Literacy, metalinguistic, and executive functions processing in bilingual children speakers of similar typology languages in a border area

Abstract This study aimed to analyze whether there are differences between bilingual (Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish) monolingual Portuguese) school children regarding reading writing learning achievement, in executive functions (EF) components metalinguistic abilities. Twenty-three 23 children, aged 6 8 years, were assessed terms of their writing, reading, abilities, with verbal non-verbal tasks testing EF. A advantage was observed abilities 16 the 44 EF measures, including subcomponents working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, attention, mainly paradigms, while outperformed ones three scores: counting errors (Five Digits Test), omission bells (Bells test) sequential trial B (Trail Making Test). There moderate weak effect sizes showing advantage. Literacy improvement seems have potential increase linguistic