Edited by: Nicolas Chevalier, University of Colorado Boulder, USA
Reviewed by: Ray Klein, Dalhousie University, Canada; Kenneth Paap, San Francisco State University, USA
*Correspondence: Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole, Linguistics Program, English Department, Florida International University, Modesto Maidique Campus, Miami, FL 33199, USA e-mail:
This article was submitted to Developmental Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
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This study explores the extent to which a bilingual advantage can be observed for three tasks in an established population of fully fluent bilinguals from childhood through adulthood. Welsh-English simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals, as well as English monolinguals, aged 3 years through older adults, were tested on three sets of cognitive and executive function tasks. Bilinguals were Welsh-dominant, balanced, or English-dominant, with only Welsh, Welsh and English, or only English at home. Card sorting, Simon, and a metalinguistic judgment task (650, 557, and 354 participants, respectively) reveal little support for a bilingual advantage, either in relation to control or globally. Primarily there is no difference in performance across groups, but there is occasionally better performance by monolinguals or persons dominant in the language being tested, and in one case-in one condition and in one age group-lower performance by the monolinguals. The lack of evidence for a bilingual advantage in these simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals suggests the need for much closer scrutiny of what type of bilingual might demonstrate the reported effects, under what conditions, and why.
The question of bilinguals' linguistic and cognitive abilities relative to those of their monolingual counterparts has been the subject of intense study and scrutiny over the last century. Debates have examined children's and adults' capacities in a number of linguistic and cognitive realms. Early studies had mixed results concerning whether bilingualism was seen to have negative or positive effects on cognition, but many studies were flawed in that they did not control, e.g., for socioeconomic or cultural differences (Hakuta,
At the same time, bilinguals have been reported to show an advantage over their monolingual peers in the realms of metalinguistic abilities (Bialystok,
The advantage of bilinguals is reported, e.g., for the Stroop (
In another task, the Simon task (Martin and Bialystok,
A third type of task is the “dimensional change card sort task” (Frye et al.,
The bilingual advantage in control tasks is argued to also lead to superior performance by bilinguals in certain conditions of yet another type of task, a metalinguistic judgment task. Work conducted by Bialystok and colleagues (Bialystok,
Despite the many studies documenting such a cognitive advantage in bilinguals, some research has challenged the generality of the effect. Some have questioned the source of the effect, some have argued for better control over the choice of bilingual participants (e.g., Namazi and Thordardottir,
Yang and Lust (
Rosselli et al. (
Similarly, in Chen and Ho (
Socio-economic level might also contribute to results (Morton and Harper,
Thus, the source and generality of experimental effects in bilinguals vs. monolinguals is not always clear, demonstrating the need for more well-controlled studies. Hilchey and Klein ( When these factors are not well controlled, a primary concern is that some of them might contribute or lead directly to what would appear to be bilingual processing advantages, and indeed, concerns of this sort have permeated the bilingualism literature. (p. 642).
The contributions of degree of proficiency in the language, SES factors, general cognitive abilities, age, and gender (and interactions between these) are still little understood in relation to bilinguals' and monolinguals' performance. Even the role of language dominance in the bilingual's performance is still unclear—it is not known to what extent various levels of language dominance might affect the cognitive benefits of bilingualism (Bialystok,
Furthermore, some have argued for a general cognitive advantage in bilinguals, not an advantage for inhibitory control (Hilchey and Klein,
Adesope et al. (
Ultimately, the extent to which each factor contributes to performance is not well-understood. As Hilchey and Klein (
The goal of the present study was to test performance on a series of executive function tasks in a carefully controlled study on bilinguals and monolinguals who grew up in the same context. The data come from Welsh-English bilinguals living in North West Wales. This group can provide insight into the effects of bilingualism in individuals who grow up as bilinguals—either as 2L1 simultaneous bilinguals or as early sequential bilinguals who begin the second language by age 4 at the latest—in comparison with monolinguals who are from the same sociocultural background.
