Vocabulary matters! The relationship between verbal fluency and measures of inhibitory control in monolingual and bilingual children

The Impact of Bilingualism on Executive Functions in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review Based on the PRISMA Method

“…In twenty-four studies were assessed both languages known by the bilingual participants. In three studies (Escobar et al, 2018 ; Dick et al, 2019 ; Zeng et al, 2019 ), objective assessments and self-report questionnaires were used. The use of both tools allows investigating both language proficiency (tests) and language use (self-report), two aspects that can contribute to a better description of the bilingual experience (Luk and Bialystok, 2013 ).…”

“…Nine studies (Gathercole et al, 2010 ; Duñabeitia et al, 2014 ; Mohades et al, 2014 ; Abdelgafar and Moawad, 2015 ; Jalali-Moghadam and Kormi-Nouri, 2015 ; Schröter and Schroeder, 2017 ; Arizmendi et al, 2018 ; Escobar et al, 2018 ; Nayak et al, 2020 ) assessed cognitive inhibition by using the Stroop task (Stroop, 1935 ). Two studies (Abdelgafar and Moawad, 2015 ; Jalali-Moghadam and Kormi-Nouri, 2015 ) used the pencil and paper version of this task and did not find any significant difference in the performance of monolingual or bilingual participants.…”

“…For reaction times, significant differences emerged only in the teens, and monolingual participants responded significantly slower than all bilingual groups. Escobar et al ( 2018 ) used the Day-Night Stroop Task. The experimental task included congruent trials in which participants named the word corresponding to the presented stimulus (e.g., the word day for the sun) and incongruent trials in which they had to pronounce the word opposite to the presented stimulus (e.g., the word day for the moon).…”

Language Dominance, Verbal Fluency, and Language Control in two Groups of Russian–English Bilinguals

“…The longer retrieval times needed by bilinguals have been explained to be a consequence of competition between lexical entries of the bilinguals' two languages, overall weaker connections between lexical forms and corresponding meanings in the bilingual lexicon due to lower word usage frequencies or a combination of both. However, the bilingual disadvantage in verbal fluency disappears or turns into an advantage when monolingual and bilingual groups have similar levels of vocabulary size in the response language (Escobar et al 2018).…”

“…In this study, we used letter and category fluency tasks exclusively as measures of lexical retrieval skills, and Stroop tasks as measures of language control and the suppression of interference. We need to acknowledge though that researchers have also considered letter and category fluency tasks as tools that may tap into aspects of inhibitory control, i.e., the ability to inhibit responses to irrelevant information in cognitive or language-related tasks (e.g., Bialystok et al 2008;Escobar et al 2018;Friesen et al 2015). Category fluency tasks, which resemble every-day tasks, like generating a shopping list, require response inhibition: Participants have to inhibit the retrieval of semantically related items that are not part of the required category.…”