Running head: COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 1

Cognitive Effects of Growing Up as a Limburgish Bidialectal: A Theory of Mind Perspective

Vera Elisabeth Snijders - 241124

Tilburg University

Supervisor: Dr. A.M.L. Aarts

Second assessor: Prof. Dr. J.W.M. Kroon

Date: 4 July 2018

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 2

Abstract

This study focuses on the relationship between Limburgish bidialectism and the development of Theory of Mind in 3 and 4 year old children. It examines whether children growing up with a Limburgish dialect as well as standard Dutch, experience the same cognitive advantage in

Theory of Mind development as bilingual children have been shown to do in previous studies.

The children in this study participated in a picture-based test on productive vocabulary, in addition to an unexpected content Theory of Mind task. The results showed neither a cognitive

Theory of Mind advantage, nor a disadvantage for bidialectal children. A positive relationship between age and Theory of Mind found in other studies was replicated. Additionally, an unexpected effect of parental age was discovered, which is speculated to be accounted for by higher occupational class of older parents. A possible explanation for the lack of cognitive advantage for bidialectal children may be due to the small sample used in the study, the low number of children who produced Limburgish, or highly frequent code-switching among

Limburgish bidialectals. An important finding from the study is the importance of linguistic context in studying cognitive effects of bidialectism.

Keywords: Bidialectism, Limburgish, dialect use, Theory of Mind, false-belief understanding

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 3

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ...... 5

1.1. Bilingualism and Theory of Mind ...... 5

1.2. Definition of Concepts ...... 6

1.3. The Context of Limburg ...... 8

1.4. The Present Study ...... 8

2. Theory ...... 9

2.1. Bidialectism and Cognition ...... 9

2.2. Language Distance ...... 11

2.3. Theory of Mind Advantage in the Case of Bilingualism ...... 11

2.4. Theory of Mind Advantage in the Case of Bidialectism ...... 13

2.5. The Influence of Code-switching ...... 15

2.6. Research Question ...... 16

3. Method ...... 17

3.1. Procedure ...... 17

3.2. Instruments ...... 18

3.3. Participants ...... 21

3.4. Analyses ...... 23

4. Results ...... 25

4.1. Descriptive Analysis ...... 25

4.2. Background Variables ...... 26

4.3. Relationship Analysis ...... 28 COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 4

4.4. Predictive Analysis ...... 29

4.5. Parental Age ...... 31

4.6. Qualitative Analysis ...... 32

5. Discussion ...... 35

5.1. Theory of Mind and Bidialectism ...... 35

5.2. Theory of Mind and Age ...... 39

5.3. Theory of Mind and Background Variables ...... 39

6. Conclusion ...... 40

7. References ...... 43

8. Appendix ...... 49

8.1. Picture-based Test on Productive Vocabulary ...... 49

8.2. Data Sheet Picture-based Test on Productive Vocabulary ...... 62

8.3. Data Sheet Unexpected Content Theory of Mind Test ...... 62

8.4. Parental Questionnaire ...... 62

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 5

Cognitive Effects of Growing Up as a Limburgish Bidialectal: A Theory of Mind Perspective

1. Introduction

1.1. Bilingualism and Theory of Mind

The importance of language in the cognitive development of Theory of Mind (ToM) in children has been widely recognized. Previous research has indicated that within this development, interaction with family members, especially maternal talk, is of great importance.

The skills a child possesses within a language are important as well (Harris, de Rosnay, & Pons,

2005). Language is both an important cognitive and social instrument. Development of language is needed for the creation of representational resources in order to manage mental states, and communicate without much difficulty. The level of language ability in a child, also predicts ToM development (Pons, de Rosnay, Harris, & Lece, 2009). The reason behind this relation is that children who are more advanced in their language development, are better able to form representations on mental states. In turn, they can put these representations into use when interacting with others. Language and cognition are intimately connected, in the sense that language is acquired through and applied in communication, where certain cognitive processes form the basis in acquiring and maintaining specific linguistic skills (Kohnert, Bates,

& Hernandez, 1999). Hence, language is an important factor in ToM development.

Throughout the years, attention to the effect of bilingualism on cognitive development in children has been increasing, and the attitude towards it has changed. Bilingualism cannot easily be defined, and there are many elements to it. Additionally, there is no such thing as the

‘perfect’ bilingual (Ng & Wigglesworth, 2007; Baker, 2011). However, in much of the literature, bilingualism is defined as ‘the ability and use of two languages’ (Baker, 2011). While bilingualism is often shown to have positive effects nowadays, it has not always carried the positive value that is attached to it now. Much early research found negative effects of growing up bilingually, saying it would harm the children in their linguistic and cognitive development COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 6

(Darcy, 1953). However, these early studies have been criticized for their methodology and inadequate interpretation of results. Recent research has resulted in more positive findings within the phenomenon of bilingualism. These studies found bilingual children to have an advantage in several aspects of cognition (Gathercole et al., 2014), including executive functioning (Kalashnikova & Mattock, 2014; Nguyen & Astington, 2014; Reetzke, Lam, Xie,

Sheng, & Chandrasekaran, 2016; Rubio-Fernández, 2017), inhibitory control (Kovács, 2009), and metalinguistic awareness (Cheung, Yan Mak, Luo, & Xiao, 2010; Nguyen & Astington,

2014).

There has thus been an increasing amount of attention for the study of bilingualism and cognition. However, not so much research has been conducted on the cognitive consequences that growing up with a dialect may have. While dialects are often closer to the standard language spoken in a country than ‘foreign’ languages, there is still variation in linguistic systems between the standard language and the dialects (Cornips, Snijders, Snijders, Swanenberg, & de

Vriend, 2011). The current study will therefore focus on the influence of growing up as a

Limburgish bidialectal on ToM development in children. As ToM is a broad concept, the focus will be narrowed down to false-belief understanding.

1.2. Definition of Concepts

A definition of concepts is needed in order to prevent misunderstanding. The first concept important in the present study is Theory of Mind (ToM). ToM is an extensive concept and contains many different aspects in human development, but can broadly be defined as: “the ability to ascribe beliefs, desires, and intentions to oneself and to others, and to predict and interpret the behavior of others depending on these mental states.” (Kovács, 2009 : 48). In the current study, the focus will be on early false-belief understanding. In false-belief understanding, children are able to put their egocentric beliefs aside and place themselves in COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 7

the perspective of someone else’s knowledge. They are able to reason upon this knowledge and react in the right manner according to their beliefs. Children generally succeed in false-belief tasks around the age of four, while they fail before this because of their egocentric beliefs

(Wimmer & Perner, 1983).

Secondly, bidialectism is a concept closely linked to bilingualism, and occurs when a person is able to use a dialect in addition to the standard language of a country (Day, 1976). A dialect is a regional variety of the standard language spoken in a country, which has distinct linguistic features (Hazen, 2001). Children can thus be regarded bidialectal, when they grow up with a regional language - a dialect -, in addition to the standard language of the country they grow up in. A key feature of bidialectism is that the distinction between the standard language and the spoken dialect is not always clear. This holds that the speakers of the two varieties will often mix the two in use, and no bidialectal speaker ever speaks exactly the same (Francot, Van den Heuij, Blom, Heeringa, & Cornips, 2017). The extent to which these language varieties are used, differs across place and type of dialect. Also, the more a dialect is spoken to a child, the quicker the child will learn the dialect (Smith, Durham, & Fortune, 2007).

A dialect has the same type of features as languages have; it has its own unique vocabulary, rules for grammar, phonetics, and its own meaning attached to certain words and phrases (Cornips & Van den Heuij, 2015). In that sense, one could argue that growing up bidialectal is not so different from growing up bilingual. Research on Scottish bidialectism has shown that bidialectal children are able to take social context in mind when choosing whether to speak their dialect, or the standard language (Smith et al., 2007; Smith & Durham, 2012).

Bidialectal children thus learn which language to use in specific kinds of situations, and with specific people. These children are able to make the distinction between standard language and dialect, and make correct choices from a very young age in their use. In that sense, bidialectal children have to use the same mechanisms as bilingual children do in their language choice. COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 8

1.3. The Context of Limburg

The present study will focus on bidialectal children who are growing up with a

Limburgish dialect. This dialect is spoken in the province of Limburg, and takes its influence from High German. It has received minor recognition as a regional language in 1992 by the

European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) (Council of Europe, 1992).

