The Cognitive Science of Bilingualism

Abstract

Recent research in cognitive effects of bilingualism has generated both excitement and controversy. The current paper provides an overview of this literature that has taken a componential approach toward cognitive effects of bilingualism, according to which bilingual advantages in executive functions are measured in terms of executive control (inhibiting, switching, updating) and monitoring. Findings to date indicate that the presence or absence of bilingual advantages may be influenced by a variety of learner and environmental factors, including the bilingual individual's age, age of acquisition, language proficiency, frequency of language use, and difficulty of the experimental task. The cognitive effects of bilingualism must be interpreted in light of the bilingual's lifelong linguistic experience, which results in adaptive changes in the mind and the brain. We suggest directions for future research in this domain.

The Impact of Language Switching Frequency on Attentional and Executive Functioning in Proficient Bilingual Adults

“…Bilingual executive advantages have been observed in children (e.g., Bialystok & Barac, 2012; Kalashnikova & Mattock, 2014; Nicolay & Poncelet, 2013; Nicolay & Poncelet, 2015), adults (e.g., Bialystok, Poarch, Luo, & Craik 2014; Costa, Hernandez, Costa-Faidella, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2009; Costa, Hernandez, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2008; Fernandez, Acosta, Douglass, Doshi, & Tartar, 2014; Fernadez, Tartar, Padron, & Acosta, 2013; Ibrahim, Shoshani, Prior, Prior, & Share, 2013; Marzecová, Asanowicz, Kriva, & Wodniecka, 2012; Seçer, 2016) or even older adults (e.g., Bialystok et al, 2014). These advantages, demonstrated by several studies, have been noted in tasks assessing, for instance, the suppression of automatic response tendencies (response inhibition; Fernandez et al, 2013; Fernandez et al, 2014), the ability to ignore irrelevant conflicting information (interference inhibition; Costa et al, 2008; Marzecová et al, 2012), the ability to shift from a mental set to another (set-shifting) within the demands of a particular context or to switch attention from one aspect to another of a stimulus (cognitive flexibility; Ibrahim et al, 2013; Liu, Fan, Rossi, Yao, & Chen, 2015; Nicolay & Poncelet, 2013, 2015; Seçer, 2016), and the ability to monitor and to use (or to delete) working memory information (updating; e.g., Dong & Li, 2015). All these skills cover the range of executive sub-components (inhibition, cognitive shifting or cognitive flexibility, and updating) described by the model of Miyake (Miyake et al, 2000).…”

“…Bilingual advantages in executive functions are well documented (see Bialystok, 2009; Dong & Li, 2015, for a review), but the specific aspects of bilingualism that underlie these advantages are unclear. The few studies conducted up until now on this subject (e.g., Hartanto & Yang, 2016; Prior & Gollan, 2011; Verreyt, Woumans, Vandelanotte, Szmalec, & Duyck, 2016) have suggested that the frequency of language switching may partially mediate this advantage.…”

Bilingualism alters children's frontal lobe functioning for attentional control

“…Theories of bilingual cognitive development further suggest that the doubling of these conflicting contexts that are typical of bilingual language acquisition (e.g. increasing the number of possible homophones) and the unique need to selectively attend to one language while suppressing the other may alter bilinguals’ attentional control mechanisms (Bialystok, Craik & Luk, ; Green & Abutalebi, ; Dong & Li, ; Kroll, Dussias, Bice & Perrotti, ). Yet, inconsistent findings across diverse bilingual populations continue to fuel the debate on whether bilingual experiences do (Kroll & Bialystok, ) or do not (Paap & Greenberg, ) yield benefits for attentional control (Hilchey & Klein, ; Valian, ).…”

A multilingual advantage in the components of working memory

“…This suggests that bilingualism aids general top-down, executive guidance of attention, facilitating higher-order processes that keep representations in working memory separate from those that guide visual attention. Thus, while there is some evidence of a bilingual advantage in young adults, in comparison to other age groups (children, older adults), these findings are among the most muted (Bialystok, 2017; Bialystok, Craik & Luk, 2008; Bialystok et al, 2012; Bialystok & Barac, 2012; Blom et al, 2014; Dong & Li, 2015; Engel de Abreu, 2011). Furthermore, of the few studies that considered working memory in this population, most focused only on visuospatial processing.…”