The effect of bidialectalism on executive function

Abstract

Aims and objectives: We investigate how varying usage patterns in speakers of closely related language varieties might impact executive function. More specifically, bidialectals with more balanced usage were predicted to show better inhibitory control than less balanced bidialectals. Design: Thirty-four adult bidialectals of Standard German and Swabian German performed two executive function tasks (flanker and Simon). Data and analysis: The participants’ reaction times on the two executive function tasks were analysed using regression models. Data and R code are available online. Findings: Contrary to predictions, Swabian-dominant bidialectals showed smaller flanker and Simon effects than balanced German-Swabian bidialectals. Furthermore, contrary to some previous studies, executive function task performances correlated significantly. Originality: We discuss how bidialectal language usage patterns can be assessed and how arbitrary analytical decisions affect findings regarding the effects of bidialectalism on executive function. Significance: These findings shed a new light on the effects of bilingualism/bidialectalism on executive function.

A Bilingual Advantage? An Appeal for a Change in Perspective and Recommendations for Future Research

“…Furthermore, the manner in which the collected data is trimmed (i.e., how outliers are identified and subsequently excluded from further analysis) can obscure possibly relevant differences between groups [83,108], especially if effects might be driven by a subset of data, for instance, slower responses [109]. Finally, the choice of statistical analyses can influence how performance patterns either differ or not [109,110] and may need to be standardized in order to make studies fully comparable. These differences in experimental set-up, stimulus selection and design, procedure, and data processing and analysis may be adding to the variability in research findings.…”

Characterizing the social diversity of bilingualism using language entropy

“…Moreover, language entropy can provide a concrete estimate of diversity while simultaneously reducing the complexity of the data, making data visualization and modeling more tractable. Importantly, variability in language diversity holds theoretical implications for behavior, brain structure, and brain function (Abutalebi & Green, 2016;Beatty-Martínez & Dussias, 2017;Green & Abutalebi, 2013;Poarch, Vanhove, Berthele, 2018), and our recent work shows that this variability is measurable at the level of the individual .…”

“…Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. doi: 10.1017/S1366728919000026 7 Amengual, 2012; , Poarch et al, 2018. While innovative, such approaches are limited in the ability to assess nuanced differences in the social diversity of language usage that likely exists at the level of the individual within a population or that arise from situations where people use more than two languages.…”

Characterizing the social diversity of bilingualism using language entropy

“…We note that, while novel, this focus is a successor in the spirit of seminal work on language mode by Grosjean (1997Grosjean ( , 2001. Accordingly, recent work has begun to examine the social diversity of language use in relation to executive control capacity and language processing by sampling various groups of participants from locations that are known to differ in the social diversity of language use (e.g., Beatty-Martínez & Dussias, 2017) or by computing difference scores between self-report usage measures for the first language (L1) and second language (e.g., Birdsong, Gertken & Amengual, 2012;, Poarch et al, 2018. While innovative, such approaches are limited in the ability to assess nuanced differences in the social diversity of language usage that likely exist at the level of the individual within a population or that arise from situations where people use more than two languages.…”