In this study, we strictly divide the bilingual participants, first, according to the languages that their parents speak to them in the home—only Welsh at home (OWH), Welsh and English (WEH), or only English (OEH). In our work on children's acquisition of Welsh (Gathercole et al.,
The determination of relative “dominance” (where dominance is defined according to relative abilities in the two languages) across the three home language groups is not unproblematic, however. Typically, at initial stages, OWH children can be considered the most Welsh-dominant of the three types, WEH the most balanced, and OEH the most English-dominant. By the teen years, the differences across the groups become indistinguishable in English, but the OWH group still surpasses the others in Welsh. So OWH speakers may be considered the most balanced at older ages (see Gathercole et al.,
In a previous study (Gathercole et al.,
In the Stroop task, participants were tested either in Welsh or in English on four conditions, one of which was the classic Stroop condition. Analyses showed no home language effect in Welsh at either age. For English, by the teen years, there was no home language effect, including no difference between the monolinguals and the bilinguals. At the younger age, the WEH children showed an advantage over the OWH and MonE participants, but the OWH children showed inferior performance on a control condition in which they had to retrieve the color name from their lexical store. This supports the position of a bilingual advantage, here in the WEH children, but also important contributions of automaticity related to literacy. Follow-up analyses also confirmed important contributions to performance of balanced use of the two languages, of SES, of overall cognitive abilities, and of general linguistic knowledge, as measured by vocabulary scores.
In order to document more fully where and when a bilingual advantage might occur in this type of bilingual population—fully bilingual participants who grew up or are growing up as simultaneous bilinguals or early sequential bilinguals, we administered a series of tasks on Welsh-English bilinguals from seven age groups, across the lifespan. The following experiments report on card sorting tasks, Simon tasks, and a metalinguistic judgment task, providing further evidence on the influence of bilingualism on tasks related to executive function.
Participants in seven age groups (from 3 years of age through over 60 years of age) were administered several executive function tasks, including the card sorting, Simon, and metalinguistic tasks to be reported here. Participants were also administered, when possible, vocabulary tests in English (Dunn et al.,
We predicted that the overall findings would be consistent with superior performance by bilinguals, especially the balanced bilinguals, over monolinguals. In the case of the card sorting tasks, the prediction was that this advantage would be observable in greater accuracy or faster reaction times of the (balanced?) bilinguals over the monolinguals in the tasks involving a switch of the parameters on which to base the sort; in the case of the Simon tasks, the prediction was that (balanced?) bilinguals would show an advantage in the conflict condition. For the metalinguistic task, the prediction was that (balanced?) bilinguals would show a particular advantage in the condition that involved grammatical but anomalous sentences.
A total of 650 children and adults participated in the card sort tasks, 557 in the Simon tasks, and 354 in the metalinguistic task. With the exception of the metalinguistic task (which was not administered to the preschoolers) participants took part in all studies. Differences in numbers are due to attrition. Participants were recruited through schools in and around North Wales, bilinguals from Gwynedd, Denbigh, and Conwy counties, and monolinguals from the Chester area, just across the Welsh border into England. Informed consent was obtained from participants or parents of participants. Across the tasks, participants fell into 7 age categories and four major home-language groups. Children came from 5 different age groups, around 3, 4, and 5 years of age, 8 years of age (henceforward “primary schoolers”), and 15 years of age (henceforward “teens” or “teenagers”); adults came from two groups, younger adults and older adults. (Exact ages will be reported with each task). All age groups performed (different versions of) a card sort task and a Simon task, and those of primary school age and above a metalinguistic task.
On the basis of the background questionnaires, participants were classified as either monolinguals (“MonE”) or bilinguals coming from homes in which only Welsh was spoken (“OWH”), both Welsh and English were spoken (“WEH”), or only English was spoken (“OEH”)
The distribution of participants for the card sort tasks was as shown in Table
3 | 14 | 20 | 16 | 21 | 71 |
4 | 29 | 19 | 18 | 18 | 84 |
5 | 19 | 21 | 21 | 19 | 80 |
Primary schoolers | 25 | 22 | 20 | 29 | 96 |
Teens | 20 | 24 | 26 | 34 | 104 |
Younger adults | 28 | 20 | 28 | 30 | 106 |
Older adults | 23 | 24 | 19 | 31 | 97 |
Total | 161 | 151 | 150 | 188 | 650 |
Three types of card sort task were given, according to participants' age groups. The school age children and adults were provided with a set of normal playing cards and were asked to sort them according to the experimenter's instructions. The specific sorting tasks differed, however, for the primary school age children from the older participants. The exact instructions and procedure for each are given in Appendix B. The youngest 3 age groups of children were given a simpler dimensional change card sort task, also described in Appendix B. In each case, participants were asked to sort the cards according to one criterion first, and then according to another criterion on a second (and in the case of older participants, additional) sort. Participants' accuracy and reaction times were recorded for every sort.
