Abstract

Are there differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in non-linguistic cognitive processes related to attention? Recent interest in this question, which has a long history, was stimulated by ideas presented in Bialystok’s 2001 book: Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy, and cognition. Because attention is a multi-faceted construct Costa et al. (Cognition 106(1):59–86, 2008, Cognition 113(2):135–149, 2009) sought to answer this question using the attention network test (ANT), a simple-to-administer tool that was designed to measure the efficacy of three attention networks: alerting, orienting and executive control. Using the ANT Database, a recently developed repository of data extracted from studies that have used the ANT to answer any question, we identified 16 papers that followed Costa’s pioneering use of the ANT to address the question whether bilingualism is associated with differences in attention. In this paper we begin by reviewing the methods and findings from Costa’s studies, and then report the results of three meta-analyses (conducted separately for children, young adults and middle-aged adults) of the data reported in these 16 papers. Whereas, there were no noteworthy effects of language status on alerting or orienting in any group, our meta-analysis of the studies that tested young adults revealed, in agreement with Costa et al. (2008) a bilingual advantage in executive control. A similar bilingual advantage was not observed in the other age groups.

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