Swiss Journal of Psychology, 74 (2), 2015, 65–73

E. Struys
Sw issJ. Psychol. 74 (2)et©al.: Co gnitive
2015 Co ntrol
Verlag Hans in Bilingual
Huber, Children
Hogrefe AG , Bern

Original Communication

Cognitive Control in Bilingual Children

Disentangling the Effects of Second-Language
Proficiency and Onset Age of Acquisition
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Esli Struys1, Ghazal Mohades1,2, Peggy Bosch3,4, and Maurits van den Noort1,5
1
Centre for Linguistics, Free University of Brussels, Belgium, 2University Hospital Brussels, Belgium,
3
Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 4LVR-Klinik Bedburg-Hau, Germany,
5
Kyung Hee University, Republic of Korea

Abstract. Studies comparing the cognitive control of bilingual and monolingual speakers are inconclusive about the nature and underlying
mechanisms of differences in language-related processing. In the present study, in order to disentangle the impact of second-language
onset age of acquisition and bilingualism on cognitive control, we compared a group of bilingual Dutch/French children who had started
acquisition of both languages at birth (simultaneous bilingual group) to a group of children who had started acquisition of their second
language at the age of 3 years (early bilingual group). Both groups had equal proficiency in the two languages. All participants completed
an extensive language test battery in Dutch and French and conducted a linguistic (verbal fluency) and a nonlinguistic cognitive control
task (the color Simon task). We found higher global accuracy rates for the simultaneous bilingual group on the Simon task. Surprisingly,
we did not find any differences in mean reaction time between the two bilingual groups. In conclusion, this study finds no advantage in
terms of verbal fluency, but does reveal that acquiring two languages from birth onward gives simultaneous bilingual children an advan-
tage on the Simon task, even over early bilingual children and when second-language proficiency is held constant.

Keywords: bilingualism, cognitive control, onset age of acquisition, proficiency, Simon task

Cognitive control refers to a number of processes that en-
able the human brain to regulate cognitive activity in non-
routine situations. These processes include the suppression
of irrelevant information and the selection of the appropri-
ate response in the face of other possibilities (Bunge, Ha-
zeltine, Scanlon, Rosen, & Gabrieli, 2002).
Previous research found an advantage for bilinguals on
cognitive control tasks (e.g., Garbin et al., 2010; Green,
1998; Hilchey & Klein, 2011). However, controversy re-
mains concerning the universality and explaining factors of
this so-called “bilingual cognitive control advantage” (e.g.,
Bialystok, 2009; Costa, Hernández, Costa-Faidella, & Se-
bastián-Gallés, 2009; Morton & Harper, 2007, 2009).
In order to further clarify this issue, recent research shift-
ed its focus of attention from comparing a group of bal-
anced bilinguals to monolingual controls to comparisons
within bilingual and multilingual groups. In these studies,
various bilingual and multilingual samples are grouped ac-
cording to the number of languages spoken, the age of sec-
ond language (L2) acquisition, the attained L2 proficiency,
the measure of equality between first language (L1) and L2
proficiency, or by taking an individual differences ap-
proach (Linck, Schwieter, & Sunderman, 2012; Luk, De
Sa, & Bialystok, 2011; Poarch & van Hell, 2012; Salvatier-
ra & Rosselli, 2012; Schwieter, 2008). The present study
builds on these studies by examining the relative role of the
effect of onset age of L2 acquisition and L2 proficiency on
Simon task performance in a sample of bilingual children.
Bilingualism as a Possible Simon Task
Performance Modulator
The Simon task (Simon & Rudell, 1967) is one of the most
frequently used experimental tasks in studies on general
cognitive conflict performance in bilingual participants
(e.g., Bialystok, Craik, Klein, & Viswanathan, 2004; Bialy-
stok et al., 2005; Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008; Morton
& Harper, 2007). Why would bilingualism modulate Si-
mon task performance? A first reason may be found in the
fact that the cognitive mechanisms involved in solving cog-
nitive conflict situations, such as those generated by the
Simon task, share many characteristics with those being
recruited to control language use in the bilingual brain.

