The Inhibitory Advantage in Bilingual Children Revisited

Abstract

In recent decades several authors have suggested that bilinguals exhibit enhanced cognitive control as compared to monolinguals and some proposals suggest that this main difference between monolinguals and bilinguals is related to bilinguals' enhanced capacity of inhibiting irrelevant information. This has led to the proposal of the so-called bilingual advantage in inhibitory skills. However, recent studies have cast some doubt on the locus and generality of the alleged bilingual advantage in inhibitory skills. In the current study we investigated inhibitory skills in a large sample of 252 monolingual and 252 bilingual children who were carefully matched on a large number of indices. We tested their performance in a verbal Stroop task and in a nonverbal version of the same task (the number size-congruency task). Results were unequivocal and showed that bilingual and monolingual participants performed equally in these two tasks across all the indices or markers of inhibitory skills explored. Furthermore, the lack of differences between monolingual and bilingual children extended to all the age ranges tested and was not modulated by any of the independent factors investigated. In light of these results, we conclude that bilingual children do not exhibit any specific advantage in simple inhibitory tasks as compared to monolinguals.

The neuroanatomy of bilingualism: how to turn a hazy view into the full picture

“…Be that as it may, further complex brain network studies are needed to understand how over-developed structural and functional subnetworks and the entire functioning network correlate with executive control and behavioural linguistic tasks, respectively, in order to clear up the controversies surrounding the bilingual behavioural data. Particularly, it seems crucial to investigate which kinds of bilinguals and which conditions give rise to this cognitive advantage since there is very strong evidence showing no enhanced executive control in some bilinguals (Antón et al, 2014;Duñabeitia et al, 2014;Gathercole et al, 2014).…”

“…In addition, we will examine how evidence for structural changes may contribute to this debate on the 'advantages' and 'disadvantages' of bilingualism at the behavioural level (Abutalebi & Green, 2007;Antón et al, 2014;Bialystok & Barac, 2012;Costa et al, 2009;Costa et al, 2008;Duñabeitia et al, 2014;Gathercole et al, 2014;Gollan et al, 2011;Kroll & Bialystok, 2013;Martin et al, 2012;Paap & Greenberg, 2013;. In this sense, we will highlight how neuroimaging data could contribute to the debate by adding empirical evidence from a different perspective.…”

“…Some of the recent behavioural studies investigating bilingual advantage tested vast numbers of simultaneous and early bilinguals and reported no difference between bilinguals and monolingual peers in tasks such as verbal Stroop, number size congruency (a non-verbal version of the Stroop) (Duñabeitia et al, 2014), attentional network test (Antón et al, 2014), card sorting test, Simon test and metalinguistic judgments test (Gathercole et al, 2014). In fact, as a recent review by Paap, Johnson and Sawi (2015) points out, the incongruity and inconsistency of the behavioural findings from tasks related to executive functions extend to different paradigms, ranges of ages (i.e., from childhood to the elderly), and types of bilinguals (e.g., early vs. late bilinguals).…”

Identifying a Threshold for the Executive Function Advantage in Bilingual Children

“…A number of studies controlling for SES indeed found no bilingual advantage (e.g. Morton & Harper, 2007;Paap & Greenberg, 2013;Duñabeitia et al, 2015). However, evidence also exists of a bilingual advantage in socio-economically deprived children (Engel de Abreu et al, 2012;Calvo & Bialystok, 2014).…”

“…A number of large-scale studies using a variety of tasks probing inhibitory control did not find a bilingual advantage either (e.g. Duñabeitia et al, 2015;Antón et al, 2014-see Paap, 2014 for an in-depth review).…”