The Impact of Lexical Skills and Executive Functioning on L1 and L2 Phonological Awareness in Bilingual Kindergarten

Dataset containing the raw data and syntax used for analyses in the research described in the published article "The Impact of Lexical Skills and Executive Functioning on L1 and L2 Phonological Awareness in Bilingual Kindergarten" (Kwakkel et al., 2021). This study investigated the role of lexical skills and executive functioning on L1 Dutch and L2 English phonological awareness in children enrolled in bilingual Dutch/English kindergarten in The Netherlands (n = 95) and monolingual Dutch kindergarten (n = 83). Participants had an average age of 5 years and 10 months and completed tasks on phonological awareness, lexical skills (vocabulary and lexical specificity), and executive functioning (sustained visual and auditory attention, behavioural self-regulation, and verbal short-term memory) in the L1 Dutch and the L2 English. Dutch phonological awareness was predicted by self-regulation and verbal short-term memory. English phonological awareness was directly predicted by Dutch phonological awareness and visual sustained attention. The results highlight the importance of executive functioning such as sustained attention, behavioural self-regulation and short-term memory in first and second language learning in kindergarten, and support cross-language transfer effects from L1 to L2 phonological awareness among bilingual learners.