DOI 10.1024/1421-0185/a000152 Swiss J. Psychol. 74 (2) © 2015 Verlag Hans Huber, Hogrefe AG, Bern
 66 E. Struys et al.: Cognitive Control in Bilingual Children
There are two distinct reasons why bilinguals constantly
have to monitor their language systems: First, many studies
showed that both the target and nontarget language system
are activated even when bilinguals use only one of their
languages (Thierry & Wu, 2007; van Heuven & Dijkstra,
2010). A bilingual thus has to recruit cognitive processes
in charge of solving potential interference from the unneed-
ed language. Second, depending on the amount of code
switching within a society or other variables like the pres-
ence of official status for more than one language, a bilin-
gual speaker must switch between different language sys-
tems. Studies investigating these two forms of language
control found a similar network for suppressing a nontarget
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language system and for executing typically bilingual tasks
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like switching, translation, and interpreting (Abutalebi,
2008; Price, Green, & von Studnitz, 1999; Rodriguez-For-
nells et al., 2005). The cognitive mechanism required to
monitor language use of both origins can be summarized
as the need to inhibit the task-irrelevant language system
and to select the task-relevant system. The neural cognitive
processes that underlie these skills are not only specifically
engaged when dealing with controlling different language
systems, but also serve domain-general cognitive control
purposes (Abutalebi et al., 2011; Alvarez & Emory, 2006).
This explains why certain linguistic variables, like onset
age of acquisition and attained proficiency, may also have
an impact on general cognitive control (Luo, Luk, & Bialy-
stok, 2010). More specifically, onset age of acquisition and
attained proficiency, of which lexical robustness is a spe-
cific part (Schwieter & Sunderman, 2008), have an effect
on cognitive processes that underlie language control skills
(Costa, Santesteban, & Ivanova, 2006).
A second reason why bilingualism modulates Simon task
performance might be that the stimulus/response conflicts
generated in the Simon task correspond well with the conflict
generated by linguistic processing in the bilingual mind. Lan-
guage conflict most often arises due to the automatic activa-
tion of the nontarget language system whenever the target
language is heard and produced. This is comparable to the
automatic response to the task-irrelevant feature that has to
be inhibited during incongruent trials in the Simon task. Only
rarely does language conflict originate from simultaneous ex-
posure to two conflicting language systems. This would cor-
respond to a stimulus/stimulus conflict task on a nonlinguistic
level, as is the case during Stroop (Stroop, 1935) and Flanker
tasks (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974). Incongruent trials in the
Simon task do not contain a conflict in the stimuli themselves
(Simon & Rudell, 1967).
Potential Differences Related to
Second-Language Onset Age
To our knowledge, so far no study has focused on poten-
tial differences related to L2 onset age in bilingual chil-
Swiss J. Psychol. 74 (2) © 2015 Verlag Hans Huber, Hogrefe AG, Bern
dren with equal proficiency in both languages. However,
there are several reasons to assume that these effects ex-
ist. One reason is that differences in the recruitment of
cognitive control processes are known to depend on the
age of second-language acquisition. Wartenburger et al.
(2003) compared three groups of bilinguals on grammat-
ical and lexical processing while their brain activity was
being recorded in an MRI scanner. Their results showed
that the early bilinguals (who acquired L2 from birth on-
ward) had more automatic access to their L2 grammar
representations. In contrast to late bilinguals (who ac-
quired L2 after the age of 18) with equal proficiency, they
did not rely on prefrontal regions involved both in lan-
guage and cognitive control. Many studies replicated the
finding of age-related effects on bilingual language pro-
cessing and language control, showing that early learners
have a shared system for both languages, while they are
kept separate in late learners (e.g., Silverberg & Samuel,
2004). A second reason is that very early childhood is an
optimal biological moment for acquiring certain features
of language (Locke, 1997). Bilinguals who acquired a
second language within this early time frame (age of ac-
quisition of L2 < 3 years) often outperform equally pro-
ficient late bilinguals (age of acquisition of L2 > 10
years) on language control tasks (Isel, Baumgaertner,
Thrän, Meisel, & Büchel, 2010). Since automaticity in
controlling languages leads to (specific) general cogni-
tive advantages for bilinguals (Christoffels, Kroll, &
Bajo, 2013), we ask whether performance effects related
to the age of acquisition can also be observed in bilingual
children performing a nonlinguistic conflict task.
