Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T07:44:40.891Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the bilingualism effect in task switching*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2016

FRANCESCA M. BRANZI ,
MARCO CALABRIA ,
MIRIAM GADE ,
LUIS J. FUENTES  and
ALBERT COSTA
FRANCESCA M. BRANZI*
Affiliation:
Neuroscience and Aphasia Research Unit, School of Biological Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), San Sebastian, Spain Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC), Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain
MARCO CALABRIA
Affiliation:
Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC), Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain
MIRIAM GADE
Affiliation:
Catholic University of Eichstatt-Ingolstadt, Department of Psychology, General Psychology, Eichstatt, Germany
LUIS J. FUENTES
Affiliation:
Department of Basic Psychology and Methodology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain
ALBERT COSTA
Affiliation:
Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC), Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain
*
Address for correspondence: Francesca M. Branzi, Room 3.19, Neuroscience and Aphasia Research Unit (NARU), Zochonis Building, University of Manchester, Brunswick Street, Manchester, M13 9PL[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In one task-switching experiment, we compared bilinguals and monolinguals to explore the reliability of the bilingualism effect on the n-2 repetition cost. In a second task-switching experiment, we tested another group of bilinguals and monolinguals and measured both the n-1 shift cost and the n-2 repetition cost to test the hypothesis that bilingualism should confer a general greater efficiency of the executive control functioning. According to this hypothesis, we expected a reduced n-1 shift cost and an enhanced n-2 repetition cost for bilinguals compared to monolinguals. However, we did not observe such results. Our findings suggest that previous results cannot be replicated and that the n-2 repetition cost is another index that shows no reliable bilingualism effect. Finally, we observed a negative correlation between the two switch costs among bilinguals only. This finding may suggest that the two groups employ different strategies to cope with interference in task-switching paradigms.

Keywords

Bilingualismexecutive controltask switchingn-2 repetition cost
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 195 - 208
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

We are grateful to Dr. Kenneth Paap and Dr. Mireia Hernández for their useful comments on the previous versions of this manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the Spanish Government (PSI2014-54500, PSI2008-01191, PSI2011-23033, PSI2014-53427-P, Consolider Ingenio 2010 CSD2007-00012), the Catalan Government (Consolidat SGR 2009-1521 and SGR 2014-1210), by one grant from the European Research Council under the European Community's Seventh Framework (FP7/2007-2013 Cooperation grant agreement 613465-AThEME), by one grant from Fundación Séneca (19267/PI/14) and by the Severo Ochoa program grant SEV-2015-049. Francesca M. Branzi was supported by a predoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Government (FPU-2009-2013) and by a postdoctoral fellowship from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 658341. Marco Calabria was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Government (Ramón y Cajal Fellowship).

