From Bilingualism to Bilingualisms: Bilingual experience in Edinburgh and Singapore affects attentional control differently

Abstract

Recent theories propose that language-switching in bilinguals influences executive control. We investigated whether switching behaviour, shaped by the bilingual's interactional context as well as personal preferences impacted attentional control. We compared four groups – (i) Edinburgh monolinguals, (ii) Edinburgh non-switching late bilinguals, (iii) Edinburgh non-switching early bilinguals, and (iv) Singapore switching early bilinguals – on two tasks of attentional control. Effects of interactional context were observed, with Singapore bilinguals performing better on conflict resolution in the Attention Network Task and Edinburgh late bilinguals on attentional switching in the Elevator reversal (Test of Everyday Attention) subtest. Our results suggest that the interactional context of bilinguals could impact attentional control differently.

Understanding bilingual brain function and structure changes? U bet! A unified bilingual experience trajectory model

“…A growing body of evidence does show specificity of adaptations to individual bilingual experiences both from a cross-sectional (Beatty-Martínez et al, 2019;Bonfieni, Branigan, Pickering, & Sorace, 2019;DeLuca, Rothman, Bialystok, & Pliatsikas, 2019Gullifer et al, 2018;Luo et al, 2019;Mamiya et al, 2016;Nichols & Joanisse, 2016;Ooi, Goh, Sorace, & Bak, 2018;Pliatsikas, DeLuca, Moschopoulou, & Saddy, 2017;Rossi, Cheng, Kroll, Diaz, & Newman, 2017;Sulpizio, Del Maschio, Del Mauro, Fedeli, & Abutalebi, 2020;Thomas-Sunesson, Hakuta, & Bialystok, 2018;Yamasaki, Stocco, & Prat, 2018) and longitudinal perspective (DeLuca, Rothman, & Pliatsikas, 2018;Grant, Fang, & Li, 2015;Hervais-Adelman, Moser-Mercer, & Golestani, 2015;Hofstetter, Friedmann, & Assaf, 2016;Hosoda, Tanaka, Nariai, Honda, & Hanakawa, 2013;Legault, Fang, Lan, & Li, 2019;Mårtensson et al, 2012;Mohades et al, 2015;Schlegel, Rudelson, & Tse, 2012). Findings between studies here are more consistent.…”

Cognitive Control Facilitates Attentional Disengagement during Second Language Comprehension

“…For example, it is possible that bilinguals whose languages are more likely to create conditions of cross-language conflict are also more likely to create a greater need for cognitive control recruitment. Likewise, we acknowledge the limitations that may come from comparing monolinguals and bilinguals [96], as more recent research suggests that different bilingual language experiences can come to have different consequences for both cognitive [97,98,99,100] and language [101] processes. However, it is also worth pointing out that there are situations in which such comparisons reveal important aspects of language and cognitive functioning that may be harder to interpret otherwise, at least initially.…”

The pressure to communicate efficiently continues to shape language use later in life

“…Moreover, it has been standardized through a normative sample of healthy adults aged 18-80 53 , making it particularly suitable for the age range in this study. Crucially, the TEA has been successfully applied to test the relationship between attentional skills and a wide range of linguistic abilities across the adult lifespan, from perspective-taking 11 and pronominal use 46 to bilingualism 54,55 and language learning 56 and thus was adopted for the purpose of this study.…”