Many studies suggested that bilingualism boosts the de-
velopment of cognitive control abilities in children (e.g.,
Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008). At the same time, how-
ever, only few differences in cognitive control abilities are
found in young adults who are at the peak of their atten-
tional abilities (Bialystok, Craik, & Ruocco, 2006; Bialy-
stok, Craik, & Ryan, 2006; Bialystok, Martin, & Viswa-
nathan, 2005). The development of cognitive control abil-
ities in children is well described (Munakata, Snyder, &
Chatham, 2012), and research suggests that three cardinal
developmental changes take place: During the first pro-
gression, children increasingly learn to overcome old rules
and behavior in response to signals from their environ-
ment. Then, during the second transition, a qualitative
shift takes place in which children have increasing capac-
ity for active maintenance, creating opportunities to start
recruiting cognitive control proactively. Finally, during
the third transition, children stop relying on environmental
signals and become increasingly self-directed (for a de-
tailed description, see Munakata et al., 2012). In normal
development, there are specific improvements in the abil-
ity to suppress inappropriate responses between the ages
of 8 and 12 (Bunge et al., 2002). Hence, one could expect
acquisition-related effects on these abilities in bilingual
groups to manifest themselves most prominently at this
age.
 E. Struys et al.: Cognitive Control in Bilingual Children
Hypotheses
The goal of this study is to disentangle cognitive control
effects from onset age of L2 acquisition and proficiency by
comparing two groups of Dutch/French bilingual children
who are equally proficient in both languages but who differ
in their onset of L2 acquisition. We expected to observe
age-related performance effects, namely, a processing ad-
vantage for simultaneous bilingual children over early bi-
lingual children. These effects were specifically expected
in incongruent trials because of the similarity between the
conflict generated during that type of trials and language
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conflicts in the bilingual mind.
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Methods
Participants
A total of 34 bilingual children (17 boys and 17 girls) with
a mean age of 9 years and 5 months (range: 8 years–10
years, 11 months) were recruited from primary schools in
the Brussels region of Belgium. There were two experi-
mental groups in this study.
The first group (hereafter, the “simultaneous bilingual
group”) consisted of 18 children (9 boys and 9 girls) with a
mean age of 9 years and 5 months (range: 8 years–10 years,
11 months). The children’s first languages were either Dutch
(n = 12) or French (n = 6). The reported second languages
were French (n = 10), Dutch (n = 6), or English (n = 2). All
children in the simultaneous bilingual group had started ac-
quiring their two languages from birth onward in line with the
“one parent–one language” approach. They had all attended
nursery school in one of the two languages from age 3 onward
(12 in L1 and 6 in L2) and had had 2 hours of weekly instruc-
tion in the other language from age 8 onward.
The second group (hereafter, the “early bilingual
group”) consisted of 16 children (8 boys and 8 girls) with
a mean age of 9 years and 5 months (range: 8 years, 9
months–10 years, 11 months). All children in the early bi-
lingual group had started acquiring French at home from
birth on and had started learning Dutch in a Dutch-only
nursery school from age 3 onward. Up to the point of ex-
amination, they had only attended a Dutch-speaking
school. All of these children had received 2 hours of weekly
instruction in French since the age of 8.
To gather information about the participants’ key char-
acteristics, we asked the parents to complete an extensive
questionnaire (Mondt et al., 2011) including the children’s
onset ages of L1 and L2 acquisition, self-ratings of their
children’s language proficiency in listening, speaking,
reading, and writing skills, using a 5-point scale ranging
from 0 (not proficient) to 4 (highly proficient), and number
of years of parental education. Only children whose profi-
ciency in all language skills in both languages was reported
to be moderate to high were selected to participate in this
67
experiment. Independent two-sample t-tests showed no sig-
nificant differences in age or number of years of parental
education between the two bilingual groups, indicating that
the groups were comparable on these variables.
