[A] Evidence for a "bilingual advantage"—the idea that speaking more than one language improves mental skills such as attention

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问题    [A] Evidence for a "bilingual advantage"—the idea that speaking more than one language improves mental skills such as attention control or ability to switch between tasks—has been mixed. Most studies have had only a few dozen participants from mid- to high-socioeconomic-status backgrounds perform laboratory-based tasks.
   [B] The use of such a sizable data set "constitutes a landmark approach" for language studies, says Jon Andoni Dunabeitia, a professor at Nebrija University in Madrid, who was not involved in the work. But Dnabeitia notes the data did not contain details such as when bilingual subjects learned each language or how often they spoke it. Without this information, Hartanto concedes, it is difficult to draw conclusions about how being bilingual could confer cognitive advantages.
   [C] Children growing up in low-income homes score lower than their wealthier peers on cognitive tests and other measures of scholastic success, study after study has found. Now mounting evidence suggests a way to mitigate this disadvantage: learning another language.
   [D] Andree Hartanto, a doctoral candidate at Singapore Management University and the study’ s lead author, says he sought out a data set of thousands of children who were demographically representative of the U.S. population. It is the largest study to date on the bilingual advantage and captures more socioeconomic diversity than most others, Hartanto says. The analysis also includes a real-world measure of children’s cognitive skills: teacher evaluations.
   [E] Hartanto agrees that it will take more work to untangle the complex relations among bilingual-ism, socioeconomic status and cognitive development. The new findings, he says, "show us that the answer to bilingual cognitive advantages should not be a simple yes or no."
   [F] Kenneth Paap, a psychologist at San Francisco State University, thinks other factors may explain higher performance in bilingual children. For example, they are more likely to be immigrants. Previous epidemiological studies have revealed a "healthy immigrant effect," Paap says, referring to findings that immigrants on average have better physical health and lower mortality rates than native-born citizens. This benefit could extend to cognitive ability.
   [G] In an analysis published online in January in Child Development, Singapore Management University researchers probed demographic data and intellectual assessments from a subset of more than 18,000 kindergartners and first graders in the U.S. As expected, they found children from families with low socioeconomic status (based on factors such as household income and parents’ occupation and education level) scored lower on cognitive tests. But within this group, kids whose families spoke a second language at home scored better than monolinguals.
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选项

答案G

解析 第一段提到了Children growing up in low-income homes,之后又提到了another language,所以之后的段落应和这两方面的内容相关,只有G项符合题意。该段指出新加坡管理大学的研究人员对超过18 000名孩子进行了研究,并得出结论:使用第二外语的孩子得分要相对高一些。故本题选G。
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