Since the beginning of the century, scholars from many backgrounds, including psychologists, linguists, neurologists, and educators, have focused much attention on the development of bilinguality (Hamers & Blanc, 1983).  The past two decades however, have brought about many new studies on this subject.  During the first half of the century two kinds of studies were prominent: documented child biographies (Ronjat, 1913; Leopold, 1929) and comparative psychometric studies of school tests obtained from bilingual and monolingual children.  The first of the child biographies generally found an equal language development in the bilingual child.  Equal language development implies that both bilinguals and monolinguals develop language skills at the same rate and level. On the other hand, the early psychometric studies found a developmental delay in bilingual children as compared with monolingual peers (Hamers & Blanc, 1983).  These two approaches are still used in studies today, but are more sophisticated and utilize more accurate techniques (Hamers & Blanc, 1983).

Bilingualism
     The concept of bilingualism actually has two dimensions: bilinguality and bilingualism.  Bilinguality is defined as the “psychological state of an individual who has access to more than one linguistic code as a means of social communication” (Webster Dictionary, p.75).  The degree of access will vary along a number of different dimensions which are psychological, cognitive, psycho linguistic, social psychological, sociological, sociocultural, and linguistic (Hamers & Blanc, 1983).
The concept of bilingualism includes that of bilinguality, but refers equally to “the state of that linguistic community in which two languages are in contact” (Hamers & Blanc, 1983, p.6).  Therefore, it can be said that to be bilingual does not necessarily mean ‘perfecting’ two languages.  A child, for example, may have access to two linguistic codes (bilinguality), but may not be in contact with these two codes in the same interaction (Hamers & Blanc, 1983).

First Reports of Bilingual Development
    The first report of the linguistic development of a bilingual child was that of the French psychologist Ronjat (1913), who studied detailed records of his son's language behavior from birth to the age of 4 years and 10 months.  The Ronjat’s were a mixed lingual family; according to Ronjat, a bilingual upbringing has no adverse effect on the child's overall development.  Instead, the phonology, grammar and lexis of both languages develop in parallel with one another.  Very early on, the child becomes aware of the existence of two separate linguistic codes and rarely mixes the two languages.  Therefore, this study demonstrated that a bilingual experience does not delay the cognitive development of the child, but rather fosters a more abstract conception of language (Hamers & Blanc, 1983).
     A second detailed biography of bilingual development is that of Leopold (1939) who described the language acquisition of his daughters in a German-English mixed lingual family.  His conclusions were consistent with Ronjat’s:  there are no developmental or linguistic disadvantages for a bilingual child.  Leopold also points out some of the advantages of early bilinguality; for instance, as sustained attention for content rather than form and a greater capacity for dissociating the word from its referent (Hamers & Blanc, 1983).   Though the findings of Ronjat and Leopold may have been accurate, the conclusions are difficult to justify on empirical grounds.  In other words, when these first observations had been made, there were no scientifically sound theories on language development, thus, it puts these studies at a disadvantage.  It was not until the sixties with a renewal of interest in the subject, when a number of studies on bilingual development based on general theoretical models of language were presented (Hamers & Blanc, 1983).
     The theoretical advances in the study of language acquisition since the 1960’s has brought about novel approaches to the study of bilingual development (Hamers & Blanc, 1983).  Scholars have been attempting to answer many important questions such as, how do certain characteristics that are unique to bilingual students such as code mixing develop? How far are the two linguistic systems differentiated in the early stages of language development?  These questions enabled researchers to generate a number of hypotheses concerning the development of the bilingual child and how they differ from monolingual children. (Hamers & Blanc, 1983).