References

Abutalebi, J., Della Rosa, P.A., Green, D.W., Hernández, M., Scifo, P., Keim, R., Cappa, S. F., & Costa, A. (2012). Bilingualism tunes the anterior cingulate cortex for conflict monitoring. Cerebral Cortex, 22 (9), 2076–2086.Google Scholar
Antón, E., Duñabeitia, J. A., Estévez, A., Hernández, J. A., Castillo, A., Fuentes, L. J., Davidson, D. J., & Carreiras, M. (2014). Is there a bilingual advantage in the ANT task? Evidence from children. Frontiers in Psychology, 5.Google Scholar
Babcock, L., & Vallesi, A. (2015). Language control is not a one-size-fits-all languages process: Evidence from simultaneous interpretation students and the n − 2 repetition cost. Frontiers in Psychology, 6.Google Scholar
Bak, T. H. (2015). Beyond a simple “yes” and “no”. Cortex, 73, 332–333.Google Scholar
Barac, R., & Bialystok, E. (2012). Bilingual effects on cognitive and linguistic development: Role of language, cultural background, and education. Child development, 83 (2), 413–422.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I., Green, D. W., & Gollan, T. H. (2009). Bilingual minds. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 10 (3), 89–129.Google Scholar
Branzi, F. M., Calabria, M., Boscarino, M. L., & Costa, A. (2016). On the overlap between bilingual language control and domain-general executive control. Acta Psychologica, 166, 21–30.Google Scholar
de Bruin, A., Bak, T. H., & Della Sala, S. (2015). Examining the effects of active versus inactive bilingualism on executive control in a carefully matched non-immigrant sample. Journal of Memory and Language, 85, 15–26.Google Scholar
von Bastian, C. C., Souza, A. S., & Gade, M. (2016). No Evidence for Bilingual Cognitive Advantages: A Test of Four Hypotheses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145 (2), 246–258.Google Scholar
Calabria, M., Branzi, F. M., Marne, P., Hernández, M., & Costa, A. (2015). Age-related effects over bilingual language control and executive control. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18 (1), 65–78.Google Scholar
Calabria, M., Hernández, M., Branzi, F. M., & Costa, A. (2012). Qualitative differences between bilingual language control and executive control: Evidence from task-switching. Frontiers in Psychology, 2.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cattaneo, G., Calabria, M., Marne, P., Gironell, A., Abutalebi, J., & Costa, A. (2015). The role of executive control in bilingual language production: A study with Parkinson's disease individuals. Neuropsychologia, 66, 99–110.Google Scholar
Cohen, J., & Cohen, P. (1983). Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Costa, A., Hernández, M., Costa-Faidella, J., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2009). On the bilingual advantage in conflict processing: Now you see it, now you don't. Cognition, 113 (2), 135–149.Google Scholar
Costa, A., Hernández, M., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2008). Bilingualism aids conflict resolution: Evidence from the ANT task. Cognition, 106 (1), 59–86.Google Scholar
Durkin, M., Prescott, L., Furchtgott, E., Cantor, J., & Powell, D. A. (1995). Performance but not acquisition of skill learning is severely impaired in the elderly. Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, 20 (2), 167–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duñabeitia, J. A., Hernández, J. A., Antón, E., Macizo, P., Estévez, A., Fuentes, L. J., & Carreiras, M. (2014). The inhibitory advantage in bilingual children revisited: Myth or reality? Experimental Psychology, 61 (3), 234–251.Google Scholar
Gade, M., Schuch, S., Druey, M. D., & Koch, I. (2014). Inhibitory control in task switching. In Grange, J. A., & Houghton, G. (Eds.), Executive Control and Task Switching. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Garbin, G., Sanjuan, A., Forn, C., Bustamante, J. C., Rodriguez-Pujadas, A., Belloch, V., Hernández, M., Costa, A., & Ávila, C. (2010). Bridging language and attention: brain basis of the impact of bilingualism on cognitive control. NeuroImage, 53 (4), 1272–1278.Google Scholar
Gold, B. T., Kim, C., Johnson, N. F., Kryscio, R. J., & Smith, C. D. (2013). Lifelong bilingualism maintains neural efficiency for cognitive control in aging. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33 (2), 387–396.Google Scholar
Gobel, E. W., Blomeke, K., Zadikoff, C., Simuni, T., Weintraub, S., & Reber, P. J. (2013). Implicit perceptual-motor skill learning in mild cognitive impairment and Parkinson's disease. Neuropsychology, 27 (3), 314–321.Google Scholar
Hartanto, A., & Yang, H. (2016). Disparate bilingual experiences modulate task-switching advantages: A diffusion-model analysis of the effects of interactional context on switch costs. Cognition, 150, 10–19.Google Scholar
Hernández, M., Costa, A., & Humphreys, G. W. (2012). Escaping capture: bilingualism modulates distraction from working memory. Cognition, 122 (1), 37–50.Google Scholar
Hernández, M., Martin, C. D., Barceló, F., & Costa, A. (2013). Where is the bilingual advantage in task-switching? Journal of Memory and Language, 69 (3), 257–276.Google Scholar
Houtzager, N., Lowie, W., Sprenger, S., & de Bot, K. (2015). A bilingual advantage in task switching? Age-related differences between German monolinguals and Dutch-Frisian bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1–11.Google Scholar