Language Test Battery
An extensive language test battery comprised of modified
versions of several subtests of the Bilingual Aphasia Test
(Paradis, 1989) was used to obtain an objective measure of
the children’s language proficiency in L1 and L2. The Bi-
lingual Aphasia Test is one of the only available test bat-
teries with culturally and linguistically equivalent tests in
over 50 languages. Instructions for each task were given by
a Dutch/French bilingual speaker. All tests were conducted
in the participant’s L1 and L2 and the participants were
tested individually. In the simultaneous bilingual group, the
language version used to test L1 corresponded to the L1
identified by the parents. The order of the languages was
counterbalanced across participants.
The following four tests were included in the test bat-
tery: 1. Receptive vocabulary. The children heard 18 words
and were asked to choose the drawing that best depicted
the meaning of the word from four images. 2. Listening
comprehension. The children heard a short story, followed
by five simple questions about the contents of the story. 3.
Translation. The children heard 10 words and were in-
structed to give the equivalent translation in the other lan-
guage. 4. Grammaticality judgments. The children heard
eight sentences and were asked to assess the grammatical-
ity of these sentences and to give the correction.
In order to assess the extent to which the different lan-
guage versions of the language tasks were comparable, we
had two monolingual control groups of the same age per-
form the receptive vocabulary, listening comprehension,
and grammaticality judgment tasks. The Dutch monolin-
gual group consisted of 15 children (6 boys and 9 girls)
with a mean age of 9 years and 7 months (range: 8 years,
11 months–10 years, 11 months). The French monolingual
group consisted of 15 children (8 boys and 7 girls) with a
mean age of 9 years and 4 months (range: 8 years, 8
months–9 years, 11 months). Both groups were recruited
from primary schools in Belgium.
SPSS 17.0 (SPSS Inc., 2008) was used for all statistical
analyses. One-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) for
each task and each language, with group (simultaneous bi-
lingual, early bilingual) as the between-subjects factor,
were used to assess equal proficiency across groups and
across languages.
Verbal Fluency
The children were instructed to produce as many words as
possible in one minute starting with a certain letter. For
Dutch, the letters were /p/, /v/, and /k/, for French /b/, /f/, and
Swiss J. Psychol. 74 (2) © 2015 Verlag Hans Huber, Hogrefe AG, Bern
 68 E. Struys et al.: Cognitive Control in Bilingual Children

/l/, and for English /p/, /f/, and /k/. Order was counterbal-
anced. Even though performance on verbal fluency tasks is
confounded with active vocabulary (Matute, Rosselli, Ardila,
& Morales, 2004), these tasks also tap specific control capac-
ities such as clustering words that belong to semantic subcat-
egories and switching between these subcategories (e.g., Ma-
tute et al., 2004; Snyder & Munakata, 2010).
For the verbal fluency task, only the mean score for the
three conditions served as input for the analysis. According
to the CELEX database (Baayen, Piepenbrock, & Van Rijn,
1993), the frequency of the phoneme as onset letter in each
of the three languages was added as a covariate.
To assess the comparability of the different language
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stimulus are on the same side, for example, the response is
to press the left key and the stimulus appears on the left. In
incongruent trials, the response key and the stimulus are on
opposite sides. Reaction times are typically faster and ac-
curacy higher in congruent trials. These congruency-relat-
ed differences are referred to as the Simon effect (Simon &
Rudell, 1967) and expressed in milliseconds (reaction time)
and percentages (accuracy) (Bialystok et al., 2004). The
essential feature of the Simon task, which combines task-
relevant and -irrelevant dimensions and automatic respons-
es, is similar to the characteristics of other frequently used
cognitive control tasks, such as the Stroop task (Stroop,
1935) and the flanker task (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974).

versions of the verbal fluency task, we asked two monolin- Participants completed 156 trials composed of 81
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gual control groups to perform the task (for background
information about the two control groups, see above under
“Language Test Battery”).
Simon Task
In the Simon task (Simon & Rudell, 1967), a series of red
and green squares were presented either on the left or on
the right side of the screen. The width of the squares was
10% of the width of the screen, and their center was posi-
tioned vertically on its center line and horizontally at 15%
and 85% of its width. The participants were orally instruct-
ed to look at a computer screen and respond as quickly as
possible to the color of the squares, ignoring their location.