The dialect has approximately 900.000 speakers, and is mostly used in everyday life, especially in informal settings. In addition to this, research has shown that 99% of the Limburgians understand the dialect spoken in their region (Belemans, 2002). Limburgish is thus recognized as an official regional language, but in most formal institutions, such as educational settings or governmental institutions, Dutch is used (AThEME, 2015; Francot et al., 2017). The dialect is sometimes also used in some local media (Cornips, de Rooij, Stengs, & Thissen, 2016), though the use here is restricted, as well as it is in writing, public speech, education and administration.

Limburgish does not get taught in schools. It is mostly used with family and friends (Blom,

Boerma, Bosma, Cornips, & Everaert, 2017). The use of dialect therefore also heavily depends on location, as there is social meaning attached to the choice of language (Cornips, 2017). The use of dialect is especially important to its speakers for identity forming (Francot et al., 2017).

While Limburgish shares many linguistic properties with Dutch, it is still the dialect that is most different from Dutch within the Netherlands (Blom et al., 2017). However, Limburgish is not simply one dialect that is the same throughout the entire province. The way of speaking changes according to the place that one is in. The local dialect is therefore named after location

(Cornips et al., 2016). The present study will focus on the Limburgish dialects spoken in the region of Middle Limburg.

1.4. The Present Study

There has been little research in the field of cognitive effects of bidialectism. Especially in the field of ToM, research has been absent. However, there are many studies exploring the COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 9

effect of bilingualism on ToM. It is important to extend this knowledge to the field of bidialectism, in this case Limburgish, as there are many negative attitudes concerning the effects of using a dialect, such as delay in language development and vocabulary, lower intelligence, and worse career prospects (AThEME, 2015; Cornips, 2016; Francot et al., 2017).

As a result, Limburgish is discouraged to be spoken in educational settings and other formal institutions (Blom et al., 2017). However, there is no evidence regarding these negative effects.

The present study aims to investigate part of the cognitive effects of growing up bidialectal.

Based on the results, empirical information may be added to the discussion on the effect of growing up with a dialect. Additionally, the study can supply information and advice about the use of the Limburgish dialect in formal situations with young children, especially educational settings.

The paper will be structured as follows: First, some studies exploring the field of bidialectism and cognition will be presented, followed by theory on cognitive effects with small language distance. Following this, the results from bilingual studies will be linked to bidialectism, which will eventually result in the hypotheses. Secondly, a method part will be provided, in which the experimental procedure, instruments, participants, and analyses are introduced. Next is the results section, which will eventually lead to a discussion and conclusion in order to answer the research question: To what extent do the advantages in Theory of Mind development found for bilingual children apply to Limburgish bidialectal children?

2. Theory

2.1. Bidialectism and Cognition

Currently, there is a lack of research addressing the relationship between Limburgish bidialectism and cognitive development, especially ToM development. Most of the studies on have only been conducted very recently. An on-going research project, led by Blom, has COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 10

published a study addressing the cognitive advantages of bilingual children in different sociolinguistic contexts within the Netherlands (Blom et al., 2017). In the study, Polish bilingual children are compared to Frisian bilingual children, and Limburgish bidialectal children. The three language groups differ in sociolinguistic context. The Polish language is a foreign language of a minority group in the Netherlands. Polish can thus be regarded as a minority language. The Frisian language is an officially recognized language, that is also used in the public domain. The Limburgish dialect is also recognized as a regional language - a dialect -, but is mostly used in informal settings. The study tries to determine whether cognitive advantages found in bilingual children, exist across different sociolinguistic contexts. In order to do this, the children were tested on receptive vocabulary, working memory, and selective attention. Additionally, a parental questionnaire was distributed in order to determine the language use at the children’s home, and the parental educational background. The result of the study showed a cognitive advantage for the different groups of bilingual children across settings. As the advantage for the Frisian and Limburgish group was much stronger than for the

Polish group, the language distance from the standard language in the Netherlands was seen as an important factor in determining the extent of benefit. In the case where the languages are closely related to each other, they share many linguistic properties, which leads to cognitive benefits (Blom et al., 2017).

The research regarding the Limburgish sample in the previously mentioned study was undertaken by Cornips (Blom et al., 2017), who has done more research on the Limburgish dialect. She stressed the importance of the environment in which a child uses their selected dialect or standard language. The situation surrounding the speaking of a dialect or language is thus of great importance, as it is attached to the social meaning of language choice. Language cannot be detached from its environment, and the environment is extremely important for a child in their language choices (Cornips, 2017). These studies in this new field of research show COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 11

that the cognitive advantages found for bilingual children, may also occur for bidialectal children.

2.2. Language Distance

While there have been very few studies addressing the relationship between Limburgish bidialectism and cognition, there have been quite some studies addressing the relation between cognition and bilingualism in languages with small language distance. This is the case between

Limburgish and Dutch. Several studies looking at the bilingual advantage of Catalan-Spanish bilinguals found an advantage for this language combination, in the same way that previous studies have shown bilingual advantage for less closely related languages. This advantage was found in reaction time (Costa, Hernández, Costa-Faidella, & Sebstián-Gallés, 2009), and task- switching (Hernández, Martin, Barceló, & Costa, 2013). Cognitive advantages are also found for Sardinian-Italian children (Lauchlan, Parisi, & Fadda, 2012; Garraffa, Beveridge, & Sorace,

2015), Gaelic-English children (Lauchlan et al., 2012), and Cypriot-Greek children (Antoniou,

Grohmann, Kambanaros, & Katsos, 2015). Just like Limburgish, these are either language or language-dialect combinations in bilingual children of recognized and used languages within the same country. These studies show there are thus cognitive advantages for those children growing up with closely related languages or dialects, in fields other than ToM.

2.3. Theory of Mind Advantage in the Case of Bilingualism

There is a lack of research that has been devoted to the direct relationship of bidialectism and ToM. However, there has been an increasing amount of research on the relationship between bilingualism and false-belief understanding. A study by Goetz (2003) aimed to determine whether bilingual English-Mandarin children performed better than monolingual children on several ToM tasks. The study found that overall, the bilingual advantage was indeed found for these bilinguals. There was no difference between English and COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 12

Mandarin monolinguals in their performance on the ToM tasks. Goetz presented three possible explanations for this bilingual advantage. Firstly, bilingual children have learned to be aware of the situation they are in, and adjust their language use accordingly. The ability to adjust would give them greater inhibitory control. This is thus called the inhibitory control hypothesis.

Secondly, bilingual children constantly have to monitor which language to use in what situation, which would increase their sociolinguistic knowledge. This hypothesis is thus called the sociolinguistic knowledge hypothesis. Thirdly, it was argued bilingual children have learned how to refer to one concept in different manners, and developed increased metalinguistic awareness that way. In turn, this would help them develop their representational abilities. This final hypothesis is thus called the metalinguistic awareness hypothesis (Goetz, 2003).

However, Goetz (2003) conducted no research on which of these three hypotheses is most prominent. To test which is most important in the study of bilingual cognitive advantage, several other studies were conducted. Kovács (2009) tested these explanations as three distinct hypotheses. She found the inhibitory control hypothesis to be significant, over the other two presented by Goetz (2003). She then continued to explain the ToM advantage for bilingual over monolingual children in terms of inhibitory control (Kovács, 2009).

This hypothesis is not the only explanation which has found support in previous research. The sociolinguistic knowledge hypothesis was found to be an important factor in a

Cantonese-English sample (Cheung et al., 2010). After controlling for age, nonverbal intelligence, income and vocabulary, the monolinguals and bilinguals still significantly differed from each other. But once sociolinguistic knowledge was added, the difference in ToM disappeared. The results from the study are explained in such a way that having high sociolinguistic demands in a certain language environment, will lead to increased sociolinguistic knowledge, which in turn leads to better false-belief understanding (Cheung et al., 2010). Here, Goetz’s (2003) explanation addressing sociolinguistic knowledge thus COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 13

prevails. Rubio-Fernández & Glucksberg (2011) showed sociolinguistic knowledge to be an important factor in adulthood as well. In an eye-tracking experiment, the tendency towards the egocentric response was still greater for monolingual than bilingual adults, before they corrected themselves and responded with the right answer. Bilinguals corrected themselves significantly quicker. This study shows that there is not only a false-belief advantage for bilingual children, but also for adults.