The “cost” associated with switching from one criterion to another in the sorting tasks was measured by the difference in performance between the first and second sorts (first minus second). Both the difference scores for accuracy and for reaction times were examined.
The difference scores for accuracy were entered into an ANOVA in which age and home language were entered as variables, with the difference score as the dependent measure. There was a main effect of age group,
There was also a significant interaction of Age Group × Home Language,
A second ANOVA examined the difference scores for reaction times. Again, age group and home language were entered as variables. This analysis revealed only a significant main effect of age group,
To check for a possible global (BEPA) advantage for bilinguals, the data were reanalyzed, with separate tests conducted on the scores for accuracy and RTs on the first vs. second sorts by each age group. For accuracy, the only significant group effects were at the teen age group, which showed a significant HL effect,
For RTs, there were significant effects of HL group at ages 3 [
The results for the difference scores on the card sort tasks reveal little support for a bilingual advantage in relation to control (BICA), either for accuracy or reaction times, in relation to the costs related to a switch in the criteria to be followed in sorting. There was a single case, for accuracy at the teen years, in which the OWH children performed better than the MonE and WEH children; for RTs, MonE outperformed one or more bilingual group at ages 3, 4, 5, and younger adults; only among the teens were the bilinguals faster than the MonE children.
Similarly, the results on the absolute scores for accuracy and RTs on the first vs. second sort fail to support a global (BEPA) bilingual advantage. There was no difference by group at primary school age or among older adults; for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds and younger adults, the MonE or OEH participants outperformed the WEH and/or OWH participants; and for teens, the OWH group had lower accuracy rates than everyone else, but for RTs, this is the one place in which bilinguals outperformed monolinguals.
Two versions of the Simon Task, first created by Simon and Wolf (
The participants for the Simon tasks were distributed as in Table
3 | 11 | 20 | 17 | 22 | 70 |
4 | 29 | 9 | 13 | 16 | 67 |
5 | 20 | 16 | 19 | 16 | 71 |
Primary schoolers | 13 | 20 | 17 | 14 | 64 |
Teens | 20 | 28 | 31 | 35 | 114 |
Younger adults | 20 | 19 | 23 | 23 | 85 |
Older adults | 20 | 23 | 17 | 24 | 84 |
Total | 134 | 136 | 137 | 150 | 557 |
The adult version of the task involved a blue and a red square, which appeared either on the right or the left side of the computer screen. The participant's task was to press the Q on the computer if the blue square appeared and a P if the red square appeared.
The child version of the task involved a rabbit and a pig, who appeared sitting on top of a rock either on the right or the left side of the computer screen. The child's task was to touch a “button” on a touch screen, to indicate whether the rabbit or the pig appeared. The “buttons” showed either the rabbit or the pig, and the rabbit button always appeared at the bottom left of the screen and the pig button always appeared at the bottom right of the screen.
Participants were told, both verbally and in writing on the screen, to respond as quickly as possible to indicate which item appeared. If the blue square/rabbit appeared, the Q or the button on the left was to be pressed, and if the red square/pig appeared, the P or the button on the right was to be pressed. Between trials a “+” appeared in the center of the screen. The target item appeared on the screen half of the time on the left, and half the time on the right: in “congruent” trials, the target item appeared on the same side of the screen as the key or button to be pressed; in “incongruent” trials, the item appeared on the side of the screen opposite to that on which the key or button to be pressed was located. Three practice trials were given first, and then the target trials.
School age children and adults received 48 trials, 24 congruent, and 24 incongruent, in random order. The younger children received 16 trials, 8 congruent, and 8 incongruent. Accuracy of responses and reaction times were recorded electronically.
Performance by each group is shown to the left in Figures
There were no significant effects based on home language.
