The effects of bilingualism on conflict monitoring, cognitive control, and garden-path recovery

Susan E Teubner-Rhodes¹, Alan Mishler², Ryan Corbett², Llorenç Andreu³, Monica Sanz-Torrent⁴, John C Trueswell⁵, Jared M Novick⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, Biology-Psychology Bldg., College Park, MD 20742, USA; Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science, University of Maryland, Biology-Psychology Bldg., College Park, MD 20742, USA. Electronic address: teubnera@musc.edu.
² Center for Advanced Study of Language, University of Maryland, 7005 52nd Ave, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
³ Grup de Recerca en Cognició i Llenguatge (GRECIL), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Rambla de Poble Nou, 156, 08018 Barcelona, Spain.
⁴ Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona, Passeig de la Vall d'Hebron, 171, 08035 Barcelona, Spain.
⁵ Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 3401 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
⁶ Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science, University of Maryland, Biology-Psychology Bldg., College Park, MD 20742, USA; Center for Advanced Study of Language, University of Maryland, 7005 52nd Ave, College Park, MD 20742, USA; Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, University of Maryland, Lefrak Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

PMID: 26918741
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.02.011

The effects of bilingualism on conflict monitoring, cognitive control, and garden-path recovery

Susan E Teubner-Rhodes et al. Cognition. 2016 May.

. 2016 May:150:213-31.

doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.02.011. Epub 2016 Feb 23.

Authors

Susan E Teubner-Rhodes¹, Alan Mishler², Ryan Corbett², Llorenç Andreu³, Monica Sanz-Torrent⁴, John C Trueswell⁵, Jared M Novick⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, Biology-Psychology Bldg., College Park, MD 20742, USA; Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science, University of Maryland, Biology-Psychology Bldg., College Park, MD 20742, USA. Electronic address: teubnera@musc.edu.
² Center for Advanced Study of Language, University of Maryland, 7005 52nd Ave, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
³ Grup de Recerca en Cognició i Llenguatge (GRECIL), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Rambla de Poble Nou, 156, 08018 Barcelona, Spain.
⁴ Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona, Passeig de la Vall d'Hebron, 171, 08035 Barcelona, Spain.
⁵ Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 3401 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
⁶ Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science, University of Maryland, Biology-Psychology Bldg., College Park, MD 20742, USA; Center for Advanced Study of Language, University of Maryland, 7005 52nd Ave, College Park, MD 20742, USA; Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, University of Maryland, Lefrak Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

PMID: 26918741
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.02.011

Abstract

Bilinguals demonstrate benefits on non-linguistic tasks requiring cognitive control-the regulation of mental activity to resolve information-conflict during processing. This "bilingual advantage" has been attributed to the consistent management of two languages, yet it remains unknown if these benefits extend to sentence processing. In monolinguals, cognitive control helps detect and revise misinterpretations of sentence meaning. Here, we test if the bilingual advantage extends to parsing and interpretation by comparing bilinguals' and monolinguals' syntactic ambiguity resolution before and after practicing N-back, a non-syntactic cognitive-control task. Bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on a high-conflict but not a no-conflict version of N-back and on sentence comprehension, indicating that the advantage extends to language interpretation. Gains on N-back conflict trials also predicted comprehension improvements for ambiguous sentences, suggesting that the bilingual advantage emerges across tasks tapping shared cognitive-control procedures. Because the overall task benefits were observed for conflict and non-conflict trials, bilinguals' advantage may reflect increased cognitive flexibility.

Keywords: Bilingualism; Cognitive control; Memory; Sentence comprehension; Stimulus ambiguity.

PubMed Disclaimer

Cited by

Processing and Comprehension of Locally Ambiguous Participial Relative Clause Sentences in Russian.
Darzhinova L, Luk ZP. Darzhinova L, et al. J Psycholinguist Res. 2024 Feb 21;53(1):15. doi: 10.1007/s10936-024-10041-4. J Psycholinguist Res. 2024. PMID: 38381228 Free PMC article.
Bilingual Language Experience Shapes Resting-State Brain Rhythms.
Bice K, Yamasaki BL, Prat CS. Bice K, et al. Neurobiol Lang (Camb). 2020 Jul 1;1(3):288-318. doi: 10.1162/nol_a_00014. eCollection 2020. Neurobiol Lang (Camb). 2020. PMID: 37215228 Free PMC article.
FAB: A "Dummy's" program for self-paced forward and backward reading.
Gong T, Gao X, Jiang T. Gong T, et al. Behav Res Methods. 2023 Dec;55(8):4419-4436. doi: 10.3758/s13428-022-02025-w. Epub 2023 Mar 22. Behav Res Methods. 2023. PMID: 36947356
The influence of cognitive control on the processing of L2 garden path sentence among Chinese-English bilinguals.
Xie Z, Zeng G, Zhou S, Wang J. Xie Z, et al. Front Behav Neurosci. 2022 Sep 23;16:976155. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2022.976155. eCollection 2022. Front Behav Neurosci. 2022. PMID: 36212192 Free PMC article.
Bilinguals on the garden-path: Individual differences in syntactic ambiguity resolution.
Brothers T, Hoversten LJ, Traxler MJ. Brothers T, et al. Biling (Camb Engl). 2021 Aug;24(4):612-627. doi: 10.1017/s1366728920000711. Epub 2021 Apr 8. Biling (Camb Engl). 2021. PMID: 35669170 Free PMC article.

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

Actions

MeSH terms

Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources
- Elsevier Science
Other Literature Sources
- scite Smart Citations

Save citation to file

Email citation

Add to Collections

Add to My Bibliography

Your saved search

Create a file for external citation management software

Your RSS Feed

The effects of bilingualism on conflict monitoring, cognitive control, and garden-path recovery

Affiliations

The effects of bilingualism on conflict monitoring, cognitive control, and garden-path recovery

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

Similar articles

Cited by

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources

Other Literature Sources