In order to make sure that task instructions had been well
understood, this task was practiced in a short training ses-
sion. During these practice trials, feedback was only given
on the accuracy of the responses, not on the speed.
The Simon task consists of congruent and incongruent
trials, depending on the match between stimulus and re-
sponse side. In congruent trials, the response key and the
(51.9%) incongruent and 75 (48.1%) congruent trials. The
stimuli were applied with a jittered inter-stimulus interval
(ISI) of 2.2 ± 0.56 s (maximum ISI = 3.18 s, minimum ISI
= 1.19 s) and a total duration of 6.5 min.
One-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests revealed a nor-
mal distribution for accuracy scores and response times for
both types of trials (p > .05). Using individual mean accu-
racy and reaction time (RT) scores as input, mixed-model
2 × 2 ANOVAs with group as a between-subjects factor and
congruency as a within-subjects factor were used to calcu-
late group differences.
Results
Language Test Battery and Verbal Fluency
Mean scores on the different language tests and verbal fluen-
cy tasks, specified for type of monolingual and bilingual
group, can be found in Table 1. One-way ANOVAs with
scores in listening comprehension, receptive vocabulary, and
grammaticality judgments in L1 as dependent variables did

Table 1
Means and standard deviations of the different tests of the language test battery and the verbal fluency task in L1 and L2;
specified for type of monolingual and bilingual group
Language test scores Sim.a Bilingual Group Early Bilingual Group Dutch Monolingual Group French Monolingual Group
b
Verbal Fluency (L1) 6.3b (2.0)c 4.5b (1.2) 7.6b (2.3) 4.8b (1.6)
Verbal Fluencyb (L2) 5.5b (1.6) 6.2b (1.6) – –
d
Listening Comprehension (L1) 4.5 (0.6) 4.3 (1.1) 4.5 (0.7) 4.6 (0.6)
Listening Comprehension (L2) 4.3 (0.9) 4.3 (0.5) – –
Receptive Vocabularye (L1) 14.9 (1.3) 15.2 (1.6) 15.4 (1.5) 15.6 (1.1)
Receptive Vocabulary (L2) 14.8 (1.9) 13.9 (1.8) – –
Translationf (L2 > L1) 7.7 (1.4) 7.6 (1.5) – –
Translation (L1 > L2) 7.4 (1.4) 7.4 (1.1) – –
Grammaticality Judgmentsg (L1) 5.5 (1.0) 5.7 (1.4) 6.1 (0.8) 5.9 (0.9)
Grammaticality Judgments (L2) 5.9 (1.1) 5.9 (1.2) – –
Note. aSim. = Simultaneous. bPlease note that for Verbal Fluency, onset phoneme frequency was different for the Dutch and French versions of
the task. cStandard deviations are in parentheses. dThe maximum score on the Listening Comprehension Test = 5. eThe maximum score on the
Receptive Vocabulary Test = 18. fThe maximum score on the Translation Test = 8. gThe maximum score on the Grammaticality Judgments Test
= 8.

Swiss J. Psychol. 74 (2) © 2015 Verlag Hans Huber, Hogrefe AG, Bern
 E. Struys et al.: Cognitive Control in Bilingual Children
not reveal any significant differences between the two exper-
imental groups and the two control groups (p > .05). One-way
ANOVAs with scores in listening comprehension, receptive
vocabulary, and grammaticality judgments in L2 as depend-
ent variables did not reveal any significant differences be-
tween the two experimental groups (p > .05). An analysis of
covariance (ANCOVA) on the scores of L1 verbal fluency,
with onset phoneme frequency as a covariate, did not show
any significant difference between the two experimental
groups and the control groups (p > .05). An ANCOVA on the
scores of L2 verbal fluency, with onset phoneme frequency
as a covariate, did not show any significant difference be-
tween the two experimental groups (p > .05).
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Simon Task
The mean response times and accuracy scores of the simul-
taneous bilingual group and the early bilingual group on
the Simon task are given in Table 2.
