Conflict monitoring and resolution: Are two languages better than one? Evidence from reaction time and event-related brain potentials

Abstract

An advantage for bilingual relative to monolingual young adults has been found for cognitive control tasks, although this finding is not consistent in the literature. The present investigation further examined this advantage using three tasks previously found to be sensitive to the effect. Furthermore, both behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) measures were included. Monolingual (n=25) and highly proficient bilingual (n=26) young adults completed a Stroop, Simon, and Eriksen flanker task while electrophysiological recording took place. Behaviorally there were no language group differences on any of the tasks. The ERP measures demonstrated differences between monolinguals and bilinguals with respect to conflict monitoring, resource allocation, stimulus categorization, and error-processing; however, these differences were not consistent across tasks. Given the similar behavioral performance across the groups the observed differences in brain responses may not represent an advantage for bilinguals. The results are discussed with respect to previous findings.

Working memory capacity: Is there a bilingual advantage?

“…Consistently, bilingual executive processing advantages have not been observed in studies with large sample sizes (e.g., Duñabeitia et al, 2014;Gathercole et al, 2014). Using similar tasks, other researchers have also failed to observe inhibitory control advantages in bilingual adults (Kousaie & Phillips, 2012a, 2012b). …”

“…More recent studies have failed to observe evidence of a bilingual advantage in inhibitory control or other executive abilities (e.g., Duñabeitia et al, 2014;Gathercole et al, 2014;Goldman, Negen & Sarnecka, 2014;Hernández, Martin, Barceló, & Costa 2013;Kousaie & Phillips, 2012a;Kousaie & Phillips, 2012b;Namazi & Thordardottir, 2010;Paap & Greenberg, 2013;Paap & Liu, 2014). Duñabeitia et al (2014) Goldman et al (2014) found that bilingual and monolingual children performed equivalently on a task that required them to attend to the number of stimuli while ignoring their size.…”

“…The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area associated with executive function abilities (e.g., D 'Esposito, et al, 1995;Kane & Engle, 2002), is reported to be more active or enhanced in bilinguals compared to monolinguals (e.g., Hernandez, Martinez, & Kohnert, 2000;Holtzheimer, Fawaz, Wilson, & Avery, 2005;Mechelli, et al, 2004;RodriguezFornells, et al, 2005). However, neural differences between bilinguals and monolinguals are not consistently associated with behavioral differences (e.g., Bialystok et al, 2005;Kousaie & Phillips, 2012b;Paap & Liu, 2014). For example, Kousaie and Phillips (2012b) found that differences in event-related potentials between bilinguals and monolinguals did not correspond to behavioral differences between groups in any task.…”

“…However, neural differences between bilinguals and monolinguals are not consistently associated with behavioral differences (e.g., Bialystok et al, 2005;Kousaie & Phillips, 2012b;Paap & Liu, 2014). For example, Kousaie and Phillips (2012b) found that differences in event-related potentials between bilinguals and monolinguals did not correspond to behavioral differences between groups in any task.…”

Data trimming procedure can eliminate bilingual cognitive advantage

“…We focus on response latencies for reasons of comparability Second, for studies that did not trim the data, there was a big variation in terms of the maximum time allowed for making a response. For example, in Kousaie and Phillips (2012) 750 ms were allowed for making a response, meaning that in this particular design it was not possible to observe responses slower than 750 ms. This is equivalent to trimming the data at 750 ms. For these reasons, we focused on maximum response times being included in analyses (Fig.…”