Abstract
We explored whether a bilingual advantage in executive control is associated with differences in cultural and ethnic background associated with the bilinguals' immigrant status, and whether dialect use in monolinguals can also incur such an advantage. Performance on the Simon task in older non-immigrant (Gaelic-English) and immigrant (Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Malay, Punjabi, Urdu-English) bilinguals was compared with three groups of older monolingual English speakers, who were either monodialectal users of the same English variety as the bilinguals or were bidialectal users of a local variety of Scots. Results showed no group differences in overall reaction times as well as in the Simon effect thus providing no evidence that an executive control advantage is related to differences in cultural and ethnic background as was found for immigrant compared to non-immigrant bilinguals, nor that executive control may be improved by use of dialect. We suggest the role of interactional contexts and bilingual literacy as potential explanations for inconsistent findings of a bilingual advantage in executive control.
Highlights
IntroductionOne background questionnaire inquired about the participants’ educational background, the occupations they had held throughout their working lives, as well as daily usage of the different varieties of English and of other foreign languages; Scottish participants were asked about their use of varieties of Scots
The reaction time difference between incongruent and congruent trials is considered to be a measure of inhibitory control
Our findings did not show an advantage in nonlinguistic inhibitory control for older GaelicEnglish and Asian Language-English bilinguals, nor did we find such an advantage for bidialectal speakers who routinely use both Dundonian Scots and Scottish English (SSE)
Summary
One background questionnaire inquired about the participants’ educational background, the occupations they had held throughout their working lives, as well as daily usage of the different varieties of English and of other foreign languages; Scottish participants were asked about their use of varieties of Scots. The LEAP-Q was adapted for use with dialect speakers by asking to what extent participants were fluent in one or two varieties, e.g. SSE and Dundonian Scots, and the age at which they became fluent. Two subscales of the WASI were used to determine participants’ verbal and non-verbal IQ. The Vocabulary subscale tested participants’ verbal reasoning ability and ability to give definitions of words. The Matrix Reasoning subscale contained visuo-spatial patterns designed to measure abstract non-verbal reasoning ability. Participants’ raw scores were converted to t-scores, which are normalised for each age range
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