A mixed-model ANOVA with L2 onset age as a between-
Table 2
Mean accuracy scores and reaction times for the correct
trials in the two conditions of the Simon task and for the
Simon effect
Simon task Simultaneous Early Bilingual
Condition/Effect Bilingual Group Group
Congruent ACCa 96.0 (2.8)b 94.5 (2.7)
Incongruent ACC 94.9 (3.5) 90.3 (5.6)
Congruent RTc 667.8 (125.7) 656.0 (93.3)
Incongruent RT 706.0 (135.4) 705.4 (95.8)
Note. aACC = Accuracy score (in percentage). bStandard deviations
are in parentheses. cRT = Reaction time (in ms).
subjects factor, congruency as a within-subjects factor, and
accuracy scores as the dependent variable showed a main
effect of congruency, F(1, 32) = 9.35, p < .01, with higher
accuracy for congruent than for incongruent trials, and a main
effect of L2 onset age, F(1, 32) = 9.15, p < .01, with higher
accuracy for the simultaneous bilingual group than for the
early bilingual group. The interaction between Congruency
× L2 Onset Age, F(1, 32) = 3.21, p = .08, was only marginally
significant.
The same analysis with reaction times as the dependent
variable only revealed a main effect of congruency,
F(1, 32) = 49.28, p < .001, with faster response times for
the congruent compared to the incongruent trials, but no
main effect of L2 onset age and no interaction were found.
Discussion
This study was designed to disentangle the effects of onset
age of L2 acquisition and proficiency in two groups of
69
Dutch/French bilingual children with equal proficiency in
Dutch and French. Performance on a stimulus/response
conflict task was taken as a measure of cognitive control.
In order to gain a better understanding of the nature of the
bilingual children’s advantage on their Simon task perfor-
mance and the variables responsible for it, we expected the
effect of onset age of L2 acquisition to be seen in the pro-
cessing of a nonlinguistic conflict task at a young age, even
when proficiency is held constant. We expected to observe
age-related performance effects, that is, a processing ad-
vantage for simultaneous bilingual children relative to ear-
ly bilingual children. These effects were specifically ex-
pected on incongruent trials because of the similarity be-
tween the conflict generated on incongruent trials and
language conflicts in the bilingual mind.
Language Test Battery and Verbal Fluency
Unlike previous studies (e.g., Bialystok et al., 2004; Poarch
& van Hell, 2012), in which only traditional measures of
receptive vocabulary or grammar were taken to establish
linguistic proficiency, the present study included four tests
of productive and receptive skills in the two target languag-
es (see also Table 1) to ensure equal linguistic proficiency
in both languages and between both bilingual groups. We
found no differences between the simultaneous bilingual
group and the early bilingual group in listening comprehen-
sion, receptive vocabulary, translation, or grammaticality
judgments. More importantly for the aim of our study, how-
ever, we found no significant interaction or main effects of
group, meaning that the two groups did not differ with re-
spect to language proficiency in Dutch or French. It should
be noted, though, that the test scores of both groups were
quite high, leaving the possibility open that the absence of
differences is partially attributable to ceiling effects. Fur-
thermore, the groups did not differ in terms of verbal flu-
ency performance, which can be taken as an indicator of
equal active vocabulary and control capacities such as clus-
tering words that belong to specific semantic subcategories
and switching between these subcategories (Snyder &
Munakata, 2010).
Simon Task
Our results for the Simon task revealed differences in ac-
curacy scores between two groups that had comparable
proficiency in both languages across different levels of lin-
guistic analysis, thus clearly supporting our hypothesis. In
this study, the simultaneous bilinguals scored significantly
higher than the early bilinguals on global accuracy in the
Simon task (see also Table 2), which confirms the intricate
link between a linguistic variable like onset age of acqui-
sition and nonlinguistic cognitive control performance. In
some previous studies, however, not age but equal profi-
ciency was put forth as the explaining factor behind many
Swiss J. Psychol. 74 (2) © 2015 Verlag Hans Huber, Hogrefe AG, Bern
 70 E. Struys et al.: Cognitive Control in Bilingual Children
of the processing advantages seen in bilingual groups rel-
ative to monolingual controls (Bialystok et al., 2004). Our
study complements these previous studies by showing that
processing differences in a nonverbal conflict task can even
be observed in a population of balanced bilinguals, with
highly proficient bilingual children who acquired their lan-
guages from birth onward outperforming their equally pro-
ficient peers who started learning a second language slight-
ly later on in life. A first novelty of this finding thus lies in
the fact that age-related effects cannot only be observed
between bilinguals traditionally characterized as “early”
and “late” with the age of 10 as a critical cutoff (Luk et al.,
2011, p. 588), but even at a much younger age in a sample
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of very early bilinguals. Second, these age-related effects
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can even be observed when both early bilingual groups
have attained equal overall proficiency in their languages,
thus minimizing the impact of attained L2 proficiency on
cognitive control skills.