There was also an interaction of Age Group × Home Language,
To explore the interaction of Condition × Age Group, separate ANOVAs were computed for each age group. Every age group showed faster performance on the congruent condition than on the incongruent condition: primary school age:
The results across the Simon tasks revealed that, consistent with predictions, all groups performed better on the congruent condition of the task than on the incongruent condition, but, inconsistent with predictions, there was little evidence of a bilingual advantage, either in accuracy of performance or in reaction times. Where there were effects involving home language, they were mixed. The MonE group often performed better or faster than one or more bilingual groups (for RTs in preschoolers and younger adults, for accuracy in teens); however, in one case the MonE group performed worse than the bilinguals (i.e., for accuracy among the older adults), and in another, the OWH participants patterned with the MonE participants in having faster RTs than OEH participants, in the preschool groups.
For the metalinguistic task, a total of 354 participants were tested, from four age groups: primary schoolers, teens, younger adults, and older adults. The distribution of participants by age group and home language was as shown in Table
Primary schoolers | 12 | 19 | 15 | 21 | 67 |
Teens | 21 | 23 | 24 | 35 | 103 |
Younger adults | 27 | 21 | 24 | 25 | 97 |
Older adults | 22 | 21 | 17 | 27 | 87 |
Total | 82 | 84 | 80 | 108 | 354 |
The mean ages for each group are shown in Appendix A.
For both languages, 24 sentences were drawn up. In these, 6 types of structures were manipulated, and each type of structure was used in a grammatical meaningful sentence (“GM”), a grammatical, but anomalous sentence (“Gm”), an ungrammatical meaningful sentence (“gM”), and an ungrammatical anomalous sentence (“gm”). The 6 types of structures involved subject-verb agreement, irregular past tense formation, position of object pronouns, subject-auxiliary inversion in
Examples of the English and Welsh sentences involving subject-verb agreement are shown in (1) in Table
E | Today, Tommy is travelling to the zoo to visit the animals. | Today, Jenny is walking to the park to play with clouds. | Today, Billy am riding to the airport to see the planes. | Today, Mary are going to the supermarket to buy three pilots. |
W | Heddiw, mae Tomi yn teithio i'r sw i weld yr anifeiliaid. | Heddiw, mae Jini yn cerdded i'r parc i chwarae ar y cymylau. | Heddiw, rydw Bili yn rhedeg i'r maes awyr i weld yr awyrennau. [requires |
Heddiw, roeddwn Mari yn mynd i'r siop i brynnu tri peilot. [requires |
E | Sam finished his work, so he gave his paper to the teacher to mark. | Sue ate her lunch, so she left her plate for the cook to break. | Jim did his painting, so he bringed his brush to his dad to clean. | Jan read the story, so she taked the book to the librarian to chew. |
W | Gorffennod Sam ei waith, felly mi roddodd ei bapur i'r athrawes i'w farcio. | Bwytaodd Siwan ei chinio, felly gadawodd ei phlat i'r ddynes cinio dorri. | Peintiodd Jim ei lun, felly daethodd â'r brws i'w dad i olchi. [requires |
Darllennodd Sian y stori, felly aethwyd hi â'r llyfr i'r llyfrgellydd i gnoi. [requires |
For the two languages, two versions of the sentences were drawn up. In the two versions, items that were grammatical and/or meaningful in one appeared as ungrammatical and/or anomalous in the other. For example, in one version, “Jim did his painting, so he bringed his brush to his dad to clean” occurred as gM, and in the other “Jim did his painting, so he bringed his brush to his dad to wear” occurred as gm. Bilingual participants heard the English sentences from one of these versions and Welsh sentences from the other. Monolinguals heard the English sentences from only one of the versions. The use of the two versions in each language across the participants was balanced.
Participants heard sentences read to them orally. They were asked to judge whether a sentence was grammatical, and to correct it if it was ungrammatical. (See Appendix C for more details.) Participants were given 5 practice sentences, and then the target trials. The trial sentences were given in random order.