Kousaie, S., & Phillips, N. A. (2012a). Conflict monitoring and resolution: Are two languages better than one? Evidence from reaction time and event-related brain potentials. Brain Research, 1446, 71–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kousaie, S., & Phillips, N. A. (2012b). Ageing and bilingualism: Absence of a “bilingual advantage” in Stroop interference in a nonimmigrant sample. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65 (2), 356–369.Google Scholar
Kousaie, S., Sheppard, C., Lemieux, M., Monetta, L., & Taler, V. (2014). Executive function and bilingualism in young and older adults. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 8.Google Scholar
Kroll, J. F., & Bialystok, E. (2013). Understanding the consequences of bilingualism for language processing and cognition. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25 (5), 497–514.Google Scholar
Mayr, U., & Keele, S. W. (2000). Changing internal constraints on action: the role of backward inhibition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129 (1), 4–26.Google Scholar
Mor, B., Yitzhaki-Amsalem, S., & Prior, A. (2015). The joint effect of bilingualism and ADHD on executive functions. Journal of Attention Disorders, 19 (6), 527–541.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paap, K. R., & Greenberg, Z. I. (2013). There is no coherent evidence for a bilingual advantage in executive processing. Cognitive Psychology, 66 (2), 232–258.Google Scholar
Paap, K. R., Johnson, H. A., & Sawi, O. (2015). Bilingual advantages in executive functioning either do not exist or are restricted to very specific and undetermined circumstances. Cortex, 69, 265–278.Google Scholar
Paap, K. R., Johnson, H. A., & Sawi, O. (2014). Are bilingual advantages dependent upon specific tasks or specific bilingual experiences? Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 26 (6), 615–639.Google Scholar
Paap, K. R., & Sawi, O. (2014). Bilingual advantages in executive functioning: problems in convergent validity, discriminant validity, and the identification of the theoretical constructs. Frontiers in Psychology, 5.Google Scholar
Pelham, S. D., & Abrams, L. (2014). Cognitive advantages and disadvantages in early and late bilinguals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40 (2), 313–325.Google ScholarPubMed
Philipp, A. M., & Koch, I. (2006). Task inhibition and task repetition in task switching. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 18 (4), 624–639.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prior, A. (2012). Too much of a good thing: Stronger bilingual inhibition leads to larger lag-2 task repetition costs. Cognition, 125 (1), 1–12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Prior, A., & MacWhinney, B. (2010). A bilingual advantage in task switching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13 (2), 253–262.Google Scholar
Prior, A., & Gollan, T. H. (2011). Good Language-Switchers are Good Task-Switchers: Evidence from Spanish-English and Mandarin-English Bilinguals. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society: JINS, 17 (4), 682–691.Google Scholar
Prior, A., & Gollan, T. H. (2013). The elusive link between language control and executive control: A case of limited transfer. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25 (5), 622–645.Google Scholar
Raven, J., Raven, J. C., & Court, J. H. (1998). Manual for Raven's advanced progressive matrices (1998 ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford Psychologists Press.Google Scholar
Rodrigue, K. M., Kennedy, K. M., & Raz, N. (2005). Aging and longitudinal change in perceptual-motor skill acquisition in healthy adults. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 60 (4), 174–181.Google Scholar
Rodriguez-Fornells, A., Krämer, U. M., Lorenzo-Seva, U., Festman, J., & Münte, T. F. (2012). Self-assessment of individual differences in language switching. Frontiers in Psychology, 2.Google Scholar
Schmidt, S. (2009). Shall we really do it again? The powerful concept of replication is neglected in the social sciences. Review of General Psychology, 13 (2), 90–100.Google Scholar
Stroebe, W., & Strack, F. (2014). The alleged crisis and the illusion of exact replication. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9 (1), 59–71.Google Scholar
Valian, V. (2015). Bilingualism and cognition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18 (01), 3–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vega-Mendoza, M., West, H., Sorace, A., & Bak, T. H. (2015). The impact of late, non-balanced bilingualism on cognitive performance. Cognition, 137, 40–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Verreyt, N., Woumans, E., Vandelanotte, D., Szmalec, A., & Duyck, W. (2016). The influence of language-switching experience on the bilingual executive control advantage. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19 (01), 181–190.Google Scholar
Wiseheart, M., Viswanathan, M., & Bialystok, E. (2016). Flexibility in task switching by monolinguals and bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19 (01), 141–146.Google Scholar
Yang, H., Hartanto, A., & Yang, S. (2016). The importance of bilingual experience in assessing bilingual advantages in executive functions. Cortex, 75, 237–240.Google Scholar