Moreover, we also predicted that the influence of onset
age of L2 acquisition would depend on the congruency of
the trials and thus only be observed on incongruent trials.
Because variance analyses yielded a highly significant
main effect of onset age, but no interaction between onset
age and congruency, our results did not support this hypoth-
esis. Rather, it seems that the total task with its constant
switching between congruent and incongruent trials is
more difficult for the early bilinguals in terms of the per-
centage of correct responses.
We suggest there are two reasons to explain the lack of
congruency-related performance differences. A task-relat-
ed explanation might be found in the way our brain deals
with congruency switching while we are performing the
Simon task. Automatic stimulus/response mapping, the
driving force behind poorer performance on incongruent
trials, attenuates or even disappears when several incongru-
ent trials are presented in succession (Hommel, Proctor, &
Vu, 2004; Ridderinkhof, 2002; Stürmer, Leuthold, Soetens,
Schröter, & Sommer, 2002). Obviously, this cannot be
avoided if the Simon task is presented in an event-related
design with randomized order and a (nearly) even distribu-
tion of congruent to incongruent trials. A second and task-
unrelated explanation for the lack of differences with re-
spect to the Simon effect is that bilingualism does not nec-
essarily boost the conflict resolution processes itself, but
the monitoring processing system in charge of evaluating
the need to use conflict resolution processes. Previous stud-
ies showed that the frequent recruitment of processes used
to monitor two or more language systems, as is the case in
bilinguals, influences the efficiency of monitoring process-
es (e.g., Costa et al., 2009). These are in charge of deciding
when to inhibit automatic stimulus/response mapping,
which is measured by global performance during the Simon
task (Abutalebi, 2008; Costa et al., 2009). This means that
bilinguals attain higher accuracy and/or faster responses
than monolinguals on both congruent and incongruent tri-
als (Bialystok, Barac, Blaye, & Poulin-Dubois, 2010), Our
results indicate that these monitoring processes, which are
Swiss J. Psychol. 74 (2) © 2015 Verlag Hans Huber, Hogrefe AG, Bern
constantly recruited during the Simon task irrespective of
congruency, are influenced not only by frequent exposure
to more than one language system, but also by the onset
age of language acquisition, with bilinguals from birth on-
ward having the most efficient monitoring processes.
Surprisingly, as can be seen in Table 2, the effects related
to onset age of acquisition were observed only in accuracy
scores and not in reaction times. People resolving the sub-
conscious conflict generated by cognitive control tasks
choose one of the following two trade-off strategies that
have an impact on their performance: responding as fast as
possible with a lower accuracy rate or trying to avoid errors
by responding more slowly (e.g., Meyer, Irwin, Osman, &
Kounois, 1988; Wylie et al., 2009). Children were explic-
itly instructed to respond as quickly as possible to the stim-
uli. Simultaneous bilingual children managed to maintain
a higher accuracy rate than early bilinguals while their re-
sponse times were equally fast. The advantage for simulta-
neous bilinguals found in our study can thus be defined as
a more efficient speed-accuracy trade-off as this higher ac-
curacy was not compensated for by slower response times.
This combination of higher accuracy and equal reaction
times was not found in any of the previous studies on the
effects of bilingualism on Simon task processing before.
Except for one study (Bialystok et al., 2004), which found
a combination of faster responses and higher accuracy for
bilinguals, most studies reported that a processing advan-
tage for bilinguals actually gave evidence of a more effi-
cient speed-accuracy trade-off, characterized by the inverse
combination of faster responding combined with equal ac-
curacy scores (Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008).
