Does language dominance affect cognitive performance in bilinguals? Lifespan evidence from preschoolers through older adults on card sorting, Simon, and metalinguistic tasks

Abstract

This study explores the extent to which a bilingual advantage can be observed for three tasks in an established population of fully fluent bilinguals from childhood through adulthood. Welsh-English simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals, as well as English monolinguals, aged 3 years through older adults, were tested on three sets of cognitive and executive function tasks. Bilinguals were Welsh-dominant, balanced, or English-dominant, with only Welsh, Welsh and English, or only English at home. Card sorting, Simon, and a metalinguistic judgment task (650, 557, and 354 participants, respectively) reveal little support for a bilingual advantage, either in relation to control or globally. Primarily there is no difference in performance across groups, but there is occasionally better performance by monolinguals or persons dominant in the language being tested, and in one case-in one condition and in one age group-lower performance by the monolinguals. The lack of evidence for a bilingual advantage in these simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals suggests the need for much closer scrutiny of what type of bilingual might demonstrate the reported effects, under what conditions, and why.

Enhancing the learning of new words using an errorless learning procedure: Evidence from typical adults

“…Thus, our results are consistent with the argument that selective attention offers no additional processing advantage in bilinguals (see Gathercole et al, 2014;Paap & Greenberg, 2013). Moreover, our results highlight the importance of adopting multiple tasks to identify the aspects of executive processes that are enhanced in bilinguals (Paap et al, 2015).…”

“…At first glance the present findings appear to be at odds with studies that reported no differences in attention between monolinguals and bilinguals who were university students (i.e., young adults: Gathercole et al, 2014;Paap & Greenberg, 2013). We employed two attention tasks -Stop Signal Reaction Time and Flanker tasks.…”

“…For example, although Bialystok, Martin, and Viswanathan (2005) found a bilingual advantage on the Simon task in children, middle aged (30-59 years) and older adults (60-80 years), this effect was absent in young adults (20-30 years). Furthermore, Gathercole et al (2014) found no evidence of a bilingual advantage in children, adolescents (13-16 years) and adults (18-90 years) (see also Paap & Greenberg, 2013 for the Flanker task). In a recent review Hilchey and Klein (2011) found that although bilinguals tended to perform faster than monolinguals, the congruency effect was of similar magnitude.…”

No evidence for bilingual cognitive advantages: A test of four hypotheses.

“…Fuller-Thomson & Kuh, 2014;Kousaie & Phillips, 2012;Morton & Harper, 2007) or leisure activities that are also potentially beneficial for cognitive performance such as video-gaming, musical training, or doing exercise (Valian, 2015). Last but not least, evidence favoring the bilingual advantage stems primarily from small-scale studies (average n = 29), whereas larger-scale studies (average n = 45; Paap, et al, 2014) more often reported null-effects (e.g., Antón et al, 2014;Duñabeitia et al, 2014;Gathercole, et al, 2014;Hernández, Martin, Barceló, & Costa, 2013). This is particularly critical as small samples have been shown to be more prone to produce false-positive findings (Button et al, 2013).…”

“…Instead, it is crucial for scientific progress that theory is informed by both positive and null findings, especially so in a field that is at high risk for false-positives publication bias, and vague theorizing. First, as pointed out by Paap (2014), many studies examining bilingual advantages comprised only relatively small samples, with the majority of larger-scale studies failing to detect consistent bilingual advantages (e.g., Antón, et al, 2014;Duñabeitia, et al, 2014;Gathercole, et al, 2014;Hernández, et al, 2013;Paap, et al, 2014; but see Luo, et al, 2013). Small sample sizes are indeed more likely to produce false-positive findings (Button, et al, 2013), the risk of which is additionally increased by research on the bilingual advantage being a particularly 'hot topic' (Ioannidis, 2005) given the desire to report statistically significant results (Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn, 2011).…”