The influence of language-switching experience on the bilingual executive control advantage

Abstract

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.

Examining the effects of active versus inactive bilingualism on executive control in a carefully matched non-immigrant sample

“…A group of frequently switching Spanish-English bilinguals showed smaller switching costs than monolinguals, whereas this advantage was not found for less frequently switching Mandarin-English bilinguals. Verreyt, Woumans, Vandelanotte, Szmalec, and Duyck (2015) tested balanced switching, balanced nonswitching, and unbalanced bilinguals on a Simon and flanker task and found a relative advantage for the balanced switching bilinguals. These two studies suggest that language use may affect executive control.…”

Identifying a Threshold for the Executive Function Advantage in Bilingual Children

“…Bedore et al, 2012 on assessing language dominance). Several aspects known to vary in bilingual experience have been argued to have an effect on executive function performance, such as proficiency (Gutiérrez-Clellen, Calderón, & Ellis Weismer, 2004;Iluz-Cohen & Armon-Lotem, 2013;Rosselli, Ardila, Lalwani, & Vélez-Uribe, 2015), language dominance (Mueller Gathercole et al, 2014;Weber, Johnson, Riccio, & Liew, 2015), language exposure (Brito, Sebastián-Gallés, & Barr, 2015), and patterns of language switching (de Bruin et al, 2015;Verreyt, Woumans, Vandelanotte, Szmalec, & Duyck, 2015;Scaltritti, Peressotti, & Miozzo, 2015;Soveri, Rodriguez-Fornells, & Laine, 2011). A number of researchers are now calling for the integration of the variability of bilingual experience in the analyses (e.g.…”

Brain Circuit for Cognitive Control Is Shared by Task and Language Switching

“…This choice was motivated by the fact that several studies have claimed that bilinguals outperform monolinguals on a range of cognitive control tasks (e.g., Prior & Gollan, 2011;Prior & MacWhinney, 2010;Bialystok & Viswanathan, 2009;Bialystok, Craik, & Luk, 2008;Costa, Hernández, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2008; but see Antón et al, 2014;Duñabeitia et al, 2014;Hernández, Martin, Barceló, & Costa, 2013;Paap & Greenberg, 2013). However, this bilingual advantage might be more salient and might spread across a wider range of attention-demanding tasks (Bialystok, Craik, & Ryan, 2006) for those bilinguals who constantly exercise language control functions on a daily basis (Verreyt, Woumans, Vandelanotte, Szmalec, & Duyck, 2015).…”