Does bilingualism shape inhibitory control in the elderly?

Abstract

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.

Emotional Diglossia in Multilingual Classroom Environments: A Proposal

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] Even if this may sound strange to most of us, multilingualism was initially considered as a potentially harmful construct for the cognitive system. Luckily, this idea was rapidly discarded and multilingualism then began to be considered as the driving element for the cognitive advantages in basic psychological processes such as memory and attention.…”

Cultural Effects Rather Than a Bilingual Advantage in Cognition: A Review and an Empirical Study

“…Yet despite the evidence reported in favor of an advantage, recent investigations have cast doubt over whether bilinguals really do outperform monolinguals on these tasks, and whether it is necessarily bilingualism that is the reason when they do (e.g., Antón et al., ; Antón, García, Carreiras, & Duñabeitia, ; Duñabeitia et al., ; Hilchey, Saint‐Aubin, & Klein, ; Morton & Harper, ; Paap, ; Paap & Greenberg, ; Paap, Johnson, & Sawi, , , ; Paap et al., ). For example, large‐scale studies of bilingual and monolingual children failed to find any evidence of an advantage on the ANT (Antón et al., ).…”

Neuroanatomical Correlates in Bilinguals: The Case of Children and Elderly

“…Several behavioural studies supported this hypothesis by showing that bilingual perform better than monolinguals in EC tasks [2][3][4] . However, other behavioural studies reported similar performance for both bilinguals and monolinguals in the same tasks [5][6][7][8][9][10][11] . In recent years, neuroscientists have sought after neuroimaging evidence of brain changes to support this hypothesis.…”

“…In short, bilinguals from dense code-switching language context do not need to employ EC mechanisms to deal with their languages as bilinguals from other dual-language environment do 15 . This fact would explain the lack of differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in some behavioural studies [5][6][7] . However, investigations with bilinguals from dual-language contexts without dense code-switching have also been unsuccessful at finding differences between both groups in tasks measuring EC functions [9][10][11] .…”