Running head: DO BILINGUALS HAVE AN ADVANTAGE IN EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS

AND MEMORY?

Do Bilinguals have an advantage in Executive Functions and Memory?

Submitted by

Akhilesh Parab

Department of Psychology,

CHRIST (Deemed to be University),

Bengaluru

Academic Year

2019-2020

1
 Running head: DO BILINGUALS HAVE AN ADVANTAGE IN EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS
AND MEMORY?

The presence of an advantage among bilinguals in their executive functions and memory has

been a hot debate for discussion. Traditionally it was thought that Bilinguals do have an

advantage. It was seen that Bilinguals had a superior performance as compared to monolinguals

in Simon task and stroop task. These tasks had some components of executive function

(Bialystok, Craik, Klein, & Viswanathan, 2004; Poarch & Van Hell, 2012). Certain cognitive

neuroscience findings suggested activation of Prefrontal cortex, left inferior parietal lobule and

caudate. These are similar to regions activated as a response to strengthening general control

process. (Abutalebi & Green, 2007). One study explored the effects of ageing and bilingualism

on executive function by using 130 monolinguals and bilinguals. They found that older

bilinguals performed faster than the early bilinguals and both age groups of monolinguals. It was

also found that the older bilinguals even faced less interference in the stroop task. An extension

to the study used visual probe task and verbal task. Bilingual advantage was seen only in the

visual probe task. This advantage was only pertained to the reaction time measures. Also, this

was only seen for older bilingual adults (Bialystok, Poarch & Luo, 2014). These findings implied

that Bilingualism acts as a buffer against age-related declines in executive functions. Contrary to

these findings a study was done with a purpose of replicating similar findings which gave

inconsistent results. This study had 72 English/French Bilinguals. It found that bilinguals have a

general speed advantage in comparison to monolinguals. It didn’t find an advantage in terms of

smaller stroop interference implying the robustness of previous findings (Kousaie & Phillips,

2014). With a change in perspective towards the research problem it was necessary to explore it

through the electrophysiological paradigm. A study using Event Relate Potential (ERP), stroop

task and stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) paradigm tested the BICA hypothesis. This

2
 Running head: DO BILINGUALS HAVE AN ADVANTAGE IN EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS
AND MEMORY?

hypothesis predicts smaller interference effect. It also predicts reduced Ninc amplitude in ERP for

bilinguals. BEPA hypothesis was also tested which predicts faster reaction times and difference

in the ERP amplitude for the control trials. The SOA paradigm was used at -400ms interval

which was the easy condition and 0ms which was the tough condition. The mean no. of errors

was found to be higher in monolinguals than in both the bilingual groups. Although, less

interference was found in bilinguals in the 0ms condition. This was only seen in the second

language. This finding can be a result of lower language proficiency. The BEPA hypothesis was

supported. There was a significant difference across all the SOA conditions in control trials. The

finding suggested an enhancement of executive control. The enhancement stemmed from

enhanced attentional control (Coderre & van Heuven, 2014). One more study testing Bilingual

Executive Function Advantage (BEA) hypothesis used 485 participants. Bilinguals were further

divided in to two groups’ early bilinguals (2nd language acquired before age of 12 years) and late

bilinguals (2nd language acquired after the age of 12 years). Several working memory tasks were

used in the study. These were administered under three isomorphic versions measuring verbal,

visuospatial and n-back working memory. Results were supported in the visuo-spatial and n-back

paradigm, but were significantly different only in the n-back paradigm. The result was only

observed in late bilinguals. The early bilinguals performed as same as the monolinguals. The

study failed to demonstrate a finding congruent with the BEA hypothesis in the domain of

working memory. This again brought confusion in the direction of the research in bilingual

advantage (Lukasik, Lehtonen, Soveri, Waris, Jylkka, Laine, 2018). One more aspect studied in

bilingual advantage was effect of language context on visual memory. This is based on the

assumption that Bilinguals use different forms of language context while processing visual

3
 Running head: DO BILINGUALS HAVE AN ADVANTAGE IN EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS
AND MEMORY?

information. The study explored the aspect through a free recall test of abstract shapes and

figures. These shapes and figures were given in 3 lists (English, Spanish and English-Spanish). It

was found that change of language context within the task had no effect on the retrieval of visual

memory. Although, there was a significant difference in the no. of retrieved shapes for the

change in language context between the tasks. This difference was more evident when list 3 was

used in a single language context which shouldn’t have been the scenario (Schroeder, 2019).

