The forgotten treasure: Bilingualism and asian children's emotional and behavioral health

W.-J. Han and C.-C. Huang

American Journal of Public Health, 2010, vol. 100, issue 5, 831-838

Abstract: Objectives. We investigated the relation between the language status of children and their behavioral and emotional well-being during their early school years. Methods. Behavioral and emotional well-being were drawn from teacherreported data and included externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Three-level growth curve analyses were conducted on a subsample (n = 12586) of children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, kindergarten cohort, who originated from Asian countries. US-born, non-Hispanic White children served as the comparison group. Results. All children started with a similar level of internalizing and externalizing behaviors at kindergarten entry. The growth rate of problem behaviors was slowest in fluent bilingual and non-English-dominant bilingual children compared with White English-monolingual children. By contrast, problem behaviors increased at a significantly faster rate in non-English-monolingual children, who had the highest level of problem behaviors among all children by fifth grade. Conclusions. By fifth grade, fluent bilingual and non-English-dominant bilingual children had the lowest levels of internalizing and externalizing behaviors, whereas non-English-monolingual children had the highest levels of both behavior problems. Our data suggest emotional and behavioral benefits of being bilingual.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2105/AJPH.2009.174219

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2009.174219_6

DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2009.174219

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Public Health is currently edited by Alfredo Morabia

More articles in American Journal of Public Health from American Public Health Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F Baum ().