The final hypothesis presented by Goetz (2003), the metalinguistic awareness hypothesis, has found support in a study by Nguyen and Astington (2014). They explain bilinguals constantly need to adapt their language use to the context they find themselves in. In turn, they have practice with coordinating the two languages they use. Additionally, the study addresses the importance of working memory instead of inhibitory control The reason behind the importance of working memory is that children need to be able to manipulate the information they have in mind. This would highlight the importance of executive functioning in ToM development (Nguyen & Astington, 2014; Rubio-Fernández, 2017).

2.4. Theory of Mind Advantage in the Case of Bidialectism

In determining whether Limburgish bidialectal children experience the same advantages as bilingual children, the explanations presented by Goetz (2003) have to be applied to the bidialectal context. The reason behind this is, that if bidialectal children experience the same underlying mechanisms as bilingual children have in their ToM advantage, they could be expected to experience the same advantage because of these underlying mechanisms. First, the inhibitory control hypothesis (Goetz, 2003) would work for bidialectal children as well as bilingual children. As shown earlier, bidialectal children have learned to adjust themselves to the situation they are in, and speak either a dialect or the standard language in a specific situation

(Smith et al., 2007; Smith & Durham, 2012). They thus resist interference from the other COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 14

language they know. Limburgish bidialectal children have to do this as well. They have to resist interference of the Dutch language when finding themselves in a situation where their conversational partners are Limburgish speakers, and choose to use the dialect in conversation.

When they are in conversation with a Dutch speaker, they have to resist interference from the dialect. Having to choose between language and dialect is thus no different for bidialectal children, as bilingual children who have to choose between two languages. Since the underlying mechanism can be applied to both bilingual and bidialectal children, it is likely to lead to a similar result: ToM advantage.

Secondly, the sociolinguistic knowledge hypothesis (Goetz, 2003), would also work for bidialectal children. Being able to choose the appropriate language in the appropriate context is important for bidialectal children as well as bilingual children, as they have been shown to be able to choose between their languages from a very young age (Smith et al., 2007; Smith &

Durham, 2012). Just like bilingual children, Limburgish bidialectal children would also end up in a situation of increased sociolinguistic knowledge. This is especially the case since there is a clear distinction present in the use of Limburgish in formal and informal settings (AThEME,

2015; Francot et al., 2017), and the use of the dialect is very much dependent on the location speakers find themselves in (Cornips, 2017). As a consequence, Limburgish bidialectal children constantly have to monitor what language is appropriate in the situation they find themselves in. In turn, this monitoring teaches them to take more aspects of the situation into account, and do better on ToM tasks, just like bilingual children.

Thirdly, the metalinguistic awareness hypothesis (Goetz, 2003) can also be linked to bidialectism. As shown, dialects have their own linguistic systems, with their own unique vocabulary, grammar, phonetics, and meaning (Cornips & Van den Heuij, 2015). As a consequence, the words a speaker of a dialect uses, are not simply a variation on the standard language, but distinct ways used to refer to a concept. Limburgish bidialectal children are thus COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 15

aware of the fact that two different words they know in different linguistic systems, can refer to one concept. Just like bilingual children, they consequently have greater representational abilities. As this has been shown to lead to ToM advantage in bilingual children, Limburgish bidialectal children are likely to achieve the same advantage.

Hence, all three hypotheses presented by Goetz (2003), developed for bilingual children, can be applicable to Limburgish bidialectal children as well. The language situation these children find themselves in increases their inhibitory control, sociolinguistic knowledge and metalinguistic awareness, similar to what happens with bilingual children. It would thus be likely that the ToM advantage found for bilingual children, can be replicated for bidialectal children in the field of false-belief understanding.

2.5. The Influence of Code-switching

As noted in the introduction, no bidialectal speaks exactly in the same way, and most will mix Limburgish dialect and standard language (Francot et al., 2017). This phenomenon can be regarded as an example of code-switching, which can be defined as the alternate use of one or more languages within one communicative situation by one person (Giesbers, 1989).

Code-switching is typical in Limburgish bidialectalism, as the dialect and standard language are closely related and interdependent of each other. Dialect speakers often adapt their language use to the linguistic knowledge or choice of others, but also switch between their dialect and standard language within one communicative occurrence (Giesbers, 1989). Mixing between languages has been associated with less cognitive control than separation of language use

(Green, 1998). In a study by Festman, Rodriguez-Fornells & Münte (2011), it was found that bilinguals who do not code-switch between languages within one task, perform better in several cognitive tasks. However, it should be noted that this study only compared bilinguals who switched, with bilinguals who did not switch. The study leaves unclear whether both groups COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 16

would still hold an advantage over monolinguals. On the other hand, there are also studies that found language mixing to have no negative influence on bilingual cognitive advantage in a range of tasks. Prior & Gollan (2011) suggest that being in the habit of switching easily between languages, can lead to more efficiency in task-switching. Here, bilinguals who switch in their language use a lot still show to experience cognitive advantage. Research on the effect of code- mixing on cognition is thus still divided, which is not so strange, since language control and cognition are interrelated (Festman et al., 2011). At this point, the habitual code-switching present in Limburgish bidialectals may thus have an influence on the results of the current study.

However, due to the mixed findings of previous studies, it remains unclear what this influence may be.

2.6. Research Question

Since all three hypotheses presented by Goetz (2003) can be applicable to Limburgish bidialectal children, it is likely that the ToM advantage can be replicated for Limburgish bidialectal children in the field of false-belief understanding. This would mean that Limburgish bidialectal children are able to pass a false-belief task at an earlier age than their monolingual counterparts: before the age of four. Growing up bidialectal is similar to the way bilingual children grow up, and similar to the way bilingual children learn to use their languages. Finally,

Limburgish shares many properties with Dutch, while it is still the dialect furthest away from

Dutch. The Dutch language and the Limburgish dialect are simply closely related. Previous studies addressing closely related languages or dialects, have shown cognitive advantage in tasks other than ToM for these bilingual or bidialectal children in comparison to monolingual children. The influence of code-switching has shown mixed results so far. Therefore, there is no definite effect of this feature to be taken into account. Taking this all together, the hypotheses and model are presented in Figure 1. COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 17

1. Limburgish bidialectal children outperform monolingual children on false-belief tasks

2. Older children outperform younger children on false-belief tasks

Figure 1. Model of present study.

3. Method

3.1. Procedure

The study was screened by the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences

Research Ethics Committee at Tilburg University. The criteria for ethical clearance were met, and research was approved to be carried out as planned. Parents of participants were given an informed consent form to sign prior to the tests.

The children and their parents participating in the study were visited by the researcher either at daycare centers, or in their own home. Specifically, research in daycare centers was conducted in the areas of Echt-Susteren and Maasgouw. Research at home was conducted in the areas of Leudal, Maasgouw, Nederweert, and Weert . The research area is depicted in Figure

2. COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 18

Figure 2. The selected research area.

The children first participated in a picture-based test on productive vocabulary, in order to test if a child produced Limburgish. According to the answers the children gave, they were assigned to different groups, as further explained in the analysis part. The details of the groups can be found in the participants part. Next, the unexpected content task was administered, in order to test the false-belief understanding of the children. Both tests were administered with each child individually. In addition to this, the parents of the children also filled in a questionnaire in order to receive some background information

The experimenter who administered the tests was both a native speaker of Dutch and the Limburgish dialect. Language of instruction for the vocabulary test was Limburgish. A switch to Dutch was made only when the child did not understand the dialect. For the false- belief task, language use was either Dutch, Limburgish, or a mix between the two, according to the child’s proficiency in either the dialect or Dutch language.

3.2. Instruments

Vocabulary Test. In order to test whether a child could be considered bidialectal, a picture-based test on productive vocabulary was administered. From a larger test from CITO

(Verhoeven, Narain, Extra, Konak, & Zerrouk, 1995), 26 pictures appropriate for the study were COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 19

selected (see Appendix 1). This selection was made based upon a clear difference between the

Dutch and Limburgish version of the word. The words were translated into Limburgish with the help of a word list developed by Veldeke (Feijen, 2013). The child was first presented with one example task, in order to determine whether they understood the task they were asked to perform, depicted in Figure 3.