With all the inconclusive findings a research review highlighted upon the various studies similar

to the ones mentioned above. One thing which was highlighted reviewing numerous studies was

the individual variation among bilinguals in terms of Age of acquisition (AoA), language

proficiency, language use and language context. Age of acquisition is the age at which the

second language was acquired by the individual. It is seen that switching and language context is

affected in late bilinguals. Inhibitory control is affected in the early bilinguals. Proficiency is

confounded with AoA as early bilinguals tend to have a high proficiency. It has been seen that

higher proficiency bilinguals outperformed the ones with low proficiency on stroop task. The

studies did not account the same for late bilinguals with high proficiency. LEAP-Q was the

standardized tool to measure AoA, Language proficiency in most of the studies. LSBQ was

commonly used for language usage and context. Further experiments with factorial designs are

recommended to take in to consideration these factors. This is essential to disambiguate the hot

debate in the current status of the concept of bilingual advantage (Bruin, 2019).

4
 Running head: DO BILINGUALS HAVE AN ADVANTAGE IN EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS
AND MEMORY?

Annotated Bibliography.

Bialystok, E., Poarch, G., and Luo, L. (2014). Effects of Bilingualism and Aging on Executive

Function and Working Memory. Journal of Psychology and Aging, 29(3), 696-705. doi:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0037254

This study clarifies the condition under which the effect of bilingual advantage is

observed. It consists of two studies one to check the difference between monolinguals &

bilinguals and early & late bilinguals with stroop task. The second one checked for the

difference in the same groups on the visual probe and verbal tasks. This study gave a

direction to the concept by bilinguals gaining an advantage especially, late bilinguals.

The limitation to the paper according to me was the young population being psychology

students.

Kousaie, S. &. Phillips, N, A. (2012) 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, doi: 10.1080/17470218.2011.604788

This study aimed at replicating the previous findings on bilingual advantage and found

opposite results. Stroop paradigm was used and it was found that there was just a general

speed advantage in bilinguals which was not associated with smaller interference. This

clouded the picture of the direction to the problem. The limitations which resulted in

failure to replicate could be because of the age range of the older bilinguals to be wider

than the previous research studies.

5
 Running head: DO BILINGUALS HAVE AN ADVANTAGE IN EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS
AND MEMORY?

Coderre, E.L., & van Heuven, W.J.B. (2014) Electrophysiological Explorations of the Bilingual

Advantage: Evidence from a Stroop Task. PLoS ONE 9(7) doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0103424

This study provided with a strong backing to the first few findings indicating the

bilingual advantage with an ERP paradigm. This provided a strong cognitive

neuroscience backing and there by redirecting back to the direction of early research. It

used the stroop task and the SOA paradigm to support BEPA as well as BICA hypothesis.

BICA hypothesis clouded the picture as the result could have been a possibility of lower

language proficiency in L2.

Lukasik, K.M., Lehtonen, M., Soveri, A., & Laine, M. (2018) Bilingualism and working memory

performance: Evidencefrom a large-scale online study. PLoSONE, 13(11):

e0205916.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0205916

This study tried to re-explore the BEA hypothesis using working memory tasks. These

tasks measured 3 different paradigms (visuo-spatial/verbal/n-back) of working memory.

It was found that Bilinguals performed better only in visuo-spatial and n-back paradigm.

Although, the result of the visu-spatial paradigm are not significant. One limitation is that

the BEA hypothesis being tested does not clearly demark the essential conditions in a

bilingual experience to gain an advantage in executive functions.

Schroeder, S.R. (2019) Do Changes in Language Context Affect Visual Memory in Bilinguals?

Frontier Human Neuroscience, 13(364). doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00364

6
 Running head: DO BILINGUALS HAVE AN ADVANTAGE IN EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS
AND MEMORY?

This study explores the aspect of how language context affects visual memory in

bilinguals. The experiment has 2 conditions, one in which the language context is

changed between the event and the other in which it is changed within the event. Three

lists include; English/ Spanish/ English-Spanish. A tool used to assess is the free recall

test of the visual abstract shapes seen through the list described by the language. These

were counterbalanced. The result obtained showed better performance only in the change

between the event conditions. Also, the findings couldn’t explain the absence of the

advantage when the switching between the events was done on the English-Spanish

context. This called up for a need to investigate the flaws in the studies done on the

bilingual advantage

Angela de Bruin (2019). Not All Bilinguals Are the Same: A Call for More Detailed

Assessments and Descriptions of Bilingual Experiences. Journal of Behavioural Sciences, 9(3),

33; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs9030033

This is a research review which includes all the various studies with respect to bilingual

advantage in executive function, the objective measurements and questionnaires for a

better defining concept of bilingualism. The paper also mentions the individual

differences like Age of acquisition (AoA), language proficiency, language use and

language context thereby providing with an evidence for all the previous inconclusive

findings. LEAP-Q and LSBQ standard measurements are recommended for further

experiments. Also, factorial designs can be used to incorporate all these factors to provide

a clear finding.