A Behavioral and Electrophysiological Investigation of the Effect of Bilingualism on Lexical Ambiguity Resolution in Young Adults

Abstract

Previous research suggests that bilinguals demonstrate superior cognitive control processes than monolinguals. The goal of the current investigation was to examine whether this “bilingual advantage” is observed in a language processing task that requires inhibition, i.e., lexical ambiguity processing. Monolingual and bilingual participants read sentences that biased the reading of a terminal homonym toward the subordinate or dominant reading (e.g., The doctor asked her to step onto the scale.). A relatedness judgment was made on target words that were related to the contextually appropriate (e.g., balance) or inappropriate meaning (e.g., skin), or unrelated to either meaning (e.g., shoe) while electrophysiological recording took place. The results revealed subtle processing differences between monolinguals and bilinguals that were evident in electrophysiological measures, but not in behavioral measures. These findings suggest that monolinguals rely on context to access the contextually appropriate meaning of a homonym to a greater extent than bilinguals, while bilinguals demonstrate simultaneous activation of both meanings.

Does the Bilingual Advantage in Cognitive Control Exist and If So, What Are Its Modulating Factors? A Systematic Review

“…Of the 56, 46 were original studies [7,14,21,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69] and 10 were review/meta-analysis studies [70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79]. The bilingual studies were conducted on several continents, with 23 (41.1%) having been conducted in North America (particularly in Canada) [14,21,27,29,30,31,32,34,38,45,…”

“…Different tasks have been used to test the bilingual advantage in cognitive control; among them, the Simon task [80], the attention network test [81], Flanker tasks [82], the Stroop task [83], and switching tasks [36] have been most frequently used to test the bilingual advantage in cognitive control. Of the 46 original studies implemented in the present review, 23 used the Simon task, 5 the attention network test, 9 Flanker tasks, 9 the Stroop task, and 7 a switching task; moreover, in 20 original studies, other experimental tasks were used: e.g., verbal fluency [84], interpretation, a judgment task [53], an N-back task [85], a reading task, a picture–word identification task [63], the Wisconsin card sorting test [86], the Tower of London task [87], the digit span task [88], the Hebb repetition paradigm [89], Luria’s tapping task [90], the opposite worlds task [91], the reverse categorization task [92], the sustained attention to response task [93], the trail making test [94], and the dichotic listening task [95]. Please note that some studies used more than one experimental task, and as a result, the total number of experimental tasks is higher than the total number of original studies.…”

Does the Bilingual Advantage in Cognitive Control Exist and if so, what are Its Modulating Factors? A Systematic Review

“…However, with respect to the behavioral results, only on the Stroop task [83] was evidence found in favor of the 'bilingual advantage in cognitive control' hypothesis. Finally, in their EEG study, Kousaie and colleagues [53] found no support for the bilingual advantage on a relatedness judgment task in young adults; the analysis of the behavioral scores revealed that the monolinguals and the bilinguals performed equally well on the task. Only subtle electrophysiological differences in the language processing were found.…”

“…Different tasks have been used to test the bilingual advantage in cognitive control; among them the Simon task [80], the Attention Network Test [81], Flanker tasks [82], the Stroop task [83], and switching tasks [36] have been most frequently used to test the bilingual advantage in cognitive control. Of the 46 original studies implemented in the present review, 23 used the Simon task, 5 the Attention Network Test, 9 Flanker tasks, 9 the Stroop task, and 7 a switching task; moreover, in 20 original studies, other experimental tasks were used: e.g., verbal fluency [84], interpretation, a judgment task [53], an N-back task [85], a reading task, a picture-word identification task [63], the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test [86], the Tower of London task [87], the digit span task [88], the Hebb repetition paradigm [89], Luria's tapping task [90], the Opposite Worlds task [91], the reverse categorization task [92], the Sustained Attention to Response task [93], the Trail Making test [94], and the Dichotic listening task [95]. Please note that some studies used more than one experimental task, and as a result, the total number of experimental tasks is higher than the total number of original studies.…”

“…Brain structures that had previously been found to be active in nonlinguistic executive control tasks were found to be involved, thereby indirectly supporting the bilingual advantage hypothesis. Kousaie and colleagues [53] used a relatedness judgment task and found no evidence for a bilingual advantage. The behavioral scores of bilinguals and monolinguals showed no differences.…”