Dutch = Mond / Lippen

Limburgish = Moandj / Luppen

Figure 3. Example of a task in a picture-based vocabulary test of productive vocabulary.

With each picture the child was asked the question: “What do you see here?” in

Limburgish. The child had to respond with what they saw in the picture, which was expected to be either in the Limburgish dialect, or the Dutch language. As mentioned before, the use of dialect in educational or formal settings is generally discouraged. This is why all children were addressed in Limburgish, in order to trigger the use of their dialect, if they were able to speak it. Since 99% of the Limburgish inhabitants can understand Limburgish (Belemans, 2002), the question was understandable for the children in Limburgish without trouble most of time. When the child did not understand Limburgish at all, they were addressed in Dutch. The test was in this case still conducted, as it also made the children feel more comfortable in talking to the experimenter. A test on Dutch vocabulary in addition is not needed, as research shows

Limburgish children do not show any delays in Dutch vocabulary development (Cornips, &

Van den Heuij, 2015; Driessen, 2016).

Before the test, the use of dialect was stimulated by asking the child to use dialect from now on if they are able to speak it. When a child gave answers in Dutch during the test, they were asked whether they also knew the word in dialect, to again encourage the use of dialect if COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 20

a child is able to produce it. This question was no longer posed when a child did not change to the Limburgish dialect after asking the question for three different pictures.

In the case of answers that did not match the expected answers, the child was given help in order to lead them to the correct answer. In the case of a depicted action, a child may answer with what they see in the picture, rather than the action itself. In this case the help phrase “What is he/she doing?” was used. Secondly, a child may give an answer that is too specific and does not include the object in the picture as a whole. Here, the help phrase “What do you see in the picture as a whole?” was used. Finally, the child may use a wrong term. In this case, the help phrase “Do you know another word for this?” was used. The use of these ‘help’ & ‘dialect- encouraging’ phrases were also noted down by the experimenter on the data sheet (see

Appendix 2).

False-belief task: Unexpected content. False-belief understanding in ToM development was measured using an ‘unexpected content’ false-belief task (Hogrefe, Wimmer,

& Perner, 1986). In order to do this a bag of crisps containing crayons was used. The children were shown the bag and asked “What do you think is in this bag?”. After the children had given their answer, the bag was opened to reveal the ‘unexpected content’: the crayons. Afterwards, the bag was closed again with the crayons in it. The child was asked the question “What is really in this bag?” one more time, in order to make sure they still knew there were crayons inside. At this point, the child was asked the false-belief question (FQ): “Your [person] has not looked inside the bag. What will he/she say is in this bag?”. The person in this question could be any person the child knows, who was not present at the moment in which the test was conducted. When children answered the question right with ‘crisps’, they passed the false-belief task. The children failed if they answered with ‘crayons’ or anything else.

To double check whether the child had understood the task, a reality question (RQ) was asked if the child had answered FQ correctly: “What is really in this bag?”. If the child had COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 21

answered FQ incorrectly, they were asked a memory question (MQ): “Do you remember what you thought was in this bag first?”. The answer the children gave to either of these questions was taken into consideration in determining whether they understood the task as a whole. The score of the answers children gave was kept on a data sheet (see Appendix 3).

Parental Questionnaire. Parents of the participating children were given a questionnaire (see Appendix 4) to fill in at home. This questionnaire included questions on the use of dialect with family, friends and the further environment. Additionally, it posed questions about parental education, which helped to determine the Socioeconomic Status (SES) of the families of the children. Questions about age of the child, having older siblings, the age of parents, and attendance of daycare were also asked. These questions were used in order to analyze whether there is a relation between these factors and the use of dialect, or ToM development. The questionnaire gave the study some important background knowledge and has helped to determine what factors to control for. Descriptive details of the background variables from the questionnaire are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Descriptives of Background Variables

Mean SD Min. Max.

Age child in months (n=37) 43.86 5.62 34 58 Age parents in years (n=32) 36.86 3.52 29.5 45 Daycare attendance (n=37) 3.11 1.39 1 5 Older siblings (n=37) 1.68 .67 1 3 SES (n=37) 4.69 .63 3.5 6

3.3. Participants

In the study, 37 children in the age range of 3 and 4 years old were recruited from the area of Middle Limburg. This region is located in the middle of the province of Limburg, COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 22

situated in the South of the Netherlands. The children were divided in two different groups by age (details in Table 2). Children below 47 months old were assigned to the group of three- year-olds (n=26), and children with an age of 47 months or higher were assigned to the group of four-year-olds (n=11). When a child is 47 months old, they are almost four years old. The reason for not putting the division at exactly 48 months, is because normal development of false-belief understanding occurs around the age of four, which could also be just before the fourth birthday. In order to see the differing development for bidialectal children, a division in child age thus also needs to be made between these two age groups. Therefore, the final month of being three years old, was added to being four years old.

Table 2. Descriptives of Categorized Child Age in Months

Mean SD Range

Three-year-old (n=26) 41 3.62 34-45 Four-year-old (n=11) 50.6 3.01 47-58

Secondly, the children were also categorized according to dialect production. A combination of the picture-based test on productive vocabulary, and linguistic background as taken from the questionnaire, resulted in the assignment of the children into three different language groups (M=1.78): monolingual children (Dutch only) (n=16), active bidialectal children (speaking Limburgish) (n=8), and a third group of children who did mostly get in contact with the dialect, but did not speak it themselves in the vocabulary test. This group was named the passive bidialectal children (n=13).

Thirdly, the children were also grouped according to their performance on the unexpected content task. This resulted in the creation of four different groups: those who got both FQ and MQ wrong; those who got FQ wrong, but MQ right; those who got FQ right, but

RQ wrong; and those who got both FQ and RQ right. COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 23

3.4. Analyses

In the analysis of the data, the independent variables age child and linguistic background were divided into groups. From the birthday variable, an age child variable was created. Child age calculated in months from the date of birth to the time the tests were administered with each participant individually. This variable was then split into two groups of younger than 47 months, or 47 months and older. Next, the linguistic background variable was composed out of the answers the children gave during the picture-based test on productive vocabulary, and the ‘use of dialect’ questions in the questionnaire. For the vocabulary test, wrong answers were removed, and children were categorized as either ‘speaking Limburgish’ or ‘speaking Dutch’.

Questions from the parental questionnaire including information about use of dialect with parents, siblings, family and friends, or other people spending much time with the child, were also selected. The questions were combined into one mean variable, and created two groups: those children who got mostly in contact with Dutch, and those who got mostly in contact with

Limburgish. Finally, the speaking and contact variable were combined into one independent variable determining linguistic background. This variable created three groups of monolingual, passive bidialectal, and active bidialectal children.

As for the dependent variable, four groups were created from the unexpected content task. All participants were asked to answer four questions while the task was administered. The first two questions of this task were answered correctly by all children, and thus did not have to be taken into account. The third, FQ, determined whether a child would answer RQ or MQ.

The children who answered RQ, did not answer MQ, which works the other way around as well. All questions contained two answer options, which thus created four groups in total. In order to make a distinction between the four groups, the values of the two answer options in all three questions differentiated. When creating the four groups, the mean for the answer values COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 24

was calculated. As the mean value for a participant grew larger, this meant they had more right answers in the unexpected content task.

The groups were tested for descriptives and frequencies. In order to see whether there were any effects within the variables, independent sample t-tests were performed for linguistic background and age on ToM.

In the further analysis of the data, the background variables child age, parental age, daycare attendance, having older siblings, and SES were first tested for having correlations with each other. After this, correlations between the background variables and linguistic background and ToM were tested.

Once this part of the analysis was done, the analysis of the hypothesis started. Crosstabs analysis first gave an overview of the data. Next, correlations between uncategorized child age and ToM, categorized child age and ToM, parental age and ToM, and linguistic background and ToM were ran. This gave an indication of the significance of relationships. Finally, stepwise multiple linear regression was performed. Linguistic background was the first independent variable tested on dependent variable ToM. After this, categorized child age, and parental age were added to the model one by one. The same analysis was done with linguistic background, uncategorized child age, and parental age respectively.

