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Research papers on Bilingualism and cognition

Recent and highly-cited academic work on bilingualism and cognition, gathered from Semantic Scholar, CrossRef and OpenAlex.

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  2. Bilingualism, Aging, and Cognitive Control: Evidence From the Simon Task.

    Ellen Bialystok, Fergus I. M. Craik, Raymond M. Klein, et al. · 2004 · Psychology and Aging · 1,617 citations

    Previous work has shown that bilingualism is associated with more effective controlled processing in children; the assumption is that the constant management of 2 competing languages enhances executive functions (E. Bialystok, 2001). The present research attempted to determine whether this bilingual advantage persists for adults and whether bilingualism attenuates the negative effects of aging on cognitive control in older adults. Three studies are reported that compared the performance of monolingual and bilingual middle-aged and older adults on the Simon task. Bilingualism was associated with smaller Simon effect costs for both age groups; bilingual participants also responded more rapidly

  3. Bilingualism: The good, the bad, and the indifferent

    Ellen Bialystok · 2008 · Bilingualism Language and Cognition · 1,073 citations

    The present paper summarizes research showing that bilingualism affects linguistic and cognitive performance across the lifespan. The effect on linguistic performance is generally seen as a deficit in which bilingual children control a smaller vocabulary than their monolingual peers and bilingual adults perform more poorly on rapid lexical retrieval tasks. The effect on cognitive performance is to enhance executive functioning and to protect against the decline of executive control in aging. These effects interact to produce a complex pattern regarding the effect of bilingualism on memory performance. Memory tasks based primarily on verbal recall are performed more poorly by bilinguals but m

  4. Bilingual experience and executive functioning in young children

    Stephanie M. Carlson, Andrew N. Meltzoff · 2008 · Developmental Science · 1,046 citations

    Advanced inhibitory control skills have been found in bilingual speakers as compared to monolingual controls (Bialystok, 1999). We examined whether this effect is generalized to an unstudied language group (Spanish-English bilingual) and multiple measures of executive function by administering a battery of tasks to 50 kindergarten children drawn from three language groups: native bilinguals, monolinguals (English), and English speakers enrolled in second-language immersion kindergarten. Despite having significantly lower verbal scores and parent education/income level, Spanish-English bilingual children's raw scores did not differ from their peers. After statistically controlling for these f

  5. Cognitive control and lexical access in younger and older bilinguals.

    Ellen Bialystok, Fergus I. M. Craik, Gigi Luk · 2008 · Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · 920 citations

    Ninety-six participants, who were younger (20 years) or older (68 years) adults and either monolingual or bilingual, completed tasks assessing working memory, lexical retrieval, and executive control. Younger participants performed most of the tasks better than older participants, confirming the effect of aging on these processes. The effect of language group was different for each type of task: Monolinguals and bilinguals performed similarly on working memory tasks, monolinguals performed better on lexical retrieval tasks, and bilinguals performed better on executive control tasks, with some evidence for larger language group differences in older participants on the executive control tasks.

  6. Cognitive Complexity and Attentional Control in the Bilingual Mind

    Ellen Bialystok · 1999 · Child Development · 874 citations

    Abstract In the analysis and control framework, Bialystok identifies analysis (representation) and control (selective attention) as components of language processing and has shown that one of these, control, develops earlier in bilingual children than in comparable monolinguals. In the theory of cognitive complexity and control (CCC), Zelazo and Frye argue that preschool children lack the conscious representation and executive functioning needed to solve problems based on conflicting rules. The present study investigates whether the bilingual advantage in control can be found in a nonverbal task, the dimensional change card sort, used by Zelazo and Frye to assess CCC. This problem contains m

  7. Is bilingualism associated with enhanced executive functioning in adults? A meta-analytic review.

    Minna Lehtonen, Anna Soveri, Aini Laine, et al. · 2018 · Psychological Bulletin · 631 citations

    Because of enduring experience of managing two languages, bilinguals have been argued to develop superior executive functioning compared with monolinguals. Despite extensive investigation, there is, however, no consensus regarding the existence of such a bilingual advantage. Here we synthesized comparisons of bilinguals' and monolinguals' performance in six executive domains using 891 effect sizes from 152 studies on adults. We also included unpublished data, and considered the potential influence of a number of study-, task-, and participant-related variables. Before correcting estimates for observed publication bias, our analyses revealed a very small bilingual advantage for inhibition, sh

