Relationship between cognitive performance and sociocultural and linguistic variables in bilingual Mexican American children

This study investigated the relationship between cognitive ability (dependent variable) and 5 independent variables: acculturation, socioeconomic status (SES), oral acquisition of syntactic structures, family size, and family structure. Instruments used were the WISC-III, Bilingual Syntax Measure (BSM), Sociocultural Scales in the System of Multicultural Pluralistic Assessment (SOMPA). The sample consisted of 96 bilingual Mexican American children aged six and seven years, randomly selected from five school districts in south Texas; 47 were female, and 49, male. The method of analysis was multiple linear regression. The null hypothesis was tested at the .05 level of significance, using a F distribution. Results suggest that for 6-year-old children there is a strong correlation between cognitive ability and oral acquisition of syntactic structures in English; a weaker correlation is found among 7-year-olds. No other variables correlate significantly with cognitive ability