The Forgotten Treasure: Bilingualism and Asian Children's Emotional and Behavioral Health

• DOI: 10.2105/ajph.2009.174219
• Publication Date: 2010-03-19T02:15:05Z
• Authors: Wen-Jui Han; Chien-Chung Huang
• Keywords: Treasure; Association (psychology)

We investigated the relation between language status of children and their behavioral emotional well-being during early school years.Behavioral were drawn from teacher-reported data included externalizing internalizing behaviors. Three-level growth curve analyses conducted on a subsample (n = 12 586) Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, kindergarten cohort, who originated Asian countries. US-born, non-Hispanic White served as comparison group.All started with similar level behaviors at entry. The rate problem was slowest in fluent bilingual non-English-dominant compared English-monolingual children. By contrast, increased significantly faster non-English-monolingual children, had highest among all by fifth grade.By grade, lowest levels behaviors, whereas both behavior problems. Our suggest benefits being bilingual.