Does language dominance affect cognitive performance in bilinguals? Lifespan evidence from preschoolers through older adults on card sorting, Simon, and metalinguistic tasks

Virginia C Mueller Gathercole,Emily J Roberts,Emma K Hughes,Enlli M Thomas,Nia Young,Cynog Prys,Leah Jones,Ivan Kennedy,Nestor Viñas Guasch

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00011

Virginia C Mueller Gathercole, Emily J Roberts + Show 7 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00011

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Abstract

This study explores the extent to which a bilingual advantage can be observed for three tasks in an established population of fully fluent bilinguals from childhood through adulthood. Welsh-English simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals, as well as English monolinguals, aged 3 years through older adults, were tested on three sets of cognitive and executive function tasks. Bilinguals were Welsh-dominant, balanced, or English-dominant, with only Welsh, Welsh and English, or only English at home. Card sorting, Simon, and a metalinguistic judgment task (650, 557, and 354 participants, respectively) reveal little support for a bilingual advantage, either in relation to control or globally. Primarily there is no difference in performance across groups, but there is occasionally better performance by monolinguals or persons dominant in the language being tested, and in one case-in one condition and in one age group-lower performance by the monolinguals. The lack of evidence for a bilingual advantage in these simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals suggests the need for much closer scrutiny of what type of bilingual might demonstrate the reported effects, under what conditions, and why.

Highlights

The question of bilinguals’ linguistic and cognitive abilities relative to those of their monolingual counterparts has been the subject of intense study and scrutiny over the last century
English An ANOVA was conducted in which condition (GM, Gm, gM, gm), age, and home language were entered as independent variables and number correct responses as the dependent variable
On the Simon task, performance was generally similar across groups, or the monolinguals generally had the advantage; in many cases, the monolinguals were faster or more accurate than one or more groups of bilinguals

Summary

Introduction

The question of bilinguals’ linguistic and cognitive abilities relative to those of their monolingual counterparts has been the subject of intense study and scrutiny over the last century. Bilinguals have been reported to show an advantage over their monolingual peers in the realms of metalinguistic abilities (Bialystok, 1993) and cognitive abilities related to executive function (Zelazo and Müller, 2002; Blair et al, 2005), involving selective attention, inhibition of attention, and switching attention in tasks with competing and misleading cues (Johnson, 1991; Bialystok et al, 2004; Hernandez Pardo et al, 2008) In these tasks, a high degree of cognitive control (Bialystok and Ryan, 1985) must be maintained, whether to inhibit irrelevant cues or to “detach” the verbal message from its reference (e.g., separate the linguistic form from its meaning). This is purported to lead to more fully developed neurological mechanisms for controlling such attention, referred to as “executive function,” which is relevant to the types of non-linguistic tasks mentioned (Bialystok and Ryan, 1985; Zelazo and Müller, 2002; Blair et al, 2005)

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