Does bilingual exerciseenhance cognitive fitnessin traditional non-linguistic executive processing tasks?

Hilchey, Matthew D.; Saint‐Aubin, Jean; Klein, Raymond M.

doi:10.1017/cbo9781107447257.026

Cited by 121 publications

(92 citation statements)

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“…Setting aside the discussed limitations of our study, the current results do not lend much support to the hypothesis that language switching improves executive functions in bilinguals. This is in line with a meticulously conducted review of 31 experiments by Hilchey and Klein (2011), which showed that the evidence that bilingualism boosts inhibitory skills is sporadic at best (see also the updated review by Hilchey, Saint-Aubin, & Klein, 2015). Whereas Hilchey and Klein (2011) examined only inhibition, Paap (2014) discusses the methodological shortcomings of studies concerning the facilitating effect of bilingualism on executive functions more generally.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

Relationship between language switching experience and executive functions in bilinguals: an Internet-based study

Jylkkä

Soveri

Wahlström

et al. 2017

Journal of Cognitive Psychology

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We examined the relationship between self-reported everyday language switching experience and the performance of early bilinguals in tasks measuring different executive functions. Our participants were Finnish-Swedish early bilinguals, aged 16-41 years (N = 66, Experiment 1) and 18-69 years (N = 111, Experiment 2). An earlier study using a sample from a similar population discovered a negative relationship between self-reported language switching and a mixing cost in error rates in a number-letter task. This finding was not replicated. Instead, we found that a higher rate of reported contextual language switching predicted larger switching cost reaction times in the number-letter task, and that a higher rate of reported unintended language switches predicted larger error rates in a spatial n-back task. We conclude that these results likely reflect individual differences in executive skills, and do not provide evidence for the hypothesis that language switching trains executive functions. ARTICLE HISTORY ). On the other hand, many of the more recent studies suggest that the performance of bilinguals is equal to, or even weaker than, that of mono-

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

Relationship between language switching experience and executive functions in bilinguals: an Internet-based study

Jylkkä

Soveri

Wahlström

et al. 2017

Journal of Cognitive Psychology

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“…In fact, we failed to find any signs of a bilingual advantage in samples of carefully selected lifelong non-immigrant native bilingual seniors with different degrees of proficiency that live in a bilingual society, when their performance is compared with that of a group of carefully matched monolingual seniors. Hence, we conclude that lifelong bilingualism does not represent any specific benefit in executive functions in healthy elderly (see also Hilchey, Saint-Aubin, & Klein, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Does bilingualism shape inhibitory control in the elderly?

Antón

García

Carreiras

et al. 2016

Journal of Memory and Language

113

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a b s t r a c tBilingualism has been argued to benefit executive functioning. However, recent research suggests that this advantage may stem from uncontrolled factors or incorrectly matched samples. In this study we test the effects of bilingualism on elderly lifelong bilinguals whose cognitive abilities are in decline, thus making any benefits more salient. Firstly we compare 24 bilinguals and 24 carefully matched monolinguals on verbal and the numerical Stroop tasks, obtaining no differences in monitoring or inhibitory measures. Secondly we explore the modulations that the proficiency in the L2 might cause to executive control functions, as measured by the same tasks, by testing 70 elderly bilinguals who vary in their L2 mastery from very low to perfectly fluent. Results show no modulation in any of the indices due to L2 proficiency. These results add to the growing body of evidence showing that the bilingual advantages might indeed be due to other factors rather than bilingualism.

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“…On average studies investigating young adults tested with simple executive function tasks often fail to discriminate between these groups, but the issue is how to interpret these results and what implications these null results have for the more robust effects of bilingualism found at other points in the lifespan and using different approaches, including neuroimaging, even with young adults. If it turns out that there is absolutely no trace of an effect of bilingualism on young adults as some have argued (e.g., Hilchey et al, 2015) one would still need to explain how an experience that impacts cognitive and brain structure in childhood and older age recedes in young adulthood where it appears to have no consequence. More importantly, the studies that do show language group differences on behavioral measures of executive function would still need to be explained.…”

Section: Evidence For Bilingual Effects On Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The bilingual adaptation: How minds accommodate experience.

Bialystok

2017

Psychological Bulletin

631

596

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According to some estimates, more than half of the world’s population is multilingual to some extent. Because of the centrality of language use to human experience and the deep connections between linguistic and nonlinguistic processing, it would not be surprising to find that there are interactions between bilingualism and cognitive and brain processes. The present review uses the framework of experience-dependent plasticity to evaluate the evidence for systematic modifications of brain and cognitive systems that can be attributed to bilingualism. The review describes studies investigating the relation between bilingualism and cognition in infants and children, younger and older adults, and patients, using both behavioral and neuroimaging methods. Excluded are studies whose outcomes focus primarily on linguistic abilities because of their more peripheral contribution to the central question regarding experience-dependent changes to cognition. Although most of the research discussed in the review reports some relation between bilingualism and cognitive or brain outcomes, several areas of research, notably behavioral studies with young adults, largely fail to show these effects. These discrepancies are discussed and considered in terms of methodological and conceptual issues. The final section proposes an account based on “executive attention” to explain the range of research findings and to set out an agenda for the next steps in this field.

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Does bilingual exerciseenhance cognitive fitnessin traditional non-linguistic executive processing tasks?

Cited by 121 publications

References 0 publications

Relationship between language switching experience and executive functions in bilinguals: an Internet-based study

Relationship between language switching experience and executive functions in bilinguals: an Internet-based study

Does bilingualism shape inhibitory control in the elderly?

The bilingual adaptation: How minds accommodate experience.

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