Cognitive control and lexical access in younger and older bilinguals.

By Ellen Bialystok, Fergus I. M. Craik, G. Luk. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory and Cognition, 2008

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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. These results replicate findings from individual studies obtained using only 1 type of task and different participants. The confirmation of this pattern in the same participants is discussed in terms of a suggested explanation of how the need to manage 2 language systems leads to these different outcomes for cognitive and linguistic functions.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental and Educational Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2db0c6e9b5e6c25d0b0340d76ecef4edd7d5fe8f

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Citations in the corpus

Examining the effects of active versus inactive bilingualism on executive control in a carefully matched non-immigrant sample (2015, positive): “The number of participants per language group in our study was similar to the sample size in these three studies that showed an effect of language group (Bialystok, 2006: N per group = 40; Bialystok et al., 2008: N per group = 24; Bialystok & DePape, 2009: N per group = 24).”
The Bilingual Adaptation: How Minds Accommodate Experience (2017, neutral): “Bialystok, Craik, and Luk (2008) administered both a Stroop and Simon task to younger and older adults who were monolingual or bilingual and found bilinguals in both age groups outperformed the monolinguals, although there was no language group difference for young adults on the Simon task.”
Cognitive and Linguistic Processing in the Bilingual Mind (2010, methodology): “The first question was addressed in a study of younger and older adults by Bialystok et al. (2008a).”
Moving toward a neuroplasticity view of bilingualism, executive control, and aging (2014, background): “Bilingualism in older adults is thought to increase cognitive reserve (Bialystok et al., 2008a; Chertkow et al., 2010; Gollan, Montoya, Cera, & Sandoval, 2008) and in so doing leaves indelible marks on brain structure and connectivity similar to other highly specialized skills, such as musical…”
The effects of bilingualism on executive functions: an updated quantitative analysis (2020, neutral): “…(2013) - 1 0 0 Bennett (2012) - 1 0 0 Bialystok (2004) 1 1 0 Bialystok et al. (2005a) 1 1 0 Bialystok et al. (2005b) 1 1 0 Bialystok (2006) 1 1 0 Bialystok et al. (2008) 1 1 0 Bialystok and DePape (2009) 1 1 0 Bialystok et al. (2014) 0 1 1 Bialystok et al. (2017) 1 1 1 Bice and Kroll (2015) 0…”
Are there bilingual advantages on nonlinguistic interference tasks? Implications for the plasticity of executive control processes (2011, methodology): “For completeness, 1 Other studies have examined inhibitory control processes in bilinguals using the Stroop task (e.g., Bialystok et al., 2008), spatial negative-priming (Treccani, Argyri, Sorace, & Della Sala, 2009), and inhibition-of-return (IOR) paradigms (Colzato et al., 2008).”
The influence of language-switching experience on the bilingual executive control advantage* (2015, background): “In addition, the advantage remains consistent in bilingual elderly (Bialystok, Craik, Klein & Viswanathan, 2004; Bialystok et al., 2008; Weissberger, Wierenga, Bondi & Gollan, 2012).”
Bilingual advantages in executive functioning either do not exist or are restricted to very specific and undetermined circumstances. (2015, methodology): “In each case the smaller Simon interference effects for the bilinguals were interpreted as “bilingual advantages” in inhibitory control (Bialystok et al., 2008; Salvatierra& Rosselli, 2011; Schroeder & Marian, 2012).”
Dominance and Age in Bilingualism. (2014, background): “On cognitive 55control and lexical access among younger versus older bilinguals, see Bialystok et al. (2008).”
Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children (2009, result): “Consistent with this pattern, some studies have reported higher vocabulary scores for monolinguals even in adulthood (e.g., Bialystok, Craik & Luk, 2008; Ellen Bialystok, Gigi Luk, Kathleen F. Peets and Sujin Yang Portocarrero, Burright & Donovick, 2007) so further research is needed to investigate…”
Dual mechanisms of cognitive control in bilinguals and monolinguals (2013, methodology): “This proposal offers a clear interpretation to the smaller interference effects found in Stroop (Bialystok et al., 2008; Blumenfeld & Marian, 2010; Tse & Altarriba, 2012; Zied et al., 2004), flanker (Costa et al., 2008, 2009), or Simon tasks (Bialystok, 2006; Bialystok et al., 2004), and to the…”
Bilingual Minds (2009, background): “…Task (Kaplan, Goodglass, & Weintraub, 1983), bilinguals produced fewer correct responses (Roberts, Garcia, Desrochers, & Hernandez, 2002; Gollan, FennemaNotestine, Montoya, & Jernigan, 2007) and made more errors on a speeded version of the task (Bialystok et al., 2008a) than did monolinguals.”