An ANOVA was conducted in which condition (GM, Gm, gM, gm), age, and home language were entered as independent variables and number correct responses as the dependent variable. There were significant main effects for all variables: condition,
These main effects were modified by a significant interaction of Condition × Age,
Performance at each age is shown in Figure
An ANOVA was similarly conducted examining performance on the Welsh sentences. There were significant main effects for all variables: condition,
These main effects were modified by a significant interaction of Condition × Age,
Performance at each age is shown in Figure
The results of the metalinguistic tasks also failed to reveal a bilingual advantage, either overall or in the crucial Gm condition, which requires the greatest levels of inhibitory control. This is contrary to expectations, according to the proposal of an executive function advantage by bilinguals in this condition. In accordance with predictions related to language ability, in contrast, home language, when it mattered, showed an advantage in the direction of the bilingual group that was dominant in the given language. That is, for English, the OEH children performed the best of the bilinguals; and in the primary age group, on the gM condition (which requires greater levels of sentence analysis than control of attention), the OEH children outperformed the OWH children; in contrast in Welsh, the OWH and WEH participants outperformed the OEH participants, and specifically in the gM condition, the OWH participants outperformed the OEH participants.
These experiments reveal that on three sets of executive function tasks, performance by this group of simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals fails to provide support for an overall bilingual advantage at any of the seven ages tested here. The card sorting tasks failed to show an overall advantage of bilinguals, either in relation to the “cost” of the switch or in relation to an overall performance advantage. On the Simon task, performance was generally similar across groups, or the monolinguals generally had the advantage; in many cases, the monolinguals (or in one case, the OEH bilinguals) were faster or more accurate than one or more groups of bilinguals. In one case, however, the OWH bilinguals were, like the monolinguals, also faster than the OEH and WEH bilinguals, and in one case, the monolinguals were less accurate than the bilinguals (at the older adult group). On the metalinguistic task, again where there were differences, the differences were in the direction of those dominant in the language being tested outperforming those who were less dominant, most importantly, even in the Gm condition, where executive control was predicted to favor bilinguals.
It should be noted that this evidence showing little support for the bilingual advantage was accompanied in every case by robust evidence supporting predictions not related to home language. For example, performance in congruent conditions was always superior to performance in incongruent conditions, both in accuracy and in RTs (similar to findings in Kousaie and Phillips,
The absence of strong support for the position of a bilingual advantage on these executive tasks, as in our earlier work (and in some forthcoming work from Clare et al., submitted) is striking. This study examined a large number of fully fluent, simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals, homogeneous in cultural and educational backgrounds, and homogeneous with those of the monolinguals. While it is possible that language abilities contributed to performance on the card sorting and metalinguistic tasks, the Simon task is a classic task used to examine EF performance. The results here suggest that whatever mechanisms yield superior performance in other studies in relation to bilinguals and control may be less relevant to simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals.
As noted above, in many studies, the participants are L2 bilinguals (or not clearly defined, Adesope et al., To provide just a few examples, conversational participants must monitor the environment for signals regarding turn-taking, misunderstandings, possible use of sarcasm, changes of topic, or changes in register contingent upon who enters or leaves the conversation. These lead to switches from speaker to listener, switches from one knowledge domain to another, and so forth. Although monolinguals do not need to suppress translation equivalents during production, they incessantly make word choices among semantically and syntactically activated candidates that include synonyms, hypernyms, and hyponyms. In addition monolinguals must use context to suppress irrelevant meaning of homographs during comprehension (p. 256).
It is worth considering as well the extent to which the theory surrounding a bilingual advantage in relation to control hinges on a modular approach to language. If the two languages spoken by a bilingual are separate, then this would necessarily involve some mechanism for switching back and forth between the two languages. Consider, however, a less modular model of language. Under a computational model of language acquisition and language use, for example, the processes involved in language use can be seen more as involving activation of links than switches between two separate (but related) systems. The links within a language will be stronger than across languages, but both languages appear to be “on line” at all moments (see, e.g., Lam and Dijkstra,
These questions are deserving of much closer scrutiny in future research. The choice of participants in studies of this type needs to be controlled more carefully in the future, so that we can better define exactly who shows an advantage in performance, under what conditions, and why.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
This research was supported by ESRC grant RES-062-23-0175 on Cognitive effects of bilingualism across the lifespan and by ESRC/HEFCW grant RES-535-30-0061 for the ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice, which we gratefully acknowledge. We also wish to express our thanks to all of the schools, parents, children, and adults who participated in this work; without their very helpful cooperation this study could never have taken place. Thank you also to project students and research assistants who helped in data collection: Carys Blunt, Angela H. Clifford, Lowri Cunnington, Nikki Davies, Sinead Dolan, Susan D. Elliott, Katie Gibbins, Bethan Gritten, Lowri Hadden, Josselyn Hellriegel, Catherine L. Hogan, Siwan Long, Jason H. McEvoy, Sarah N. Pearce, Hannah Perryman, Emily Roberts, Sioned Roberts, Kathryn Sharp, Heather Shawcross, and Lesley Waiting. Finally, thank you to the reviewers for their helpful and insightful suggestions for revision.
