Abstract
This study investigated the possibility that lifelong bilingualism may lead to enhanced efficiency in the ability to shift between mental sets. We compared the performance of monolingual and fluent bilingual college students in a task-switching paradigm. Bilinguals incurred reduced switching costs in the task-switching paradigm when compared with monolinguals, suggesting that lifelong experience in switching between languages may contribute to increased efficiency in the ability to shift flexibly between mental sets. On the other hand, bilinguals did not differ from monolinguals in the differential cost of performing mixed-task as opposed to single-task blocks. Together, these results indicate that bilingual advantages in executive function most likely extend beyond inhibition of competing responses, and encompass flexible mental shifting as well.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 253-262 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Bilingualism |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 2010 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:* The authors thank Anna Guitchounts for impeccable data collection and coding, Giora Unger for programming assistance, Nick Yeung and Hagit Magen for helpful discussions, and Tamar Degani, Dave Plaut, Ellen Bialystok, Albert Costa, Addie Johnson and Andrea Philipp for comments on a previous version of the manuscript. AP was funded by post-doctoral NRSA F32HD049255.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education
- Language and Linguistics
- Linguistics and Language