After the analysis of the hypotheses, the data was also analyzed qualitatively, in order to get some insight in dialect use among and with children. First, the picture-based test on productive vocabulary was examined in order to get some information on the children’s vocabulary. In addition, the use of dialect was inspected here as well. Secondly, the data from the parental questionnaire was also looked at more in-depth, in order to find out the demographics of dialect use in the context of a child. Here, the linguistic background variable was thus further explored, in order to find out who exactly spoke dialect to a child, and how dialect use developed from parent to child. COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 25

4. Results

4.1. Descriptive Analysis

According to the data collected in the unexpected content ToM test, the participants were assigned to four different groups within the ToM variable. The first group (n=9) consisted of those participants who had both the false-belief question, and the memory question wrong

(FQ=‘crayons’, MQ=‘crayons’). The second group was made up out of those participants

(n=16) who got the false-belief question wrong, but the memory question right (FQ=‘crayons’,

MQ=‘chips’). The third group (n=0) was meant for those participants who got the false-belief question right and the reality question wrong (FQ=‘chips’, RQ=‘chips’), but no participants gave this combination of answers. Finally, the fourth group (n=12) contained those participants who got both the false-belief and reality question right (FQ=‘chips’, RQ=‘crayons’).

To give a first impression of the relationships linguistic background and ToM, and age and ToM, descriptive analysis was done for both relationships. Table 3 presents the descriptive statistics of ToM for the groups of different linguistic background. When looking at the difference between the means, the mean difference between passive Limburgish and Dutch, and passive and active Limburgish participants is notable. While the means for the Dutch and active

Limburgish participants are not that far apart, the mean for passive Limburgish is much lower, and the standard deviation is also smaller. In order to see whether this difference between passive and active bidialectals is significant, the Cohen’s d between groups was tested using an independent-samples t-test (t(19)=-1.027, p=.317, d=-.43). The difference between Dutch and passive bidialectals was also analyzed using an independent-samples t-test (t(27)=1.179, p=.249, d=.45). Both tests show a slight moderate effect between groups, however, neither are significant.

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 26

Table 3. Descriptives of Theory of Mind by Linguistic Background

Mean SD Range

Dutch (n=16) 2.56 1.21 1-4 Passive Limburgish (n=13) 2.08 0.95 1-4 Active Limburgish (n=8) 2.63 1.51 1-4

The same analysis was performed for the relationship between ToM and the categorized child age variable. These descriptive statistics are summarized in Table 4. The means suggest that ToM development increases as a child grows older. However, the difference in means between groups did not seem very large. An independent-samples t-test was used to see whether there were any significant differences between the age groups (t(35)=-.764, p=.450, d=-.28).

Here, the effect size is only small, and also not significant.

Table 4. Descriptives of Theory of Mind by Age

Mean SD Range

Age three (n=26) 2.31 1.23 1-4 Age four (n=11) 2.63 1.12 1-4

4.2. Background Variables

The data analyses included five background variables, which were tested for correlations among each other. Table 5 summarizes the results. A strong significant correlation was found between age child and daycare attendance, r=.538, p<.01, and between having older siblings and parental age, r=.504, p<.01. The correlations between the other background variable combinations were not significant.

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 27

Table 5. Correlations between Background Variables

Age child Age Parents Daycare Older Siblings SES

Age child Age parents .145 Daycare .528*** -.092 Older siblings .069 .504*** .158 SES .122 .075 .056 .150 p = * sig. <.10 , ** sig. <.05 , *** sig. <.01

Next, correlations of the five background variables (details in Table 6) - age child, parental age, daycare attendance, older siblings, and SES - with linguistic background were calculated. None of the correlations showed a significant relationship with bidialectism. So the groups created on the basis of linguistic background did not differ systematically on the background variables. A small note to make here is that some effects are fairly large (age child: r=-.170, daycare attendance: r=-.156, SES: r=-.196), and would probably have showed significance if the sample would have been larger.

The background variables were also tested for correlations with the ToM variable, in order to determine whether other factors than bidialectism could have an influence on the ToM development of the participants (details in Table 6). This resulted into weak significance level for age child (uncategorized), r=.370, p<.05, and for parental age, r=.343, p<.10. Nonsignificant correlations were found for SES, r=-.068, p=.687, older siblings, r=.030, p=.859, and daycare attendance, r=.023, p=.892. In further analysis, uncategorized child age and parental age were taken into account when looking at the relationship between bidialectism and ToM development. Along with bidialectism and categorized child age, uncategorized child age and parental age will be named the key variables. Since none of the background variables showing significant interaction were significantly correlated with ToM development, these were not included in further analysis. COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 28

Table 6. Correlations between Background Variables and Bidialectism, and ToM Development

Bidialectism ToM Development

Age child -.170 .370** Age parents .031 .343* Daycare -.156 .023 Older siblings -.021 .030 SES -.196 -.068 p = * sig. <.10 , ** sig. <.05

4.3. Relationship Analysis

` Following this prior analysis, the analysis of the two hypotheses was performed

(summarized in Table 7). First, correlation analysis was done for age child, parental age and bidialectism, with ToM. The correlation between the categorized child age variable and ToM did not show significance, r=.128, p=.450. However, when checking the correlation between the uncategorized child age variable and ToM, significance did show up, r=.370, p<.05. The correlation was no longer significant at stricter levels. As shown before, the parental age was significantly correlated with ToM, r=.343, p<.05. The correlation between bidialectism and

ToM turned out to be nonsignificant, r=.022, p=.895.

Table 7. Correlations Key Variables with ToM Development

ToM Development

Age child .370** Age child categorized .128 Age parents .343** Degree of bidialectism -.022 p = ** sig. <.05 COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 29

4.4. Predictive Analysis

Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis was performed to test whether bidialectism and age child significantly predicted participants’ ToM development. In addition, parental age was also taken into account, as the correlation between parental age and ToM showed significance. Details can be found in Table 8. In the first model, the prediction of ToM by bidialectism was measured. The results of this first regression analysis indicated bidialectism explained for 0,1% of the variance in ToM (R2=.001, F(1,30)=.024, p=.878). Bidialectism did not significantly predict ToM development (b=-.043, p=.878.). The second model was analyzed, to predict ToM based on bidialectism and categorized child age. Results of this regression analysis showed the two predictors explained for 0.1% of the variance in ToM

(R2=.001, F(2,29)=.018, p=.982). Categorized child age did not significantly predict ToM development (b=.053, p=.911.). In the third model, the prediction of ToM by bidialectism, categorized child age, and parental age was measured. The results of the regression analysis indicated the three predictors explained 11,8% of the variance (R2=.118, F(3,28)=1.253, p=.310). Parental age showed to have a small significant effect on ToM development (b=.116, p<.10).

Table 8. Regression Analysis on ToM Development (age child categorized)

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 b. SD b. SD b. SD

Bidialectism .043 .279 .046 .285 .028 .272 Age child categorized .053 .472 .018 .451 Age parents .116* .060

Constant 2.391*** 2.315** -1.881 R2 .001 .001 .118 p = * sig. <.10 , ** sig. <.05 , *** sig. <.01 COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 30

As the uncategorized child age variable did show to be significantly correlated with

ToM, stepwise multiple linear regression analysis was again performed to test whether uncategorized child age did significantly predict ToM (details in Table 9). In the first model, the prediction of ToM was again measured in relation to bidialectism. As in the previous regression analysis, bidialectism explained 0.1% of the variance in ToM (R2=.001,

F(1,30)=.024, p=.878). Bidialectism did not significantly predict ToM development (b=-.043, p=.878). The second model measured the prediction of ToM based on bidialectism and uncategorized child age. These two predictors explained for 9.5% of the variance in ToM

(R2=.095, F(2,29)=1.514, p=.237.). Uncategorized child age did significantly predict ToM

(b=0.066, p<.10). In the third model, the prediction of ToM was measured in relation to bidialectism, uncategorized child age and parental age. The three predictors explained for

18,4% of the variance in ToM (R2=.184, F(3,28)=2.698, p=.122). Parental age again significantly predicted ToM, (b=.103, p<.10).

