The Role of Cognitive Development and Strategic Task Tendencies in the Bilingual Advantage Controversy
- PMID: 30319495
- PMCID: PMC6167540
- DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01790
The Role of Cognitive Development and Strategic Task Tendencies in the Bilingual Advantage Controversy
Abstract
Recent meta-analyses have indicated that the bilingual advantage in cognitive control is not clear-cut. So far, the literature has mainly focussed on behavioral differences and potential differences in strategic task tendencies between monolinguals and bilinguals have been left unexplored. In the present study, two groups of younger and older bilingual Dutch-French children were compared to monolingual controls on a Simon and flanker task. Beside the classical between-group comparison, we also investigated potential differences in strategy choices as indexed by the speed-accuracy trade-off. Whereas we did not find any evidence for an advantage for bilingual over monolingual children, only the bilinguals showed a significant speed-accuracy trade-off across tasks and age groups. Furthermore, in the younger bilingual group, the trade-off effect was only found in the Simon and not the flanker task. These findings suggest that differences in strategy choices can mask variations in performance between bilinguals and monolinguals, and therefore also provide inconsistent findings on the bilingual cognitive control advantage.
Keywords: bilingualism; choice strategy; cognitive control; inhibition; speed-accuracy trade-off.
Figures
![FIGURE 1](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/instance/6167540/bin/fpsyg-09-01790-g001.gif)
![FIGURE 2](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/instance/6167540/bin/fpsyg-09-01790-g002.gif)
![FIGURE 3](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/instance/6167540/bin/fpsyg-09-01790-g003.gif)
![FIGURE 4](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/instance/6167540/bin/fpsyg-09-01790-g004.gif)
Similar articles
-
Relationship Between Language Dominance and Stimulus-Stimulus or Stimulus-Response Inhibition in Uyghur-Chinese Bilinguals with an Investigation of Speed-Accuracy Trade-Offs.Behav Sci (Basel). 2019 Apr 18;9(4):41. doi: 10.3390/bs9040041. Behav Sci (Basel). 2019. PMID: 31003490 Free PMC article.
-
Performance on Auditory and Visual Tasks of Inhibition in English Monolingual and Spanish-English Bilingual Adults: Do Bilinguals Have a Cognitive Advantage?J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2018 Feb 15;61(2):410-419. doi: 10.1044/2017_JSLHR-H-17-0160. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2018. PMID: 29383377
-
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
-
Cultural Effects Rather Than a Bilingual Advantage in Cognition: A Review and an Empirical Study.Cogn Sci. 2018 Sep;42(7):2313-2341. doi: 10.1111/cogs.12672. Epub 2018 Aug 22. Cogn Sci. 2018. PMID: 30136441 Review.
-
Data trimming procedure can eliminate bilingual cognitive advantage.Psychon Bull Rev. 2016 Aug;23(4):1221-30. doi: 10.3758/s13423-015-0981-6. Psychon Bull Rev. 2016. PMID: 26608692 Review.
Cited by
-
Bilingual disadvantages are systematically compensated by bilingual advantages across tasks and populations.Sci Rep. 2024 Jan 24;14(1):2107. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-52417-5. Sci Rep. 2024. PMID: 38267616 Free PMC article.
-
Effects of language background on executive function: Transfer across task and modality.Front Psychol. 2023 Jan 5;13:923123. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.923123. eCollection 2022. Front Psychol. 2023. PMID: 36687953 Free PMC article.
-
Bilingualism Affects Infant Cognition: Insights From New and Open Data.Open Mind (Camb). 2022 Jul 1;6:88-117. doi: 10.1162/opmi_a_00057. eCollection 2022. Open Mind (Camb). 2022. PMID: 36439068 Free PMC article.
-
Effects of markedness in gender processing in Italian as a heritage language: A speed accuracy tradeoff.Front Psychol. 2022 Oct 12;13:965885. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.965885. eCollection 2022. Front Psychol. 2022. PMID: 36312081 Free PMC article.
-
Measures of Bilingual Cognition - From Infancy to Adolescence.J Cogn. 2021 Aug 26;4(1):45. doi: 10.5334/joc.184. eCollection 2021. J Cogn. 2021. PMID: 34514316 Free PMC article.
References
LinkOut - more resources
Full Text Sources