A number of studies revealed effects of bilingualism on the cognitive development of both children and adults. Executive functions in particular seem to be enhanced due to the constant use of two language systems. In the present study, we explored whether effects of enhanced executive functioning are also related to bilinguals’ performance on a scientific reasoning task.

In a quasi-experimental design we compared monolingual and bilingual elementary school students on a variety of measures including language proficiency, cognitive ability, executive functions, and a modified reasoning task adapted from Kuhn and Pease (2006).

The data of 57 elementary school students were analyzed using multiple regression analysis and group comparisons via multivariate ANOVAs.

Results revealed specific group differences on the measures of executive functions. On the measure of inhibition, the bilingual group showed superior performance, while no differences on the measure of attentional control were found. Moreover, regression analyses revealed that students’ performance on the reasoning task was best explained by the measures of cognitive ability and attentional control. However, the total amount of variance explained by our measures was less than 20%. Since there were no group differences on these variables, an advantage of bilingualism on the reasoning task was not detected.

The results of the study contribute to the body of research on the cognitive effects of bilingualism and its specifics. Moreover, they extend research on the positive effects of bilingualism to more applied contexts.

The results emphasize the necessity to specify the role of executive functions in reasoning tasks in order to reliably test for a possible transfer of bilingual advantages to academic learning contexts.