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Is There a Relationship between Language Switching and Executive Functions in Bilingualism? Introducing a within group Analysis Approach

Several studies have suggested a bilingual advantage in executive functions, presumably due to bilinguals’ massive practice with language switching that requires executive resources, but the results are still somewhat controversial. Previous studies are also plagued by the inherent limitations of a...

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Autores principales: Soveri, Anna, Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni, Laine, Matti
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150725/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21869878
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00183
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author Soveri, Anna
Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni
Laine, Matti
author_facet Soveri, Anna
Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni
Laine, Matti
author_sort Soveri, Anna
collection PubMed
description Several studies have suggested a bilingual advantage in executive functions, presumably due to bilinguals’ massive practice with language switching that requires executive resources, but the results are still somewhat controversial. Previous studies are also plagued by the inherent limitations of a natural groups design where the participant groups are bound to differ in many ways in addition to the variable used to classify them. In an attempt to introduce a complementary analysis approach, we employed multiple regression to study whether the performance of 30- to 75-year-old Finnish–Swedish bilinguals (N = 38) on tasks measuring different executive functions (inhibition, updating, and set shifting) could be predicted by the frequency of language switches in everyday life (as measured by a language switching questionnaire), L2 age of acquisition, or by the self-estimated degree of use of both languages in everyday life. Most consistent effects were found for the set shifting task where a higher rate of everyday language switches was related to a smaller mixing cost in errors. Mixing cost is thought to reflect top-down management of competing task sets, thus resembling the bilingual situation where decisions of which language to use has to be made in each conversation. These findings provide additional support to the idea that some executive functions in bilinguals are affected by a lifelong experience in language switching and, perhaps even more importantly, suggest a complementary approach to the study of this issue.
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spelling pubmed-31507252011-08-25 Is There a Relationship between Language Switching and Executive Functions in Bilingualism? Introducing a within group Analysis Approach Soveri, Anna Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni Laine, Matti Front Psychol Psychology Several studies have suggested a bilingual advantage in executive functions, presumably due to bilinguals’ massive practice with language switching that requires executive resources, but the results are still somewhat controversial. Previous studies are also plagued by the inherent limitations of a natural groups design where the participant groups are bound to differ in many ways in addition to the variable used to classify them. In an attempt to introduce a complementary analysis approach, we employed multiple regression to study whether the performance of 30- to 75-year-old Finnish–Swedish bilinguals (N = 38) on tasks measuring different executive functions (inhibition, updating, and set shifting) could be predicted by the frequency of language switches in everyday life (as measured by a language switching questionnaire), L2 age of acquisition, or by the self-estimated degree of use of both languages in everyday life. Most consistent effects were found for the set shifting task where a higher rate of everyday language switches was related to a smaller mixing cost in errors. Mixing cost is thought to reflect top-down management of competing task sets, thus resembling the bilingual situation where decisions of which language to use has to be made in each conversation. These findings provide additional support to the idea that some executive functions in bilinguals are affected by a lifelong experience in language switching and, perhaps even more importantly, suggest a complementary approach to the study of this issue. Frontiers Media S.A. 2011-08-01 /pmc/articles/PMC3150725/ /pubmed/21869878 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00183 Text en Copyright © 2011 Soveri, Rodriguez-Fornells and Laine. http://www.frontiersin.org/licenseagreement This is an open-access article subject to a non-exclusive license between the authors and Frontiers Media SA, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and other Frontiers conditions are complied with.
spellingShingle Psychology
Soveri, Anna
Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni
Laine, Matti
Is There a Relationship between Language Switching and Executive Functions in Bilingualism? Introducing a within group Analysis Approach
title Is There a Relationship between Language Switching and Executive Functions in Bilingualism? Introducing a within group Analysis Approach
title_full Is There a Relationship between Language Switching and Executive Functions in Bilingualism? Introducing a within group Analysis Approach
title_fullStr Is There a Relationship between Language Switching and Executive Functions in Bilingualism? Introducing a within group Analysis Approach
title_full_unstemmed Is There a Relationship between Language Switching and Executive Functions in Bilingualism? Introducing a within group Analysis Approach
title_short Is There a Relationship between Language Switching and Executive Functions in Bilingualism? Introducing a within group Analysis Approach
title_sort is there a relationship between language switching and executive functions in bilingualism? introducing a within group analysis approach
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150725/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21869878
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00183
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