Neuropsychological Development of Language
     Neuropsychological evidence suggests bilinguals develop different strategies of information processing (Hamers & Blanc, 1983).  Empirical evidence since the last century has suggested that a cerebral organization is specific to the bilingual (Minkowski, 1963).  Numerous studies on a form of aphasia point to the loss of ones language and its recovery, which occurs in a different way from the loss and recovery of the other language.  This evidence may suggest there is a different cerebral organization for each language of a bilingual, and that anatomically, they may only partially overlap (Vaid, 1983).  Cerebral lateralization develops in early childhood (ages 4-5).  For the most part, most of the population has a dominant left hemisphere, which exercises a contra lateral control (on the right side of the body) and also controls most of linguistic behavior (Hamers & Blanc, 1983).  Therefore, right-hand preference is a good indicator of left-hemispheric dominance for language.
     A number of  researchers are making direct comparisons between the neuropsychological functioning of bilinguals and monolinguals.  Barton, Goodglass, & Skai (1965) found no differences of lateralization between Hebrew-English bilinguals and English monolinguals who responded to a tachistoscopic task of word- recognition presented in the right or left visual field; both groups had a left hemisphere advantage.  Tzeng, Hung, Cotton & Wang (1979) found that Chinese-English bilinguals and Chinese monolinguals had similar reaction times to a word-recognition task of English and Chinese words.  There were also no differences found between English-Portuguese bilinguals and English monolinguals, which both showed a left hemisphere advantage (Soares & Grosjean, 1981).  However, some studies argue that bilinguals show a greater degree of heterogeneity in hemispheric organization than monolinguals (Walters & Zatorre, 1978). Many studies suggest there is a greater right-hemispheric involvement in bilinguals (Carroll, 1978; Vaid & Lambert, 1979; Galloway, 1980; Sussman, Franklin & Simon, 1982).

Bilinguality and Cognitive Development
    Vygotsky (1962) points out that language plays an essential role in cognitive development.  Language is a crucial tool in shaping cognition, which enables a child to organize abstract thoughts.   Segalowitz (1977) suggests that the internalization of two languages rather than one results in a more complex, better equipped ‘mental calculus’, which enables the child to alternate between the two linguistic codes.  Similar studies argue that bilingual children may have greater cognitive control in information processing, which provides them with the necessary foundation for metalinguistic ability (Bialystok & Ryan, 1985).
    Many researchers have pointed out the relationship between different mechanisms of information processing (encoding, decoding) between bilinguals and monolinguals.  Pearson (1988) examined the effects of bilingualism and monolingualism on the cognitive functioning of first and second grade children who were screened for proficiency and global intelligence.
The Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC), which is a standardized measure of cognitive ability, was administered to assess the cognitive differences between the two groups.  It was predicted that bilingual children would score significantly higher than monolingual children on subsets of the K-ABC.  However, results did not support the prediction.  The differences between the bilingual and monolingual groups were not significant.  However, results indicate possible influences of acculturation on performance and the sensitivity of the instrument used.
    Jean- Louis (1999) questioned whether or not bilingualism facilitates the development of theory of mind.  The study sought to determine which models would best characterize the cognitive performance of preschool aged developing bilinguals and monolinguals, and to investigate whether there would be any effects of age for the three tasks investigated.  The first model (metalinguistic awareness that included an examination of the use of mutual exclusivity) predicted that the developing bilinguals (who are proficient in one language and below age level in another) would out-perform monolinguals on the tasks; the second model (a memory task that tested whether preschoolers differing on linguistic status would vary in metacognitive strategies) predicted that the monolinguals would show better performance than the bilinguals; and the third model (examination of Theory of Mind development) anticipated that the two groups would not differ at all.    Both bilinguals and monolinguals performed equally on all three tasks. There were no differences in performance that could be attributed to linguistic status.
    Navarrete (1999) also suggests there is no significant difference in speed of processing between monolinguals and bilinguals.  The investigation was designed to address whether bilingualism in Hispanic children affects performance on standardized neuropsychological measures, which assess verbal and visual memory, as well as attention/concentration.  The sample included 31 Spanish and English speaking bilinguals and 34 English-speaking monolingual controls.  The groups were similar in terms of age, education, gender, IQ, English proficiency, and socio-economic status.  The results suggest that bilingualism is not a significant factor affecting performance on immediate and delayed recall of a list of semantically unrelated words.  Also, the retention scores on all subsets were not significantly different for the groups.  There was a significant difference between the two groups in logical memory, where bilinguals scored below the monolinguals on immediate and delayed recall.
    On the contrary, there have been numerous studies suggesting  there are significant differences in the cognitive abilities of bilinguals and monolinguals.  Haritos (1996) studied the issue of bilingual memory organization with respect to general issues of storage, event representations, encoding, organization of storage, and retrieval.  Bilingual English-Greek children in the first, third, and fifth grade, heard two stories over the course of two days.  On the third day, they were asked to recall all foods from the two stories. Bilingual memory organization is discussed with respect to the changing role of language for bilinguals, which afforded them the cognitive opportunity to maximize their recall performance.  They remembered more than monolinguals overall, which suggests that complexity in organization can be beneficial, with respect to bilingual performance.
    Oller, Cobo-Lewis, and Eilers (1998) evaluated the differences between monolingual and bilingual speakers and their abilities to perform phonological translation.  Phonological translation is used as a tool to evaluate sound-awareness through the perspective of children who live with two languages and two attendant phonemic systems.  Translations were investigated using a task designed to measure children’s ability to map one phonological system onto another.  The results indicated monolinguals generally performed more poorly than bilinguals. Bilinguals translated real names more accurately than fictitious names, in both directions.  This study has suggested that the phonological translation abilities for proper names can be reliably tested in monolinguals and bilinguals.  In addition, this phonological awareness in bilinguals has assisted in fostering specific reading capabilities (Oller, Kimbrough, Lewis, & Eilers, 1998).
    Bialystok (1999) investigated whether the bilingual advantage in control (selective attention) could be found in a nonverbal task (the dimensional change card sort, used by Zelazo and Frye, 1997) to assess Cognitive Complexity and Control (CCC).  Sixty preschool children, half of whom were bilingual, were divided into two groups of younger and older children.  All the children were given a test in English proficiency (PPVT-R; Dunn, 1981) and working memory (Visually Cued Recall Task) to assure comparability.  Then the groups were given the dimensional change card sort task and the moving word task.  The bilingual children were more advanced than the monolinguals in the solving of experimental problems requiring high levels of control.  The results demonstrate the role of attentional control in both tasks, which extends our knowledge of bilingual children.

