The impact of bilingualism on executive functions and working memory in young adults

Abstract

A bilingual advantage in a form of a better performance of bilinguals in tasks tapping into executive function abilities has been reported repeatedly in the literature. However, recent research defends that this advantage does not stem from bilingualism, but from uncontrolled factors or imperfectly matched samples. In this study we explored the potential impact of bilingualism on executive functioning abilities by testing large groups of young adult bilinguals and monolinguals in the tasks that were most extensively used when the advantages were reported. Importantly, the recently identified factors that could be disrupting the between groups comparisons were controlled for, and both groups were matched. We found no differences between groups in their performance. Additional bootstrapping analyses indicated that, when the bilingual advantage appeared, it very often co-occurred with unmatched socio-demographic factors. The evidence presented here indicates that the bilingual advantage might indeed be caused by spurious uncontrolled factors rather than bilingualism per se. Secondly, bilingualism has been argued to potentially affect working memory also. Therefore, we tested the same participants in both a forward and a backward version of a visual and an auditory working memory task. We found no differences between groups in either of the forward versions of the tasks, but bilinguals systematically outperformed monolinguals in the backward conditions. The results are analysed and interpreted taking into consideration different perspectives in the domain-specificity of the executive functions and working memory.

Interference scores have inadequate concurrent and convergent validity: Should we stop using the flanker, Simon, and spatial Stroop tasks?

“…Socially advantaged children exhibited smaller interference effects in both RT and accuracy compared to their less advantaged peers. However, in the population that is the focus of this study-young adult university students-various measures of SES yield no significant correlations with interference scores (e.g., Antón, Carreiras, & Duñabeitia, 2019;Paap & Greenberg, 2013). If interference scores did reflect general inhibitory control, then one might advance the conjecture that most college students who come from families with low SES benefit from countervailing opportunities and experiences that enable the development of EF and supported the pathway to higher education.…”

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

“…While many studies report differences (e.g. Costa et al, 2008;Prior & Macwhinney, 2010;Wiseheart, Viswanathan, & Bialystok, 2016;Zhou & Krott, 2018), others find partial or mixed effects (Coderre, van Heuven, & Conklin, 2013;Costa, Hernández, Costa-Faidella, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2009;Hernández, Martin, Barceló, & Costa, 2013) or no significant effects at all (Antón, Carreiras, & Duñabeitia, 2019;Antón et al, 2014;Paap, Anders-Jefferson, Mason, Alvarado, & Zimiga, 2018;Paap, Johnson, & Sawi, 2015a). This has led to claims that there are no consistent neurocognitive effects of bilingualism at all (Paap et al, 2015a;Paap, Johnson, & Sawi, 2015b).…”

More similitudes than differences between bilinguals and monolinguals on speeded and demand-varying executive tasks

“…Moreover, our results revealed the absence of a bilingual advantage in the updating component in the socio-linguistic framework where it is assumed to be more salient: a widely spread bilingual context where both languages are used interchangeably in similar situations. In this sense, we speculate that the ability of bilinguals to constantly keep track of the context in order to adjust their language to different addressees is not a sufficient cause to develop enhanced updating mechanisms (regardless of other memoryrelated components that we have not measured, such as specific working memory processes; Antón, Carreiras & Duñabeitia, 2019). After all, monolinguals, as bilinguals, do also have to constantly monitor for continuously changing contextual cues.…”