This study illustrates the effect of cultural, linguistic, socioeconomic status (SES), and developmental factors on young minority and majority children's cognitive development. The objective is to study developmental, SES, and linguistic factors affecting the performance of three groups of young children (i.e., monolingual mainstream, monolingual Hispanic, and bilingual Hispanic) in an alternative assessment of cognition and language (i.e., the Qualitative Use of English as Spanish Tasks, QUEST; Gonzalez, 1994, 1995). The methodology includes a quasi-experimental design using five independent variables as predictors: language of administration and response for QUEST (English and/or Spanish), low and middle-high SES, age (4 to 9 years of age), and gender. The dependent variable, the children's performance on QUEST, was analyzed using one-way ANOVA and multiple regression models. Results showed the presence of a major pattern indicating that SES, developmental (age), linguistic (i.e., language of administration and response-including code switching and code mixing, and linguistic characteristics of Spanish and English), and cultural factors (content knowledge represented by stimuli) significantly influence monolingual and bilingual children's verbal and non-verbal concept formation processes. Thus, allowing children to use their strongest language and cultural style of communication (including code switching and code mixing) is an important variable in cognitive assessment. Thus, the fact that most language-minority children come from disadvantaged SES backgrounds, rather than they speak Spanish or are limited-English proficient, is the most important variable influencing their performance in cognitive developmental tasks. The most important theoretical contribution was the empirical validation of a complex revised model showing: (1) support for the complex interaction of cognitive, linguistic, and cultural factors influencing verbal and non-verbal concept construction processes measured by alternative assessments; and (2) similarities and differences between monolingual and bilingual children, in comparison to previous findings (Gonzalez, 1991, 1994, 1995; Gonzalez, Bauerle, & Felix-Holt, 1996). Practical contributions of the study for the assessment of young children indicate that the performance of bilingual low SES students, as well as of monolingual children, is affected by the language of administration and response, and cultural attributes of alternative measures of cognitive and language development. The alternative assessment used, QUEST, provided an opportunity for bilingual children to demonstrate how their understanding of different languages and cultures had enhanced their cognitive development. QUEST provided a window to observe the presence of different content cultural knowledge domains learned, and cognitive processes that are nurtured by bilingual and bicultural settings.