Children and Metamemory
     A number of researchers have investigated memory performance in childhood, particularly metamemory-memory relationships (Pierce & Lange, 2000).  Metamemory can be defined as knowledge and beliefs about “the capacities, functioning, limitations, and development of the human memory system” (Pierce & Lange, 2000, p.121).  The ‘traditional model’ of metamemory-memory relationships states that metamemory knowledge leads to strategy use at study, which leads to strategy use at retrieval and good memory performance (Fabricius & Hagen, 1984; Paris, Newman, & McVey, 1982).
 Knowledge- base has been an indicator of assisting the encoding, storage, and retrieval of newly learned material in children (Bjorklund, 1987).  Knowledge development is often associated with increasing competence in strategic processing and increasing memory efficiency without strategic assistance.  Children's understanding of these effects of knowledge on memory could be an indicator of efficient allocation of cognitive efforts.  For example, if a child understands that he/she has efficient knowledge to complete a task easily, they may be more unlikely to waste effort and time on unnecessary strategies. (Howe & O’Sullivan, 1990).
     O’Sullivan (1996) performed a study on children's understanding about the impact of knowledge on memory was investigated.  It was predicted that, with age, children identify knowledge as an important determinant of performance.  Metamemory about the influence of conceptual relations was examined at the first, third, and fifth grade levels.  O’Sullivan found the nature of metamemory had changed with age.  The younger children recognized their recall performance would be better on the related -list of words, but could not understand why this was the case.  The older children attributed superior recall of the related words to the categorical relations in the stimulus (O’Sullivan, 1996).  Overall, these results help in clarifying the developmental course of different aspects of metamemory.
    The empirical evidence on the cognitive development, namely memory, of bilinguals is far from giving us a complete picture of those aspects that might benefit from a bilingual experience.  It seems reasonable to assume that not all thought processes are enhanced through a bilingual experience and that those cognitive tasks, which rely more on language, will benefit most from that experience.  Being exposed to more than one linguistic code has shown to enhance meta-cognitive skills and allow these students to surpass their monolingual peers.
    This study will attempt to examine whether or not bilingual and monolingual children have developed different metamemory strategies.  To test the limits of a bilingual advantage, a Metamemory Assessment will be administered to each participant to target specific memory strategies. In addition, a brief vocabulary test will be given to assure comparability of the two groups.