Table 9. Regression analysis on ToM Development (age child uncategorized)

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 b. SD b. SD b. SD

Bidialectism .043 .279 .134 .275 .106 .266 Age child uncategorized .066* .038 .056 .037 Age parents .103* .059

Constant 2.391*** -.694 -3.980 R2 .001 .095 .184 p = * sig. <0.10 , *** sig. <0.01

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 31

The current data analysis found no significant effect of bidialectism on ToM development. While the mean score for passive Limburgish bidialectals was much lower, as compared to Dutch and active Limburgish bidialectals, this difference was not significant either.

It can thus not be said that this lower mean had a significant effect on further data analysis. The previously found effect of age on ToM was replicated. However, when the categorized child age variable is used, the age child effect is not significant.. Hence, it cannot be said that ToM development is a sudden process that has a breaking point at the age of four. Surprisingly, a significant effect of parental age was also found. This variable also significantly correlated with having older siblings. However, no effect was found between having older siblings and ToM.

4.5. Parental Age

Since parental age turned out to have such an important influence on ToM development, further analysis was performed in order to see whether the current research would be able to explain this finding. The current study was able to check correlations of parental age with age child, daycare attendance, the number of people in a family, having older siblings, and SES based on educational level. The details of this analysis are summarized in Table 10. The results show only a significant correlation between parental age and having older siblings (r=.504, p<.01), as already shown in the correlation analysis between the background variables. Age child (r=.145, p=.429), daycare attendance (r=-.092, p=.615), family size (r=.127, p=.489), and

SES (r=.075, p=.685) did not show to be significantly correlated with parental age. The only influential factor on the relationship between parental age and ToM - as far as the current dataset is able to research - could be having older siblings. However, as previously shown, there was no significant correlation between having older siblings and ToM development (r=0.30, p<.01, see Table 5). It can thus not be said that having older siblings could be an explanatory factor in COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 32

the relationship. The current study leaves the mechanisms underlying the relationship between parental age and ToM unclear.

Table 10. Correlations with Parental Age

Parental Age

Age child .145 Daycare -.092 Family Size .127 Older Siblings .504*** SES .075 p =*** sig. <0.01

4.6. Qualitative Analysis

After analysis of the hypotheses and some background data, qualitative analysis on the productive vocabulary test and dialect use in children and among their families was performed.

First, the answers children gave in the picture-based test on productive vocabulary were analyzed. The test contained 26 words with an increasing difficulty level as a child came to a higher number of pictures in the test. The degree in which children gave correct answers is interesting to look at. Several pictures never received a wrong answer. This was the case for

‘eye’, ‘ to eat’, ‘to drive’, ‘to cry’, ‘mouse’, ‘chair’. These pictures were all among the first 11, which is logical, as difficulty level increased as the test went on. In the case of ‘mouse’, none of the children were in need of any helping phrases. It could thus be said that this was the word most well-known by all children. On the other hand, there was also one word that none of the children got right: ‘booth’. This word was thus also not included in analysis, and should be removed if the current test would be used again. There were also some other words that not all, but the majority of the children answered wrong. These included: ‘draw’, ‘ax’, ‘pigeon’, COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 33

‘cannon’, ‘scale’, ‘weapon’, ‘seal’ and ‘to sift’. These words were all posed from the 12th picture onwards. This is also a logical consequence of the test becoming harder as the children were shown more pictures.

The next section will look more in-depth at children’s use of dialect, and to what extent and by who it is spoken to them. When analyzing language use in the productive vocabulary test, most answers children gave were in Dutch, which resulted in the majority to be assigned to the monolingual Dutch (n=16) and passive Limburgish group (n=13). The remaining children spoke mainly Limburgish in the test, and were assigned to an active Limburgish group (n=8).

However, some of the pictures contained more than 8 answers given in Limburgish, and were thus given by children who were assigned to either of two other groups. The words with this classification are: Oog/Oug (eye) (n=11), lade/laaj (draw) (n=11), aankleden/aandoon (to get dressed) (n=17), and schildpad/schîldjpad (turtle) (n=11). These words were spread throughout the test, and can thus not be assigned to a certain difficulty. It is also interesting to note here that all words are of regular use in a household, apart from turtle. The higher number of dialect use for turtle however, could also be due to accent, rather than true use of Limburgish.

While all pictures with right answers were at least answered right by one child in dialect, there were some pictures that only received an answer in Limburgish once the children received one of the helping phrases. This concerns the following words: Rijden/Ri-jje (to drive), kammen/keîme (to brush hair), bijl/biêl (ax), duif/doef (pigeon), weegschaal/baskuul (scale), and zeven/zieëve (to sift). The children who answered these pictures in Dutch, did include cases of answering right without having to use ‘help’ phrases. This was the case for all, apart from

‘to sift’. Interestingly enough, the children giving a Limburgish answer with help (n=3), were the only ones to appoint the correct name to the ‘to sift’ picture at all. No Dutch answers were given at all to this picture. COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 34

Secondly, the use of dialect with children can also be discussed. The parent filling in the questionnaire was asked to indicate their own mother tongue (n=37), and the mother tongue of their partner (n=35), which language they spoke with their partner (n=35), which language the parent (n=37) and their partner (n=36) spoke to the child, and what languages their family

(n=37) and their partner’s family spoke to the child (n=35). In addition, the language spoken by siblings to the child (n=31) and other important people that spend a lot of time with the child

(n=22) were taken into account. When comparing the mother tongue of the parent filling in the questionnaire to the language they spoke to the child, it already shows that not all parents who speak Limburgish themselves, also speak Limburgish to their child. While 23 of these parents indicate to have Limburgish as their mother tongue, only 20 of the parents speak Limburgish to their child. There is, however, no discrepancy with the families of these parents, where also 20 of the families speak Limburgish to the child. This is not the case for the partners of the parents filling in the questionnaire. From this group, 23 indicate to have Limburgish as their mother tongue. However, only 19 from this group actually speak Limburgish to their child. It is notable that from the partner’s family, 20 speak Limburgish to the child. There is thus also one case in which the family speaks Limburgish, but the parent does not. When a participating child has speaking siblings, Dutch is spoken by the majority of siblings (Dutch, n=24, Limburgish, n=9).

This may be the case since the siblings are often also still young, which matches the fact that not many children actively speak Limburgish. When other people spend a lot of time with the children as well, Dutch is also the most-used language (Dutch, n=15, Limburgish, n=7). Parents amongst each other show that 19 speak Limburgish and 16 speak Dutch. It can thus be said that the use of dialect with children does not necessarily come from a certain part of the family, since the numbers of people speaking Limburgish to the child does not differentiate that much.

This does not go for the siblings, who more often speak Dutch themselves as well. However, COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 35

there is a slight decrease of the use of Limburgish with children when comparing it to the mother tongues of the parents.

The qualitative analysis of the data gave an overview of dialect use of the children themselves, and the people close to them. It showed that not all parents who have Limburgish as their mother tongue, speak Limburgish to their child, and that dialect use among siblings is not that common, since the majority of children speaks Dutch. When looking at the Limburgish that children do speak Limburgish, there are a couple of words that are more prominent to be used in Limburgish than others (eye, draw, getting dressed, turtle). Apart from turtle, these are all words regularly used at home. Overall, the main language use was Dutch here, but there were also some children who produced Limburgish. Finally, the productive vocabulary test was meant to become more difficult as children got further through, and this showed in the answers the children gave throughout the test

5. Discussion The aim of the current study was to investigate the influence of growing up with both a

Limburgish dialect and Dutch (as opposed to growing up with Dutch only) on ToM development in 3- to 4-year old children. Specifically, the study aimed to determine whether the previously found cognitive advantage for bilingual children also counted for children growing up bidialectal. Since the mechanisms underlying the bilingual advantage can theoretically be applied to bidialectal children, the advantage was expected to be present for these bidialectal children as well. Additionally, the influence of age on ToM, which has been shown to appear around the age of four, was also examined again.

5.1. Theory of Mind and Bidialectism

The main focus of the study was put on the relationship between ToM and Limburgish bidialectism. The cognitive advantage found for Limburgish children in previous studies (Blom COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 36

et al., 2017), could not be replicated in the field of early ToM understanding. In this previous study, Limburgish children were found to have an advantage in working memory and attention tasks. In order to test whether a child was bidialectal or not in the present study, a picture-based test on productive vocabulary was administered, followed by an unexpected content ToM test.

