Data trimming procedure can eliminate bilingual cognitive advantage
- PMID: 26608692
- DOI: 10.3758/s13423-015-0981-6
Data trimming procedure can eliminate bilingual cognitive advantage
Abstract
Bilingualism and its cognitive impacts have drawn increasing interest. Recently, inconsistencies in the findings have raised discussions on what might have caused such discrepancies and how evidence should be evaluated. This review tries to shed new light onto the reasons for the inconsistencies by taking a novel perspective. Motivated by the finding that bilingualism affects response time distribution profiles, particularly findings that suggest bilinguals have fewer long responses, we investigated the relation between maximum response times allowed/included in the analysis of an experiment and the finding of a bilingual advantage. We reviewed 68 experiments from 33 articles that compared monolingual and bilingual speakers' performance in three commonly used non-verbal interference tasks (Simon, Spatial Stroop and Flanker). We found that studies that included longer responses in their analysis were more likely to report a bilingualism effect. We conclude that seemingly insignificant details such as the data trimming procedure can have a potential impact on whether an effect is observed. We also discuss the implication of our findings and suggest the usefulness of more fine-grid analytical procedures.
Keywords: Bilingual advantage; Data trimming; Non-verbal interference tasks; Response time distribution.
Similar articles
-
Ageing and bilingualism: absence of a "bilingual advantage" in stroop interference in a nonimmigrant sample.Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2012;65(2):356-69. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2011.604788. Epub 2011 Sep 21. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2012. PMID: 21936646
-
A behavioural and electrophysiological investigation of the effect of bilingualism on aging and cognitive control.Neuropsychologia. 2017 Jan 8;94:23-35. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.11.013. Epub 2016 Nov 20. Neuropsychologia. 2017. PMID: 27876508
-
Verbal and nonverbal cognitive control in bilinguals and interpreters.J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2015 Sep;41(5):1579-1586. doi: 10.1037/xlm0000107. Epub 2015 Feb 16. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2015. PMID: 25689001
-
Is there a bilingual advantage on interference-control tasks? A multiverse meta-analysis of global reaction time and interference cost.Psychon Bull Rev. 2019 Aug;26(4):1122-1147. doi: 10.3758/s13423-019-01567-z. Psychon Bull Rev. 2019. PMID: 30815795 Review.
-
Neuropsychological, cognitive, and theoretical considerations for evaluation of bilingual individuals.Neuropsychol Rev. 2008 Sep;18(3):255-68. doi: 10.1007/s11065-008-9069-7. Epub 2008 Oct 8. Neuropsychol Rev. 2008. PMID: 18841477 Free PMC article. Review.
Cited by
-
Language athletes: Dual-language code-switchers exhibit inhibitory control advantages.Front Psychol. 2023 Mar 31;14:1150159. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1150159. eCollection 2023. Front Psychol. 2023. PMID: 37063556 Free PMC article.
-
Bilingualism can cause enhanced monitoring and occasional delayed responses in a flanker task.Eur J Neurosci. 2023 Jan;57(1):129-147. doi: 10.1111/ejn.15863. Epub 2022 Nov 23. Eur J Neurosci. 2023. PMID: 36373596 Free PMC article.
-
The Multifaceted Nature of Bilingualism and Attention.Front Psychol. 2022 Jun 3;13:910382. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.910382. eCollection 2022. Front Psychol. 2022. PMID: 35719564 Free PMC article. Review.
-
The executive function of bilingual and monolingual children: A technical efficiency approach.Behav Res Methods. 2022 Jun;54(3):1319-1345. doi: 10.3758/s13428-021-01658-7. Epub 2021 Sep 10. Behav Res Methods. 2022. PMID: 34508285 Free PMC article.
-
Measuring the Impact of Bilingualism on Executive Functioning Via Inhibitory Control Abilities in Autistic Children.J Autism Dev Disord. 2022 Aug;52(8):3560-3573. doi: 10.1007/s10803-021-05234-y. Epub 2021 Aug 18. J Autism Dev Disord. 2022. PMID: 34406588 Free PMC article.
References
Publication types
MeSH terms
LinkOut - more resources
Full Text Sources