Moving From Bilingual Traits to States: Understanding Cognition and Language Processing Through Moment-to-Moment Variation

Abstract

The study of how bilingualism is linked to cognitive processing, including executive functioning, has historically focused on comparing bilinguals to monolinguals across a range of tasks. These group comparisons presume to capture relatively stable cognitive traits and have revealed important insights about the architecture of the language processing system that could not have been gleaned from studying monolinguals alone. However, there are drawbacks to using a groupcomparison, or Traits, approach. In this theoretical review, we outline some limitations of treating executive functions as stable traits and of treating bilinguals as a uniform group when comparing to monolinguals. To build on what we have learned from group comparisons, we advocate for an emerging complementary approach to the question of cognition and bilingualism. Using an approach that compares bilinguals to themselves under different linguistic or cognitive contexts allows researchers to ask questions about how language and cognitive processes interact based on dynamically fluctuating cognitive and neural states. A States approach, which has already been used by bilingualism researchers, allows for cause-and-effect hypotheses and shifts our focus from questions of group differences to questions of how varied linguistic environments influence cognitive operations in the moment and how fluctuations in cognitive engagement impact language processing.

Bilingual Language Experience and Its Effect on Conflict Adaptation in Reactive Inhibitory Control Tasks

“…However, tasks recruit multiple control processes and may differ in their recruitment strength according to individual and task differences. Thus, it may be too simplistic to expect high between-tasks correlations (Salig et al, 2021). Another possibility is rooted in differences between linguistic and social contexts across studies, impacting transfer between cognitive systems (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Sala et al, 2019).…”

Attending multiple languages: the relation between individual multilingual language use and attentional control

“…The recent suggestion that a potential multilingual advantage lies in attentional systems [5,6] is accompanied by the recognition of the importance of considering individual differences in multilingual experiences [10,12]. It follows that a study of a varied range of individual multilingual experience factors in relation to attentional control can lead to important insights as to the nature of any multilingual cognitive advantage.…”

“…Inconsistencies in findings could, for example, be explained by variability in study samples, where factors that vary between individuals are not taken into account. The current debate has therefore in turn sparked a reevaluation of the definition of multilingualism [9][10][11][12][ [9][10][11][12] and more research is conducted detailing the diversity of multilingual experiences and backgrounds (cf. [8] [8]).…”

Type of bilingualism conditions individual differences in the oscillatory dynamics of inhibitory control

“…While effects are not always replicated (see Lehtonen et al, 2018 ), studies have shown that, at least under certain conditions, the brain adapts structurally, functionally and chemically to bilingual experience (e.g., Stocco et al, 2014 ; Abutalebi and Green, 2016 ; Weekes et al, 2018 ; DeLuca et al, 2019a ; Pliatsikas, 2019 ; Grundy, 2020 ; Pliatsikas et al, 2021 ). And yet, the study of bilingualism and neurocognition has primarily focused on monolingual vs. bilingual (dichotomous) group comparisons across a variety of domains and tasks (see Salig et al, 2021 for review). While such an approach has led to keen insights into the bilingual mind and brain, it has also resulted in the nature of individual-level variables across bilinguals themselves to not be adequately addressed (Pliatsikas et al, 2020 ; Salig et al, 2021 ).…”

“…And yet, the study of bilingualism and neurocognition has primarily focused on monolingual vs. bilingual (dichotomous) group comparisons across a variety of domains and tasks (see Salig et al, 2021 for review). While such an approach has led to keen insights into the bilingual mind and brain, it has also resulted in the nature of individual-level variables across bilinguals themselves to not be adequately addressed (Pliatsikas et al, 2020 ; Salig et al, 2021 ).…”