Highlights-Language switching is directly related to executive control advantages -Frequent language switchers are better at processing conflicting information -L2 proficiency plays a much smaller role 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 AbstractIn an ongoing debate, bilingual research currently discusses whether bilingualism enhances non-linguistic executive control. The goal of this study was to investigate the influence of language switching experience, rather than language proficiency, on this bilingual executive control advantage. We compared the performance of unbalanced bilinguals, balanced non-switching, and balanced switching bilinguals on two executive control tasks, i.e. a flanker and a Simon task. We found that the balanced switching bilinguals outperformed both other groups in terms of executive control performance, whereas the unbalanced and balanced non-switching bilinguals did not differ. These findings indicate that language switching experience, rather than high second-language proficiency, is the key determinant of the bilingual advantage in cognitive control processes related to interference resolution.

The current study investigated the effects of bilingualism on the clinical manifestation of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in a European sample of patients. We assessed all incoming AD patients in two university hospitals within a specified timeframe. Sixty-nine monolinguals and 65 bilinguals diagnosed with probable AD were compared for time of clinical AD manifestation and diagnosis. The influence of other potentially interacting variables was also examined. Results indicated a significant delay for bilinguals of 4.6 years in manifestation and 4.8 years in diagnosis. Our study therefore strengthens the claim that bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve and postpones the symptoms of dementia.

The present study explored the relation between language control and nonverbal cognitive control in different bilingual populations. We compared monolinguals, Dutch-French unbalanced bilinguals, balanced bilinguals, and interpreters on the Simon task (Simon & Rudell, 1967) and the Attention Network Test (ANT; Fan, McCandliss, Sommer, Raz, & Posner, 2002). All bilingual groups showed a smaller congruency effect in the Simon task than the monolingual group. They were also faster overall in the ANT. Furthermore, interpreters outperformed unbalanced, but not balanced, bilinguals in terms of overall accuracy on both tasks. In the ANT, the error congruency effect was significantly smaller for interpreters and balanced bilinguals. Using a measure of switching fluency in language production, this study also found direct evidence for a relation between language control and executive control. This relation was only observed in balanced bilinguals, where fluent switching was correlated with the Simon effect. These findings support the existence of a bilingual advantage and also indicate that different patterns of bilingual language use modulate the nature and extent of a cognitive control advantage in multilingual populations.

Language switching experience is assumed to have an effect on domain-general control abilities in bilinguals, but previous studies on the relationship between these two variables have generated mixed results. The present study investigated the effects of bilingual experiences on the interaction between language switching and domain-general control. Thirty-two Dutch–French bilingual young adults executed a bilingual categorisation task to assess their language switching abilities and a Simon task to assess domain-general control. The results show that global response times on the Simon task were correlated to the forward switch cost (from L1 to L2); moreover, interestingly, the forward switch cost was found to be related to recent language exposure but not to the age of second language acquisition. We suggest a monitoring account of language switching to integrate the first finding with previous studies and we interpret the second finding as support for the adaptive control hypothesis.

Recent findings suggest that people with dyslexia experience difficulties with the learning of serial order information during the transition from short- to long-term memory (Szmalec et al. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition 37(5): 1270-1279, 2011). At the same time, models of short-term memory increasingly incorporate a distinction of order and item processing (Majerus et al. Cognition 107: 395-419, 2008). The current study is aimed to investigate whether serial order processing deficiencies in dyslexia can be traced back to a selective impairment of short-term memory for serial order and whether this impairment also affects processing beyond the verbal domain. A sample of 26 adults with dyslexia and a group of age and IQ-matched controls participated in a 2 × 2 × 2 experiment in which we assessed short-term recognition performance for order and item information, using both verbal and nonverbal material. Our findings indicate that, irrespective of the type of material, participants with dyslexia recalled the individual items with the same accuracy as the matched control group, whereas the ability to recognize the serial order in which those items were presented appeared to be affected in the dyslexia group. We conclude that dyslexia is characterized by a selective impairment of short-term memory for serial order, but not for item information, and discuss the integration of these findings into current theoretical views on dyslexia and its associated dysfunctions.