Cognitive Control and Bilingualism: The Bilingual Advantage Through the Lens of Dimensional Overlap
Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemEditorial
Frontiers Media SA
Materia
Bilingual advantage Cognitive control Event-related potentials (ERPs) Simon task Stroop task Dimensional overlap
Fecha
2021-02-11Referencia bibliográfica
Bellegarda M and Macizo P (2021) Cognitive Control and Bilingualism: The Bilingual Advantage Through the Lens of Dimensional Overlap. Front. Psychol. 12:614849. [doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.614849]
Patrocinador
Spanish Government PID2019-111359GB-I00/SRA State Research Agency/10.13039/501100011033Resumen
Past research shows that the bilingual experience may enhance cognitive executive
function. In this experiment, we evaluated cognitive control in bilinguals relative to
monolinguals by using a dimensional overlap model to predict performance in a task
composed of Stroop and Simon stimuli. A group of 24 Spanish monolinguals and 24
bilinguals with differing first languages and all having Spanish as a second language (L2)
did a picture naming task and a task composed of Stroop and Simon stimuli, where
the effect of different overlap conditions (spatial/color) between stimuli and responses
were examined. The tasks were performed in Spanish for both groups and performance
was indexed with behavioral and electrophysiological measures. We hypothesized that
the bilinguals’ daily language practice in L2 reflected overlap conditions similar to the
Simon task. Both naming a picture in L2 and the Simon task would involve conflict
at the response level. L2 picture naming entails interference between two potential
oral responses, to name in L2 vs. L1 (correct vs. incorrect responses, respectively).
Similarly, incongruent stimuli in the Simon task produce interference because the
irrelevant dimension (spatial location) overlap with an incorrect response. In contrast, the
manual Stroop task involves a different type of conflict between two overlapping stimulus
dimensions (the ink color and the color meaning). We predicted for these reasons a
superior performance in Simon tasks over Stroop tasks for bilinguals, while monolinguals
were expected to have a similar performance in both tasks. We also expected to see
a correlation between the performance on the picture naming task and the Simon task
in bilinguals. However, the behavioral results did not confirm these hypotheses. In fact,
both groups had similar congruency effects as measured by reaction times and error
rates, and there was no correlation between the picture naming and Simon task in
bilinguals. Despite this, the electrophysiological data suggested a relationship between
the picture naming task and the P300 congruency effect in bilinguals. Our findings
provide insights into the neurocognitive bases of language and serve as a research
avenue for language behaviors in bilinguals.