The participants were divided into three linguistic groups, according to their reception and production of Limburgish. Additionally, the ToM test outcomes created four different groups of ToM competence. The outcomes of data analyses showed that there is no significant relationship between the degree to which a child can be considered bidialectal, and their ToM development. This means it cannot be said that children who grow up bidialectal have the same advantages as children who grow up bilingual. Results of the current study do not confirm the hypothesis on bidialectism.

An important observation to be made in the productive vocabulary test of the present study, is that children whose parents indicated them to be raised with a substantial amount of

Limburgish, never gave all 26 answers to the pictures in the test in Limburgish. Overall, the active Limburgish sample was very small (n=8), which may be the most important explanation for the lack of cognitive advantage. Most children considered bidialectal, did not produce the dialect themselves at the moment of testing (passive bidialectals). The eight children who did produce Limburgish, were mainly from the more Southern area of Middle Limburg. The location of testing may thus have had an influence on the amount of active Limburgish participants. If the present study would have recruited more into the southern part of Limburg, more active Limburgish bidialectals would be expected to have been found. This highlights the importance of linguistic context in the study of bidialectism. Within Limburg, there are regional differences in dialect use. The present study has recruited participants mainly in an area were the use of dialect among children is less prominent, which resulted in the small sample. In turn, COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 37

this may have had an effect on the results. Future research on bidialectism should just carefully consider the context in which research is performed.

In the unexpected content ToM task, the mean ToM ability of the passive bidialectal group was much lower than mean ToM ability of the active bidialectal and Dutch group. While the effect size did not show significance, it is interesting to take into account. It may be that the cognitive advantages of being bidialectal are confined to active bidialectism. Previous studies on the effect of bilingualism on cognitive ability in general, have shown that degree of bilingualism is an important factor in determining cognitive ability (Diaz & Hakuta, 1985;

Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008). As a consequence of this, it could be said that a bilingual person has to function in both languages at a certain level in order to acquire advantage from being bilingual (Bialystok, Bialystok, Craik, Klein, & Viswanathan, 2004; Martin-Rhee & Bialystok,

2008). This can be explained using the ‘threshold theory’ (Cummins, 1979; Ricciardelli, 1992), which states that in order for bilingualism to be advantageous for cognitive development, a bilingual needs to achieve a high level of linguistic proficiency in both their languages. It may thus well be so that the lower performance of passive bidialectals in the present study can be accounted for through the fact that they have not reached a desired level of linguistic proficiency in Limburgish yet, as they lack production of the Limburgish dialect. This may explain why no effect for bidialectism was found in the current study.

In addition, the eight children who could be considered active bidialectal in the current study had a tendency to switch between Dutch and Limburgish in the task, and thus use code- switching. Frequent mixing between languages is associated with less cognitive control than the case in which the use of two languages is separated from each other in different environments (Green, 1998). This separation is not fully the case in the Limburgish sample. In addition, the group of passive bidialectal children in the study, was rather large as compared to the active bidialectal group. The passive group contained those participants who got in touch COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 38

with Limburgish, but did not produce it themselves in the productive vocabulary task. During home visits, some parents of these children also indicated that they sometimes automatically talked Dutch to their children as well, since this was the language their children would also speak to them some of the time. When this happens, there is no longer a clear separation of which language is spoken where (e.g. Limburgish at home, Dutch at daycare/school). This unclear distinction, and mix in use, between the Limburgish dialect and Dutch language has been shown before (Francot et al., 2017). As Green (1998) indicates this to be disadvantageous to the development of cognitive control, the lack of advantage for bidialectal children could perhaps be explained along these lines. The present study is thus in line with previous research showing code-switching and mixing of languages to be disadvantageous in the development of cognitive advantage for bilinguals (Green, 1998; Festman et al., 2011).

To sum up, the sample size in the current study was low, since linguistic context of the use of dialect was not taken into account. As a result, not many children actively used

Limburgish. If the study had been conducted in a more southern region of Limburg, linguistic groups, and also results may have been different. In the present study, most bidialectal children were passive bidialectals. Since passive bidialectism has been associated with less cognitive advantage (Hakuta & Diaz, 1985; Bialystok et al., 2004; Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008; Martin-

Rhee & Bialystok, 2008) through the threshold theory (Cummins, 1979; Ricciardelli, 1992), this may have had an influence on the results. If the number of active Limburgish bidialectals would have been bigger, and the number of passive Limburgish bidialectals have been smaller, results may have been different. Context is thus of great importance in the study of bilingualism, and should be taken into account carefully by future research. Additionally, a high degree of code-switching in the active Limburgish group, may have had an influence on cognitive control, and resulted in a lack of cognitive advantage (Green, 1998; Festman et al., 2011). COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 39

5.2. Theory of Mind and Age

The second hypothesis of the current study focused on the previously studied relationship between age and ToM. Child age was both studied as a categorized variable, which separated three- and four-year-olds at 47 months old, and an uncategorized variable. The expected positive relationship was replicated for the uncategorized child age variable. No significance was found for the categorized child age variable. The normal development of ToM with age is thus also shown in this study, though it does not exactly show up for the separated groups. However, the age-group of four years old (n=11) was much smaller than the three-year- olds (n=26), which may have had an effect on the results. The hypothesis about age can thus partially be confirmed. It is indeed the case that as children grow older, they develop a better

ToM understanding. However, a cutting point at 47 months of age was not found. ToM understanding may have developed for these children more gradually, and therefore, the significance may get lost once the age variable is categorized, especially considering the small sample size (n=37). Studies that investigated the relationship between age and ToM (sometimes in addition to bilingualism) have mixed the use of categorized child age (Wimmer & Perner,

1986; Goetz, 2003) and uncategorized child age (Kovács, 2009; Cheung et al., 2010; Nguyen

& Astington, 2014). However, all studies did find an effect of age on ToM. It may thus be that the categorization used for age in the present study, was simply not based on an accurate split, or due to the small sample size

5.3. Theory of Mind and Background Variables

In addition to bidialectism and child age, some background variables coming from the parental questionnaire were also analyzed for both ToM and bidialectism. This was done in order to see whether other factors could have an influence on either of the variables. The tested variables were: parental age, daycare attendance, having older siblings, and socioeconomic status (SES) derived from the mean educational level of parents. It is strange that no effect of COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 40

SES was found, since this factor is taken into account by many studies investigating the cognitive effects of growing up bilingually. However, the general literature on the effect of SES on false-belief understanding is divided on the topic. Some studies find no significant effect of

SES on ToM performance (Noble, Norman, & Farah, 2005; Lucariello, Durand, & Yarnell,

2007), while others do find SES to be significantly influential (Cutting & Dunn, 1999; Shatz,

Diesendruck, Martinez-Beck, & Akar, 2003; Razza & Blair, 2009). An explanation provided for this division, is that the influence of SES on ToM performance is task dependent (Lucariello et al., 1999). The influence of SES may thus not be significant for unexpected content tasks as the used ToM task designed by Hogrefe, Wimmer and Perner (1986).

While no significant correlations were found between the background variables and bidialectism, there was a significant correlation between parental age and ToM. This unexpected finding can perhaps be explained by the influence of occupational class. In a 1999 study, Cutting and Dunn found occupational class of a child’s parents to have a significant influence on the development of false-belief understanding. This influence was not shown in parental education, which was used as the determiner for SES in the current study. It may thus be so that older parents may have had more time to get to a higher occupational class, than younger parents. Since having a higher occupational class has been shown to influence ToM development (Cutting & Dunn, 1999), children who have older parents are automatically placed in higher occupational class. As a consequence, they will also develop this advantage in ToM.

However, this is mere speculation at this point, and proper research is needed in order to make statements about this influence. The other background variables did not show to have a significant influence on ToM development.

