Abstract
Previous research suggests that bilinguals demonstrate superior cognitive control processes than monolinguals. The goal of the current investigation was to examine whether this “bilingual advantage” is observed in a language processing task that requires inhibition, i.e., lexical ambiguity processing. Monolingual and bilingual participants read sentences that biased the reading of a terminal homonym toward the subordinate or dominant reading (e.g., The doctor asked her to step onto the scale.). A relatedness judgment was made on target words that were related to the contextually appropriate (e.g., balance) or inappropriate meaning (e.g., skin), or unrelated to either meaning (e.g., shoe) while electrophysiological recording took place. The results revealed subtle processing differences between monolinguals and bilinguals that were evident in electrophysiological measures, but not in behavioral measures. These findings suggest that monolinguals rely on context to access the contextually appropriate meaning of a homonym to a greater extent than bilinguals, while bilinguals demonstrate simultaneous activation of both meanings.
Highlights
Language is our primary form of communication and involves many cognitive processes
A mixed-design analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted separately for the blocked and intermixed versions of the vocal Stroop task with the between subjects variable Language Group and the within subjects variable Condition. Both ANOVAs revealed no significant effect of Language Group [blocked: F(1, 31) = 0.93, p = 0.3; intermixed: F(1, 31) = 2.4, p = 0.1] or Language Group x Condition interaction [blocked: F(3, 93) = 0.88, p = 0.4; intermixed: F(2, 62) = 0.57, p = 0.6]; such an interaction would have been expected if there was an effect of bilingualism on inhibitory control in this sample
There was a main effect of Target, F(2, 72) = 35.4, MSE = 74, 473.3, p < 0.001, demonstrating that all three target types differed from each other, with the fastest response time (RT) for targets related to the dominant meaning of the homonym and the longest to targets unrelated to either meaning
Summary
Language is our primary form of communication and involves many cognitive processes. more than 50% of the world’s population is bilingual or multilingual, meaning that these individuals manage more than one language (e.g., Grosjean, 1989, 2008; Fabbro, 1999). Some findings suggest that bilingual individuals demonstrate superior cognitive function relative to their monolingual peers (e.g., Bialystok et al, 2005; Bialystok, 2006; Costa et al, 2008), despite disadvantages in vocabulary size in children and on measures of lexical access/retrieval in adults (see Bialystok, 2009). Findings demonstrating superior performance for bilinguals endorse what has become known as the “bilingual advantage” hypothesis, which postulates that the constant management of two (or more) languages results in superior and more robust cognitive control processes, including inhibition, switching, and working memory (Bialystok et al, 2012). The bilingual advantage refers to findings showing that on tasks requiring attentional/cognitive control, such as the Stroop (Stroop, 1935), Simon (Simon and Rudell, 1967), and Flanker (Eriksen and Eriksen, 1974) tasks, bilinguals demonstrate superior performance relative to monolinguals
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