Mean ages by group were as follows:
3: mean: 3.0; range of means in the individual home language groups: 2.11–3.2 (individual range: 2.0–3.6)
4: mean: 4.2; range of means in the individual home language groups: 4.1–4.3 (individual range: 3.7–4.9)
5: mean: 5.5; range of means in the individual home language groups: 5.4–5.6 (individual range: 4.10–6.0)
Primary Schoolers: mean: 8.0; range of means in the individual home language groups: 7.8–8.5 (individual range: 7.0–8.11)
Teens: mean: 14.9, range of means in the individual home language groups: 14.7–14.11 (individual range: 13.0–16.0)
Younger Adults: mean: 24.8; range of means in the individual home language groups: 23.5–26.2 (individual range: 18.0–39.0)
Older Adults: mean: 67.4; range of means in the individual home language groups: 65.1–69.1 (individual range: 57.0–90.0)
Mean ages for each group were as follows:
3: mean: 3.0; range of means in the individual home language groups: 2.11–3.3 (individual range: 2.0–3.6)
4: mean: 4.2; range of means in the individual home language groups: 4.1–4.5 (individual range: 3.5–4.11)
5: mean: 5.4; range of means in the individual home language groups: 5.4–5.6 (individual range: 4.10–6.0)
Primary School: mean: 8.2; range of means in the individual home language groups: 7.9–8.5 (individual range: 7.0–8.11)
Teens: mean: 14.9; range of means in the individual home language groups: 14.8–14.11 (individual range: 13.0–16.0)
Younger Adults: mean: 25.5; range of means in the individual home language groups: 23.4–26.6 (individual range: 18.3–39.0)
Older Adults: mean: 67.6; range of means in the individual home language groups: 66.2–68.4 (individual range: 57.6–90.0)
The mean ages were as follows:
Primary School: mean: 8.2; range of means in the individual home language groups: 7.10–8.4 (individual range: 7.0–8.11)
Teens: mean: 14.10; range of means in the individual home language groups: 14.8–15.0 (individual range: 13.0–16.0)
Younger Adults: mean: 25.4; range of means in the individual home language groups: 23.2–27.2 (individual range: 18.3–39.0)
Older Adults: mean: 67.7; range of means in the individual home language groups: 66.2–68.5 (individual range: 57.6–90.0)
Participants heard sentences read to them orally. They were asked to judge whether a sentence was grammatical, and to correct it if it was ungrammatical, with the following instructions:
These are my friends, Sali and Twmi. Sometimes, Twmi gets mixed up when he talks. Sometimes, he doesn't know how to talk very well. Sometimes, he says things right but they're just silly. Sometimes, he says things that make sense, but he says them wrong. And sometimes, he says things that are silly
For example, if Twmi says “I am a banana,” Sali says “That's very silly but you said it right.”
And if Twmi says “My hair be yellow” then Sali says “That makes sense,” but it's not right, you should say “my hair
And if Twmi says “I can talk,” Sali says “yes, that's right.”
And if Twmi says “I be a lemon,” Sali says “That's silly
So, if Twmi says (Practice Sentence 1), what do you think Sali will say? (Child responds Right, Silly or Not Right). How should Sali tell Twmi to say it?
1A child was classified as OWH (OEH) if the parents reported at least 80% use of Welsh (English) in the home in speech to the child from birth to the present time, and adults were classified as OWH (OEH) according to the “origin home language,” the home language patterns in their homes when they were children. Participants were classified as WEH if they received between 40 and 60% use of both languages in the home from their parents.