  9. Musical expertise, bilingualism, and executive functioning.

    Ellen Bialystok, Anne-Marie DePape · 2009 · Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance · 437 citations

    The authors investigated whether intensive musical experience leads to enhancements in executive processing, as has been shown for bilingualism. Young adults who were bilinguals, musical performers (instrumentalists or vocalists), or neither completed 3 cognitive measures and 2 executive function tasks based on conflict. Both executive function tasks included control conditions that assessed performance in the absence of conflict. All participants performed equivalently for the cognitive measures and the control conditions of the executive function tasks, but performance diverged in the conflict conditions. In a version of the Simon task involving spatial conflict between a target cue and it

  10. Bilingualism and the Development of Executive Function: The Role of Attention

    Ellen Bialystok · 2015 · Child Development Perspectives · 380 citations

    This paper reviews research examining the effect of bilingualism on children's cognitive development, and in particular, executive function. Studies reporting bilingual advantages in various tasks are described with the purpose of identifying the process or executive function component that might be responsible for this bilingual advantage. Several possibilities are discussed, such as inhibitory control. Finally, the role of attention is proposed as a fundamental process that initiates developmental differences in bilingual children from as early as infancy.

  11. Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism: How Linguistic Experience Leads to Cognitive Change

    Ellen Bialystok · 2007 · International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism · 360 citations

    Bilinguals must have a mechanism for controlling attention to their two language systems in order to achieve fluent performance in each language without intrusions from the other. This paper examines the evidence that the experience of controlling attention to two languages boosts the development of executive control processes in childhood for bilinguals, sustains cognitive control advantages for bilinguals through adulthood and protects bilingual older adults from the decline of these processes with ageing. Future research with bilingualism should explore these effects in a broader and more multidisciplinary context in order to provide a more detailed understanding of the functioning of the

  14. Musical Training, Bilingualism, and Executive Function: A Closer Look at Task Switching and Dual‐Task Performance

    Linda Moradzadeh, Galit Blumenthal, Melody Wiseheart · 2015 · Cognitive Science · 87 citations

    AbstractThis study investigated whether musical training and bilingualism are associated with enhancements in specific components of executive function, namely, task switching and dual‐task performance. Participants (n = 153) belonging to one of four groups (monolingual musician, bilingual musician, bilingual non‐musician, or monolingual non‐musician) were matched on age and socioeconomic status and administered task switching and dual‐task paradigms. Results demonstrated reduced global and local switch costs in musicians compared with non‐musicians, suggesting that musical training can contribute to increased efficiency in the ability to shift flexibly between mental sets. On dual‐task perf

  16. Effects of dense code-switching on executive control

    Julia Hofweber, Theodoros Marinis, Jeanine Treffers-Daller · 2016 · Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism · 78 citations

    Abstract Bilingualism is reported to re-structure executive control networks, but it remains unknown which aspects of the bilingual experience cause this modulation. This study explores the impact of three code-switching types on executive functions: (1) alternation, (2) insertion, and (3) dense code-switching or congruent lexicalisation. Current models hypothesise that different code-switching types challenge different aspects of the executive system because they vary in the extent and scope of language separation. Two groups of German-English bilinguals differing in dense code-switching frequency participated in a flanker task under conditions varying in degree of trial-mix

  17. Musical training, bilingualism, and executive function: working memory and inhibitory control

    A. D’Souza, L. Moradzadeh, M. Wiseheart · 2018 · Cognitive Research · 66 citations

    The current study investigated whether long-term experience in music or a second language is associated with enhanced cognitive functioning. Early studies suggested the possibility of a cognitive advantage from musical training and bilingualism but have failed to be replicated by recent findings. Further, each form of expertise has been independently investigated leaving it unclear whether any benefits are specifically caused by each skill or are a result of skill learning in general. To assess whether cognitive benefits from training exist, and how unique they are to each training domain, the current study compared musicians and bilinguals to each other, plus to individuals who had expertis

  18. Referring expressions and executive functions in bilingualism

    Antonella Sorace · 2016 · Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism · 65 citations

