Is there a relation between onset age of bilingualism and enhancement of cognitive control?*

By G. Luk, Eric de Sa, Ellen Bialystok. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2011

349 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Young English-speaking monolingual and bilingual adults were examined for English proficiency, language use history, and performance on a flanker task. The bilinguals, who were about twenty years old, were divided into two groups (early bilinguals and late bilinguals) according to whether they became actively bilingual before or after the age of ten years. Early bilinguals and monolinguals demonstrated similar levels of English proficiency, and both groups were more proficient in English than late bilinguals. In contrast, early bilinguals produced the smallest response time cost for incongruent trials (flanker effect) with no difference between monolinguals and late bilinguals. Moreover, across the whole sample of bilinguals, onset age of active bilingualism was negatively correlated with English proficiency and positively correlated with the flanker effect. These results suggest a gradient in which more experience in being actively bilingual is associated with greater advantages in cognitive control and higher language proficiency.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental and Educational Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0a5c26a0a06e9c72438825fbdaa97f8cf9aaa079

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Citations in the corpus

The construct of language proficiency in the study of bilingualism from a cognitive perspective* (2012, methodology): “Luk, de Sa and Bialystok (2011) used the PPVT (3rd edition) in screening adult subjects (early and late bilinguals and monolingual controls).”
Are bilingual advantages dependent upon specific tasks or specific bilingual experiences? (2014, methodology): “Only two of the six (Kapa & Colombo, 2013; Tao et al., 2011) showed a unique advantage for early bilinguals in measures of monitoring (global RT) and only one of the six (Luk et al, 2011) showed a unique advantage for early bilinguals in measures of inhibitory control.”
Bilingual advantages in executive functioning either do not exist or are restricted to very specific and undetermined circumstances. (2015, background): “Luk, De Sa, and Bialystok (2011) reported the following pattern of differences across the three language groups: no language-group differences inmonitoring and an advantage in inhibitory control for early bilinguals over both late bilinguals and monolinguals.”
Bilingualism is not a categorical variable: Interaction between language proficiency and usage (2013, background): “However, when examining cognitive consequence of bilingual experience, the onset age of active bilingualism played a more critical role than age of second-language acquisition (Luk et al., 2011).”