The Bilingual Advantage Debate

Bruin, Angela de; Sala, Sergio Della

doi:10.1002/9781119387725.ch35

Cited by 27 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…In particular, environments where two or more languages are used may be particularly demanding for a variety of control processes including active goal maintenance and conflict monitoring (Green & Abutalebi, 2013). However, the relationship between bilingualism and executive control has been contentious because of high variance in the outcomes of individual studies and meta-analytical reports of small effect sizes that do not survive corrections for publication bias (de Bruin & Della Sala, 2019; de Bruin, Treccani, & Della Sala, 2015; Donnelly et al, 2019; Lehtonen et al, 2018; Paap, 2019, 2014; Paap, Johnson, & Sawi, 2015).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…A third issue generally raised in the social sciences, applied to the domain of bilingualism and executive control, is the potential for publication bias (e.g., Easterbrook, Gopalan, Berlin, & Matthews, 1991) or other questionable research practices (such as p-hacking; Nuzzo, 2014), as well as an overreliance on small sample sizes among published studies (de Bruin & Della Sala, 2019; de Bruin et al, 2015; Donnelly et al, 2019; Lehtonen et al, 2018; Paap, 2019, 2014). According to this line of argument, the culture within the social sciences has resulted in a publication bias where studies with significant positive results to be published over studies with negative or null results.…”

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Engaging proactive control: Influences of diverse language experiences using insights from machine learning.

Gullifer

Titone

2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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We used insights from machine learning to address an important but contentious question: is bilingual language experience associated with executive control abilities? Specifically, we assess proactive executive control for over 400 young adult bilinguals via reaction time on an AX continuous performance task (AX-CPT). We measured bilingual experience as a continuous, multidimensional spectrum (i.e., age of acquisition, language entropy, and sheer second language exposure). Linear mixed effects regression analyses indicated significant associations between bilingual language experience and proactive control, consistent with previous work. Information criteria (e.g., AIC) and cross-validation further suggested that these models are robust in predicting data from novel, unmodeled participants. These results were bolstered by crossvalidated LASSO regression, a form of penalized regression. However, the results of both crossvalidation procedures also indicated that similar predictive performance could be achieved through simpler models that only included information about the AX-CPT (i.e., trial type). Collectively, these results suggest that the effects of bilingual experience on proactive control, to the extent that they exist in younger adults, are likely small. Thus, future studies will require even larger or qualitatively different samples (e.g., older adults or children) in combination with valid, granular quantifications of language experience to reveal predictive effects on novel participants.

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Engaging proactive control: Influences of diverse language experiences using insights from machine learning.

Gullifer

Titone

2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…Similarly, the ‘bilingualism advantage’ regarding enhanced cognitive skills in bilinguals has been extensively investigated, with recent meta‐analyses showing mixed findings: although there seems to be a small marginal effect of bilingualism in executive functions (Gunnerud et al., 2020; Nichols et al., 2020), publication bias also has affected reporting of results (de Bruin & Della Sala, 2019).…”

Section: Domain‐general Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Situating language and music research in a domain‐specific versus domain‐general framework: A review of theoretical and empirical data

Drakoulaki,

Anagnostopoulou,

Guasti

et al. 2024

Language and Linguist. Compass

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While many theoretical proposals about the relationship between language and music processing have been proposed over the past 40 years, recent empirical advances have shed new light on this relationship. Many features are shared between language and music, inspiring research in the fields of linguistic theory, systematic musicology, and cognitive (neuro‐)science. This research has led to many and diverse findings, making comparisons difficult. In the current review, we propose a framework within which to organise past research and conduct future research, suggesting that past research has assumed either domain‐specificity or domain‐generality for language and music. Domain‐specific approaches theoretically and experimentally describe aspects of language and music processing assuming that there is shared (structure‐building) processing. Domain‐general approaches theoretically and experimentally describe how mechanisms such as cognitive control, attention or neural entrainment can explain language and music processing. Here we propose that combining elements from domain‐specific and domain‐general approaches can be beneficial for advances in theoretical and experimental work, as well as for diagnoses and interventions for atypical populations. We provide examples of past research which has implicitly merged domain‐specific and domain‐general assumptions, and suggest new experimental designs that can result from such a combination aiming to further our understanding of the human brain.

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“…Antoniou, 2019; Bialystok, 2017; Hilchey et al, 2015; Privitera et al, 2021; Privitera, Momenian, & Weekes, 2022; Valian, 2015), evidence for reduced performance associated with bilingualism has also been reported (e.g., Dick et al, 2019). To capture the observation that bilingualism is associated with both advantages and disadvantages in executive function, the present review has adopted the term “bilingual effects.” The veracity of positive bilingual effects (i.e., bilingual advantages) has been called into question in light of alternative explanations rooted in the influence of nonlinguistic variables (De Bruin & Della Sala, 2019; De Bruin et al, 2015; Donnelly et al, 2019; Gunnerud et al, 2020; Lehtonen et al, 2018; Naeem et al, 2018; Paap, 2019; Paap et al, 2020). A complementary explanation is that mixed findings may also result from methodological differences between studies including whether between (i.e., bilingual vs monolingual) or within-group (i.e., bilinguals who differ in their degree of bilingualism) designs are used, where those studies are conducted, the behavioral tasks that are used, or how these data are analyzed.…”

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Scoping review of research practices in the investigation of bilingual effects on inhibition and attention in young people

Privitera

Weekes

2022

International Journal of Bilingualism

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Aims and objectives: The aim of this scoping review is to curate and summarize research methodologies used to assess the effects of bilingualism on inhibition and attention in young people. Methodology: The methodology of a scoping review was followed. Searches of the literature using inclusive search strings were conducted using PubMed, Scopus, Proquest, and PsyArXiv. Study selection followed the guidance of the PRISMA-ScR checklist with published and unpublished studies included. Data and analysis: Extracted data included study authors, year of publication, source format (e.g., journal article, thesis), country in which the study was conducted, sample size, average age of participants in the sample, language combination used by participants in the bilingual sample, task(s) used to assess inhibition, task(s) used to assess attention, and method used for data analysis. Findings and conclusions: Studies identified were disproportionately conducted in English-speaking (Western) language environments, based on bilingual samples who were proficient in English and a second language that was typically a related Indo-European language (e.g., English-Spanish). Tasks employed were most often aimed at measuring differences in inhibition compared with attention. Finally, almost all studies were limited to between group designs and fixed-effects analysis methods. Future research can be improved through inclusion of samples from a wider range of language backgrounds that is representative of more diverse language combinations, and underrepresented age groups. Furthermore, within participant mixed-effects analysis methods that account for the diversity of bilingual experience would strengthen the methodological rigor of future studies. Originality: This is the first scoping review focused on methods used to investigate bilingual effects in young people. Significance: We provide strong evidence that standard methods ignore nontrivial differences in bilingual experience. In addition, Westocentric sampling trends provide an incomplete and biased understanding of the true effects of bilingualism.

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The Bilingual Advantage Debate

Cited by 27 publications

References 48 publications

Engaging proactive control: Influences of diverse language experiences using insights from machine learning.

Engaging proactive control: Influences of diverse language experiences using insights from machine learning.

Situating language and music research in a domain‐specific versus domain‐general framework: A review of theoretical and empirical data

Scoping review of research practices in the investigation of bilingual effects on inhibition and attention in young people

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