Abstract
This study uses several bibliometric indices to explore the temporal course of publication trends regarding the bilingual advantage in executive control over a ten-year window. These indices include the number of published papers, numbers of citations, and the journal impact factor. According to the information available in their abstracts, studies were classified into one of four categories: supporting, ambiguous towards, not mentioning, or challenging the bilingual advantage. Results show that the number of papers challenging the bilingual advantage increased notably in 2014 and 2015. Both the average impact factor and the accumulated citations as of June 2016 were equivalent between categories. However, of the studies published in 2014, those that challenge the bilingual advantage accumulated more citations in June 2016 than those supporting it. Our findings offer evidence-based bibliometric information about the current state of the literature and suggest a change in publication trends regarding the literature on the bilingual advantage.
Highlights
In recent years, the behavioral performance of monolingual and bilingual participants during tasks related to executive control has become a theme of debate [1] and has emerged as a controversial topic in cognitive science
The χ2 test, performed to observe the relationship between the number of papers published in each category (SBA, ambiguous regarding the bilingual advantage (ABA), NMA, and challenging the bilingual advantage (CBA)) as a function of the time period (2005 to 2013 and 2014 to 2015), showed that the paper category was related to time period, with χ2(3, N = 139) = 9.51, p = .023, and F = .19, revealing, as expected, an overall larger amount of studies published in 2013 and before
The present study aimed to present an in-depth analysis regarding several bibliometric indices concerning the literature on bilingualism and cognitive control based on the information retrieved from 139 abstracts
Summary
The behavioral performance of monolingual and bilingual participants during tasks related to executive control has become a theme of debate [1] and has emerged as a controversial topic in cognitive science. The results accumulated over the past years support the idea that bilinguals show enhanced cognitive control capacity when compared to their monolingual peers This phenomenon has been labelled the ‘bilingual advantage’ (BA), and it has been reported in different population groups, such as children [2], young adults [3], and older adults [4]. In this regard, the BA has been assumed to stem from the proficient ability to switch between two or more languages, which involves both the inhibition of one language and the subsequent activation of the target language during oral production [5]. Bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals in tasks related to specific aspects of cognitive control, such as the inhibition of irrelevant information [7], the switch towards new relevant information [8], and the updating of information in working memory [9]
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