 1976), will influence the development of metalinguistic awareness and also will have a significant effect on the English (L3) scores of our sample. It is finally concluded that the degree of bilingualism has a significant positive cognitive effect with regard to the proposed dependent variables