Cognitive Advantage in Bilingualism

@article{deBruin2015CognitiveAI,
  title={Cognitive Advantage in Bilingualism},
  author={Angela de Bruin and Barbara Treccani and Sergio Della Sala},
  journal={Psychological Science},
  year={2015},
  volume={26},
  pages={107 - 99}
}
It is a widely held belief that bilinguals have an advantage over monolinguals in executive-control tasks, but is this what all studies actually demonstrate? The idea of a bilingual advantage may result from a publication bias favoring studies with positive results over studies with null or negative effects. To test this hypothesis, we looked at conference abstracts from 1999 to 2012 on the topic of bilingualism and executive control. We then determined which of the studies they reported were… 
View on SAGE
iris.unitn.it
406 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
7
Background Citations
49
Methods Citations
4
Results Citations
22

Figures and Tables from this paper

406 Citations

Is Bilingualism Associated With Enhanced Executive Functioning in Adults? A Meta-Analytic Review

It is concluded that the available evidence does not provide systematic support for the widely held notion that bilingualism is associated with benefits in cognitive control functions in adults.

Ecological Validity in Bilingualism Research and the Bilingual Advantage

The effects of bilingualism on executive functions: an updated quantitative analysis

Several researchers have suggested that learning and using a second language requires domain-general executive functions, and many have shown that bilinguals outperform monolinguals on tasks that tap…

Cultural Effects Rather Than a Bilingual Advantage in Cognition: A Review and an Empirical Study

A large-scale review of the extant literature found that the weight of research pointed to an absence of positive evidence for a bilingual advantage at any age, and interpreted these results as further evidence against the bilingual advantage hypotheses.

Is bilingualism related to a cognitive advantage in children? A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Given the small mean effect size and small-study effects, this meta-analysis gives little support for a bilingual advantage on overall EF, and there might be bilingual advantages (or disadvantages) under conditions that this study is not able to identify through the analysis of 12 moderators.

The alchemy of confirmation bias transmutes expectations into bilingual advantages: A tale of two new meta-analyses

It is shown that the deviance is due in part to search terms that yielded far fewer relevant studies, but more importantly to a subjective method of evaluating the results of each study that enables confirmation biases on the part of study authors and meta-analysts to substantially distort the objective pattern of results.

Bilingual Advantages in Inhibition or Selective Attention: More Challenges

A large sample of college students participated in both a conjunctive visual search task and an ambiguous figures task that have been used as tests of selective attention, and the evidence that bilinguals are better than monolinguals at attentional control is equivocal at best.

Does the Bilingual Advantage in Cognitive Control Exist and If So, What Are Its Modulating Factors? A Systematic Review

To conclude, there is some evidence for a bilingual advantage in cognitive control; however, if significant progress is to be made, better study designs, bigger data, and more longitudinal studies are needed.

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

The authors suggest that bilingual benefits are not as broad and as robust as has been previously claimed and that earlier effects were possibly due to task-specific effects in selective and often small samples.

The Role of Cognitive Development and Strategic Task Tendencies in the Bilingual Advantage Controversy

It is suggested that differences in strategy choices can mask variations in performance between bilinguals and monolinguals, and therefore also provide inconsistent findings on the bilingual cognitive control advantage.
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 46 REFERENCES

There is no coherent evidence for a bilingual advantage in executive processing

Understanding the consequences of bilingualism for language processing and cognition

It is argued that the tendency to consider bilingualism as a unitary phenomenon explained in terms of simple component processes has created a set of apparent controversies that masks the richness of the central finding in this work: the adult mind and brain are open to experience in ways that create profound consequences for both language and cognition.

Are there bilingual advantages on nonlinguistic interference tasks? Implications for the plasticity of executive control processes

It is suggested that bilinguals do enjoy a more widespread cognitive advantage that is likely observable on a variety of cognitive assessment tools but that is most often not apparent on traditional assays of nonlinguistic inhibitory control processes.

Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: evidence from the Simon task.

It appears, therefore, that controlled processing is carried out more effectively by bilinguals and that bilingualism helps to offset age-related losses in certain executive processes.

Introduction to Bilingualism and Cognitive Control

The papers in this special issue on Bilingualism and Cognitive Control represent the best of the new research on each of these issues to understand how control in language processing is achieved and how domain-general cognitive processes are themselves affected by language experience.

The role of componential analysis, categorical hypothesising, replicability and confirmation bias in testing for bilingual advantages in executive functioning

This commentary documents that bilingual advantages in inhibitory control, switching and monitoring are difficult to replicate and that the use of componential analyses and categorical hypothesising are often responsible for the null results.

Spatial negative priming in bilingualism

The hypothesis that the bilinguals’ efficiency in inhibitory control can be advantageous in some conditions, but disadvantageous in others—for example, negative priming conditions, in which previously irrelevant information becomes relevant is investigated.

A bilingual advantage in task switching

This study investigated the possibility that lifelong bilingualism may lead to enhanced efficiency in the ability to shift between mental sets. We compared the performance of monolingual and fluent…

Conflict resolution in sentence processing is the same for bilinguals and monolinguals: The role of confirmation bias in testing for bilingual advantages

On the bilingual advantage in conflict processing: Now you see it, now you don’t