6. Conclusion In summary, the results reported in this study do not show an advantage in ToM development for Limburgish bidialectal children. The lack of advantage may be due to the low COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 41

number of active Limburgish bidialectals in the study. The use of Limburgish among children in the selected research area was low, but increased as participants came from the more southern part of the region. Linguistic context becomes an important factor for dialect use, and should be carefully considered in future research on bidialectism. It is also suggested that being a passive bidialectal inhibits the development of cognitive advantage, since a high level of proficiency is needed in both linguistic systems, according to threshold theory. Also, a high degree of code-switching and frequent mixing in active Limburgish bidialectal children may have had an influence. Secondly, the results do replicate the previous findings of ToM development with age. As children grow older, they start to understand the mental states of others, and can predict behaviour upon it. In addition to the two hypotheses, several background variables were also tested against bidialectism and ToM development. The analysis of these variables showed a significant correlation between parental age and ToM understanding, which could perhaps be explained through higher occupational class of older parents.

A limitation of the current study is the relatively small sample that took part in the study

(n=37). Since the sample was further grouped, this resulted into small groups to compare in analyses of data, which may have affected the results. Especially the group of active Limburgish bidialectals was rather small (n=8). Further research could thus attempt to obtain a larger sample, in which linguistic context is important to consider. Additionally, future research could further explore the relationship between parental age and ToM understanding, which the current study was unable to do.

Despite these limitations, the study gives a first step into the field of bidialectism and cognitive development of ToM, and adds to the understanding of the effects growing up with a

Limburgish dialect may have. While no significant results regarding Limburgish bidialectism were found in this study, it can still add information to the discussion. The expected positive relationship was not found, but neither was there a significant effect for a negative relationship, COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 42

or a negative relationship at all. Limburgish bidialectism may thus not have a very large influence on ToM in general. Since the field is still quite new, further research may focus on other unexplored fields of cognitive development, in order to gain a broader understanding of the effects of Limburgish bidialectism.

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 43

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COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 49

8. Appendix

8.1. Picture-based Test on Productive Vocabulary

1. 0: Oog , 1: Oug

2. 0 = Eten , 1 = Eêten

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 50

3. 0 = Voet , 1 = Voot

4. 0: Rijden , 1: Ri-jje

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 51

5. 0: Handschoen , 1: Haos

6. 0: Potlood, 1: Potloeëd

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 52

7. 0: Huilen , 1: Huûle / Jânke / Kake / Kriête / Zûmpe / Bäöke / Griêne

8. 0: Kraam , 1: Kraom

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 53

9. 0: Muis , 1: Moês

10. 0: Kammen , 1: Keîme

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 54

11. 0: Stoel , 1: Stool

12. 0: Lade , 1: Laaj

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 55

13. 0: Wasknijper , 1: Waspinke

14. 0: Duwen , 1: Dowwe

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 56

15. 0: Bijl , 1: Biêl

16. 0: Duif , 1: Doef

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 57

17. 0: Arm , 1: Êrm

18. 0: Kanon , 1: Kenón

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 58

19. 0: Weegschaal , 1: Baskuul

20. 0: Struik , 1: Stroêk

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 59

21. 0: Aankleden , 1: Aandoon

22. 0: Wapen , 1: Waope

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 60

23. 0: Zeehond , 1: Zieëhôndj

24. 0: Slijper , 1: Sliêper

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 61

25. 0: Zeven , 1: Zieëve

26. 0: Schildpad , 1: Schîldjpad

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 62

8.2. Data Sheet Picture-based Test on Productive Vocabulary

# Dialect Dialect Dialect help Wrong Dutch help Dutch encouragement

1-26

8.3. Data Sheet Unexpected Content Theory of Mind Test

Chips Crayons

What do you think is in this bag?

What is really in this bag?

What do you think [person] will say is in this bag?

Succeed: What is really in this bag?

Fail: Do you remember what you thought was in this bag at first?

8.4. Parental Questionnaire

Onderzoek ‘Theory of Mind effect van Dialectgebruik bij Jonge Kinderen’ Vragenlijst Achtergrondgegevens

1. Codenummer (in te vullen door onderzoeker) …………………………………………………………………………… 2. Geboortedatum kind (dag / maand / jaar) ……………………………………………………………………………

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 63

3. Uw geslacht Man = 1 Vrouw = 2 4. In welk land bent u geboren? 1. Nederland 2. Anders, namelijk ………………………………………………………………… 5. Wat is uw moedertaal (de eerste taal die u leerde spreken)? 1. Nederlands 2. Limburgs dialect 3. Anders, namelijk ………………………………………………………………… 6. Wat is uw hoogste opleidingsniveau? 1. Speciaal onderwijs of gewone lagere school (basisschool) 2. VMBO 3. MAVO 4. HAVO, MBO 5. VWO, HBO 6. WO 7. Anders, namelijk

7. Heeft u deze opleiding afgerond met een diploma? Ja = 1 Nee = 2

8. Heeft u een partner? (bij nee, ga naar vraag 16) Ja = 1 Nee = 2 9. In welk land is uw partner geboren? 1. Nederland 2. Anders, namelijk ………………………………………………………………… 10. Wat is de moedertaal van uw partner? 1. Nederlands 2. Limburgs dialect 3. Anders, namelijk ………………………………………………………………… COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 64

11. Wat is het hoogste opleidingsniveau van uw partner? 1. Speciaal onderwijs of gewone lagere school (basisschool) 2. VMBO 3. MAVO 4. HAVO, MBO 5. VWO, HBO 6. WO 7. Anders, namelijk 12. Heeft uw partner deze opleiding afgerond met een diploma? Ja = 1 Nee = 2 13. Welke taal spreekt u met uw partner? 1. Nederlands 2. Limburgs dialect 3. Anders, namelijk ………………………………………………………………… 14. Uit hoeveel personen bestaat uw gezin? ………. Personen, waarvan ………. volwassenen en ………. kinderen 15. Welke leeftijd hebben de personen in uw gezin? Leeftijd Relatie tot kind in onderzoek 1. ………. ………………………………………………… 2. ………. ………………………………………………… 3. ………. ………………………………………………… 4. ………. ………………………………………………… 5. ………. ………………………………………………… 6. ………. ………………………………………………… 7. ………. ………………………………………………… 8. ………. ………………………………………………… 9. ………. ………………………...……………………… 10. ………. …………………………………………………

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 65

16. Met wie voedt u uw kind(eren) op? 1. Ik voed mijn kin(eren) met mijn partner op 2. Ik voed mijn kind(eren) met een familielid op, namelijk ……………………………. 3. Ik voed mijn kind(eren) alleen op 4. Anders, namelijk ………………………………………………………………… 17. Wie brengt in uw gezin door de week de meeste tijd met uw kind(eren) door? 1. Ikzelf 2. Partner 3. Ongeveer gelijk, vader en moeder 4. Anders, namelijk ………………………………………………………………… 18. Welke taal spreekt u met uw kind dat meedoet aan dit onderzoek? 1. Nederlands 2. Limburgs dialect 3. Anders, namelijk ………………………………………………………………… 19. Welke taal spreekt uw partner met uw kind dat meedoet aan dit onderzoek? 1. Nederlands 2. Limburgs dialect 3. Anders, namelijk ………………………………………………………………… 20. Welke taal spreken broers/zussen met uw kind dat meedoet aan dit onderzoek? 1. Nederlands 2. Limburgs dialect 3. Anders, namelijk …………………………………………………………………

21. Welke taal spreekt uw familie overwegend met uw kind dat meedoet aan dit onderzoek? 1. Nederlands 2. Limburgs dialect 3. Anders, namelijk …………………………………………………………………

COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LIMBURGISH BIDIALECTISM 66

22. Welke taal spreekt uw partners familie overwegend met uw kind dat meedoet aan dit onderzoek? 1. Nederlands 2. Limburgs dialect 3. Anders, namelijk ………………………………………………………………… 23. Zijn er nog andere personen die veel tijd met uw kind doorbrengen? (zo nee, ga naar vraag 25) Ja = 1 Nee = 2 24. Welke taal spreken deze personen overwegend met uw kind dat meedoet aan dit onderzoek? 1. Nederlands 2. Limburgs dialect 3. Anders, namelijk ………………………………………………………………… 25. Hoeveel dagdelen per week gaat uw kind naar de kinderopvang? 1 dag = 1 2 dagen = 2 3 dagen = 3 4 dagen = 4

5 dagen = 5