Abstract
It is known that prefrontal cortex achieves its complete anatomo-physiological development only at the puberty age. Prospective Memory (PM) develops accordingly, since it is mainly based on prefrontal structures. These structures are also responsible for control mechanism in bilinguals’ language production. Studies have shown that this particular language processing in bilinguals has positive effects on cognitive development, particularly on executive functions. The present study aims at tracking the development of PM in monolingual and bilingual scholar children (aged 8 and 12) and evaluating whether it is related to other cognitive, social and behavioural traits. We assessed PM through an event-based visuo-spatial task, which required participants to respond whenever a probe picture appeared. The PM task was embedded in an updating WM task (ongoing activity) while an additional Go/No-Go task was used to assess inhibition. Moreover, a questionnaire evaluating social adaptation was administered to both children and their teachers. Results confirmed that PM ability improves with age. PM development tended to be higher in bilingual than in monolingual children and was mediated by the maturation of social and behavioural abilities. This pattern of results supported the idea that bilingual education may help the development of executive functions.