How to interpret these differences? Previous studies
showed that the choice between speed and accuracy is con-
trolled by a decision threshold that maximizes a reward rate
(Bogacz, Hu, Holmes, & Cohen, 2010). When accuracy is
favored, decisions are slower; when speed is favored, more
mistakes are made (Pachella, 1974). In our task design, ac-
curacy was emphasized over speed. During the practice tri-
als of the Simon task used in this study, feedback was only
given on the accuracy of the responses but not on speed.
Therefore, inaccurate responses were more strongly penal-
ized than slow responses. Our participants may have cho-
sen to favor accuracy over speed because they were only
rewarded when their response was accurate but not when
they responded faster. Importantly, the simultaneous bilin-
guals showed greater accuracy on the Simon task, which
might indicate that a more efficient speed-accuracy trade-
off may also be the result of an earlier onset age of language
acquisition in a bilingual population.
General Implications and Concluding
Remarks
This bilingualism study stresses the importance of onset
age of L2 acquisition in a sample of so-called “early” (Luk
 E. Struys et al.: Cognitive Control in Bilingual Children
et al., 2011, p. 588) bilingual children, even when profi-
ciency is held constant. Our results can be explained in light
of recent psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies in
which group differences related to the onset age of L2 ac-
quisition were found in a wide range of research domains
(e.g., Kovács & Mehler, 2009; Mohades et al., 2012; War-
tenburger et al., 2003). In line with our results, Kovács and
Mehler (2009) found improved speech discrimination per-
formance in infants who were simultaneously exposed to
two language systems from birth in comparison to mono-
lingual infants. Moreover, in their (functional magnetic res-
onance imaging) study on grammatical processing in a lan-
guage task, Wartenburger and colleagues (2003) showed
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
that early highly proficient bilinguals showed less prefron-
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
tal brain activation and more automatic processing than late
and equally proficient bilinguals did. Finally, in their (dif-
fusion tensor imaging) study, Mohades and colleagues
(2012) revealed differences in neural structure between si-
multaneous and sequential bilingual children. Qualitative
neurostructural differences between highly proficient bilin-
guals who have been simultaneously exposed to two lan-
guage systems at the optimal moment for language learning
and those who acquired an L2 system slightly later in life
may have an impact on general neurofunctioning that ex-
tends beyond the domain of language processing (Mechelli
et al., 2004). Taken together, these psycholinguistic and
neurolinguistic results may provide further support for our
finding that differences in cognitive control performance
can be found in a sample of “balanced” and “early” bilin-
gual children.
Some related issues deserve attention in the future. Lon-
gitudinal studies could elucidate whether there is a certain
age at which bilinguals lose this processing advantage. Un-
answered is also the question whether the bilingual chil-
dren’s advantage in conflict processing is due to the ab-
sence of compensating practice effects. These compensat-
ing effects were shown to reduce or eliminate the bilingual
effect in adults (Bialystok et al., 2004), but the interaction
between familiarity and language background has not been
studied in children.
The present study shows the effects of onset age of L2
acquisition on only one measure of cognitive control. The
combination of this effect with the absence of an effect on
verbal fluency seems to indicate that the onset age of L2
acquisition specifically affects the control processes re-
quired to perform the Simon task. However, there are many
other measures of cognitive control that tap into related
processes. Further studies could investigate whether the ef-
fects on the Simon task are also visible in Stroop tasks
(Stroop, 1935), attentional network tasks (ANT) (Fan, Mc-
Candliss, Sommer, Raz, & Posner, 2002), Eriksen flanker
tasks (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974), etc.
In conclusion, this study reveals that acquiring two lan-
guages from birth onward gives simultaneous bilingual
children an advantage in cognitive control skills, even over
early bilingual children and even when L2 proficiency is
held constant. This advantage can be described as a more
71
efficient speed-accuracy trade-off. Moreover, in general,
the results of our study stress the importance of onset age
of L2 acquisition in a sample of “early” bilingual children,
even if proficiency is held constant, a factor which had not
been accounted for in bilingualism studies previously.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Research Council (grant
number: HOA23) of Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
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Prof. Dr. Maurits van den Noort
Centre for Linguistics
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Pleinlaan 2
1050 Brussels
Belgium
Tel. +49 160-96868801
info@mauritsvandennoort.com
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