Post‐conflict slowing effects in monolingual and bilingual children

Abstract

Previous research has shown that bilingual children outperform their monolingual peers on a wide variety of tasks measuring executive functions (EF). However, recent failures to replicate this finding have cast doubt on the idea that the bilingual experience leads to domain-general cognitive benefits. The present study explored the role of disengagement of attention as an explanation for why some studies fail to produce this result. Eighty children (40 monolingual, 40 bilingual) who were 7 years old performed a task-switching experiment. In the pure blocks, three simple non-conflict tasks were performed in which children responded by pressing one of two response keys. In the conflict block, occasional bivalent stimuli appeared and created conflict because the irrelevant dimension was mapped to the incorrect response key. The results showed that these bivalent stimuli affected subsequent performance in the conflict block. For monolinguals, the effect of conflict was found for up to 12 trials after the appearance of the bivalent stimulus, but for bilinguals the effect disappeared after only two trials. The results are interpreted as evidence for faster disengagement of attention by bilingual children. Most studies examining EF in monolingual and bilingual children do not examine trial-by-trial adjustments following conflict, but these are essential considerations because relevant processing differences are masked when analyses are applied to data averaged across entire blocks.

Bilinguals have more complex EEG brain signals in occipital regions than monolinguals

“…Given that greater brain signal complexity is believed to index the ability to rapidly switch brain states (Deco, Jirsa, & McIntosh, 2011; Beharelle Kovačević, McIntosh, & Levine, 2012), these findings suggest a greater ability for bilinguals to switch brain states in occipital (i.e., possibly visual) regions than monolinguals. Recent evidence from our lab suggests that bilinguals are able to disengage attention from visually presented items more rapidly than monolinguals (Grundy et al, 2017, Grundy & Keyvani-Chahi, 2017), a process that requires more advanced visual processing. In these experiments, the items are visually simple like the stimuli used here.…”

“…After obtaining informed consent, participants completed the three background measures followed by the bivalency effect task (2013, Grundy & Shedden, 2014a, 2014b; Grundy & Keyvani Chahi, 2017; Meier, Woodward, Rey-Mermet, & Graf, 2009; Woodward, Meier, Tipper, & Graf, 2003) while simultaneous EEG was recorded. The experiment lasted approximately 90 minutes.…”

Exploring the role of cognitive control in syntactic processing

“…However, the focus of recent research has shifted to switching, monitoring, disengagement of inhibition, refocusing of attention, or post-conflict effects as possible areas where the impacts of bilingualism can be detected (Prior & MacWhinney, 2010;Costa, Hernández, Costa-Faidella & Sebastián-Gallés, 2009;Treccani, Argyri, Sorace & Della Sala 2009;Grundy & Chahi 2016). The hypothesis that bilinguals have better switching abilities assumes that bilingual speakers develop an enhanced ability to shift and refocus attention from task to task, and to and from different mental sets, as a result 6 of their daily experience in switching from one language to another.…”

Sequential congruency effects reveal differences in disengagement of attention for monolingual and bilingual young adults

“…There is some existing evidence that bilinguals disengage from previous distracting information more rapidly than monolinguals (Grundy & Keyvani Chahi, 2017; Mishra, Hilchey, Singh, & Klein, 2012). Task-switching studies that examine the cost of switching from one task to another versus repeating the same task have shown that bilinguals show smaller switch costs than monolinguals (Prior & Gollan, 2011; Prior & MacWhinney, 2010).…”