    Abstract Recent research has shown that the bilingual experience has positive effects on non-linguistic cognition (Bialystok 2009; Costa and Sebastian-Gallés 2014) but also negative effects on language, for example on vocabulary size and lexical fluency (Pearson et al. 1993). While most of the linguistic ‘disadvantages’ of bilingualism have been discussed in the lexical domain, this question is scaled up here to the sentence level and a novel theoretical framework is proposed which explicitly connects psychological and linguistic research. It is suggested that the bilingual experience may (a) affect the reciprocal interactions between language and general cognition, and (b) m

  19. Early Executive Function: The Influence of Culture and Bilingualism

    Crystal D. Tran, Maria M Arredondo, Hanako Yoshida · 2018 · Bilingualism (Cambridge, England) · 53 citations

    Evidence suggests that cultural experiences and learning multiple languages have measurable effects on children's development of executive function (EF). However, the precise impact of how bilingualism and culture contribute to observed effects remains inconclusive. The present study aims to investigate how these factors shape the development of early EF constructs longitudinally, between monolingual and bilingual children at ages 3, 3½ and 4 years, with a set of EF tasks that are uniquely relevant to the effects of bilingualism and cultural practices. We hypothesize that the effects of bilingualism and cultural backgrounds (i.e., Eastern) are based on different, though related, cognitive co

  20. Alerting, Orienting, and Executive Control: The Effect of Bilingualism and Age on the Subcomponents of Attention

    Tanya Dash, P. Berroir, Y. Joanette, et al. · 2019 · Frontiers in Neurology · 51 citations

    Life-long experience of using two or more languages has been shown to enhance cognitive control abilities in young and elderly bilinguals in comparison to their monolingual peers. This advantage has been found to be larger in older adults in comparison to younger adults, suggesting that bilingualism provides advantages in cognitive control abilities. However, studies showing this effect have used a variety of tasks (Simon Task, Stroop task, Flanker Task), each measuring different subcomponents of attention and raising mixed results. At the same time, attention is not a unitary function but comprises of subcomponents which can be distinctively addressed within the Attention Network Test (ANT)

  21. Executive control in bilingual children

    Klara Marton · 2016 · Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism · 15 citations

    Abstract While findings on the bilingual advantage in adults are mixed, the data from children are more consistent but still show variations. A number of factors influence the outcomes, such as individual bilingual characteristics, variations in target functions, and differences in task type. Our goal is to demonstrate that there is a complex relationship among these variables and that the outcomes of executive function (EF) studies depend on the interactions among these factors. Performance on EF is influenced by children's language proficiency, language use, age, socioeconomic status, and culture. These individual features show different interactions with different executiv

  22. Degree of bilingualism and executive function in early childhood

    M. V. Nguyen, Lindsey A. Hutchison, Gabrielle Norvell, et al. · 2023 · Language and Cognition · 13 citations

    This study explores the relationship between executive functioning (EF) and degree of bilingualism in a sample (N = 79) of 5- to 7-year-old monolingual and bilingual children. The bilingual group included children who are fully fluent in two languages (balanced bilinguals) and children who are still learning their second language (dual-language learners (DLLs). In general, findings revealed mixed associations between bilingualism and EF. There were no language group differences for one type of simple inhibitory control (i.e., go or no-go task). However, a bilingual advantage was demonstrated for another type of simple inhibitory control (the Head–Toes–Knees–Shoulders task), for complex inh

  23. Does bilingualism protect against cognitive aging?

    Caitlin Wei-Ming Watson, Jennifer J. Manly, Laura B. Zahodne · 2016 · Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism · 13 citations

    Abstract Recent studies of bilingualism as a protective factor in cognitive aging have reported conflicting findings, and researchers have begun to explore the methodological complications that may explain differences across studies. This article details the current research landscape and addresses several issues relevant to the study of bilingualism and late-life cognitive function: study design, establishing causal relationships, confounding factors, operationalizing bilingualism, predicting cognitive level versus cognitive change, and incorporating brain structural variables to interrogate cognitive reserve.

  24. Putting together bilingualism and executive function

    Virginia Valian · 2016 · Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism · 12 citations

    Abstract Three important issues bear on understanding the connection between bilingualism and executive function. The first is the absence of a fine-grained task analysis for executive functions and other cognitive processes. The second is the absence of a theory of the cognitive mechanisms underlying the deployment of two or more languages and thus the absence of a solid basis on which to make predictions about what domain-general performances, if any, bilinguals should excel in. The third is the relation between neural and behavioral consequences of bilingualism. These three issues must be taken in account in trying to understand the variability among findings showing benef

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