Bidialectalism and Bilingualism: Exploring the Role of Language Similarity as a Link Between Linguistic Ability and Executive Control

Abstract

The notion of bilingual advantages in executive functions (EF) is based on the assumption that the demands posed by cross-language interference serve as EF training. These training effects should be more pronounced the more cross-language interference bilinguals have to overcome when managing their two languages. In the present study, we investigated the proposed link between linguistic and EF performance using the similarity between the two languages spoken since childhood as a proxy for different levels of cross-language interference. We assessed the effect of linearly increasing language dissimilarity on linguistic and EF performance in multiple tasks in four groups of young adults (aged 18–33): German monolinguals (n = 24), bidialectals (n = 25; German and Swiss German dialect), bilinguals speaking two languages of the same Indo-European ancestry (n = 24; e.g., German-English), or bilinguals speaking two languages of different ancestry (n = 24; e.g., German-Turkish). Bayesian linear-mixed effects modeling revealed substantial evidence for a linear effect of language similarity on linguistic accuracy, with better performance for participants with more similar languages and monolinguals. However, we did not obtain evidence for the presence of a similarity effect on EF performance. Furthermore, language experience did not modulate EF performance, even when testing the effect of continuous indicators of bilingualism (e.g., age of acquisition, proficiency, daily foreign language usage). These findings question the theoretical assumption that life-long experience in managing cross-language interference serves as EF training.

Functional Ability in Everyday Life: Are Associations With an Engaged Lifestyle Mediated by Working Memory?

“…Hence, benefits of an engaged lifestyle may be more domain-specific than has been previously assumed. This is consistent with research showing similarly narrow and domain-specific effects of other lifestyle influences such as bilingualism (e.g., Oschwald, Schättin, von Bastian & Souza, 2018) and cognitive training (e.g., von Bastian, Guye & De Simoni, in press). Thus, while the engagement in cognitively challenging everyday activities such as gaming may build a cognitive reserve and promote compensatory scaffolding, the resulting benefits may be limited to cognitively challenging measures of functional ability.…”

Advancing the understanding of individual differences in attentional control: Theoretical, methodological, and analytical considerations

“…Whereas factor loadings and/or between-task correlations are typically acceptable for measures of updating (Ecker, Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Chee, 2010;Singh, Gignac, Brydges, & Ecker, 2018) Keye et al, 2009;Oschwald, Schättin, von Bastian, & Souza, 2018;Rey-Mermet et al, 2018von Bastian & Oberauer, 2013;von Bastian et al, 2016;Whitehead et al, 2019;Wilhelm, Hildebrandt, & Oberauer, 2013). In some of these studies, inhibition measures did not share enough variance to establish a latent factor.…”

Benefits of foreign language learning and bilingualism: An analysis of published empirical research 2012–2019

“…Other empirical studies addressing executive function investigated the bilingual advantage in young and older adults relating to language similarity (Oschwald, Schättin, von Bastian, & Souza, 2018), underlying mechanisms of a bilingual EC advantage (Yow & Li, 2015), longitudinal effects of bilingualism on dual-tasking (Sörman, Josefsson, Marsh, Hansson, & Ljungberg, 2017), and bilingual advantage as reflected in a "stimulus onset asynchrony" (SOS) manipulation of the Stroop task (Coderre, Van Heuven, & Conklin, 2013). The findings indicated that the similarity of two languages spoken by bidialectal and bilinguals appeared to affect linguistic processing in a linear fashion, with performance being more challenged when the two languages were dissimilar.…”