1. Hunter Johnson1, Jack Darrow1, Oliver Sawi1,2, Kenneth Paap1;
Early Bilingualism Does Not Lead to Bilingual Advantages in Executive Functioning
Hunter Johnson1, Jack Darrow1, Oliver Sawi1,2, Kenneth Paap1;
1San Francisco State University, 2University of Connecticut
At any point – have a model – with respect to an additional you can compute an F statistic, with respect to how much it would improve the overall fit of the model. As you add new predictors in the model, recomputes the proportion of the variance accounted for by that predictor  potentially taking out something that was significant before
All predictors and eliminate – Backward
Nothing and add – Forward
We did both, that is why we had the criteria for entering and removing
Predictors covary to some extent – want to assess how much of the total varience can be uniquely accounted for by a particular predictor, when they correlate with eachother – look at uniqueness by partial correlations – take into account all the predicters in the model
4 Tasks that Yield 13 Measures of EF
Is Luk, De Sa, & Bialystok Replicable? No!
Executive Function
Executive functions (EFs) consist of a set of general-purpose control processes believed to be central to the self-regulation of thoughts and behaviors that are instrumental to accomplishing goals. EFs include components for inhibitory control, switching, monitoring, and updating.
Luk, et al. (2011) reported that the magnitude of the flanker effect was significantly smaller in early bilinguals compared to both late bilinguals and monolinguals.
The Early Bilingual Advantage Hypothesis
Bilinguals have two lexicons that remain active even when the context strongly supports the intention to use only one of them (e.g., Brysbaert, 1998), necessitating a mechanism for maintaining separation between languages. If this mechanism (Green 1998) involves the same executive functions used in all domains, then bilinguals accrue massive amounts of practice that should generalize across cognitive domains and make them less vulnerable to interference in nonlinguistic tasks.
Luk, DeSa, & Bialystok (2011) hypothesized and reported that bilingual advantages in inhibitory control (as measured by the magnitude of the flanker interference effect) are restricted to early bilinguals.
We did not. The quintessential “early” bilinguals, those with two native languages, had the largest flanker effects.
Humphrey & Valian (2012) report no language group differences and monolinguals show the smallest flanker effect.
Differences in EF Across Groups Based on Age of Acquisition
for 12 Measures of Executive Function
Ten of 12 measures show no differences across language groups.
For the Simon effect the bilinguals with two native languages had the largest Simon effect and two of the monolingual groups had the smallest interference effects. This is incompatible with the hypothesis that early bilingualism enhances the inhibitory control component of EF.
For miixing costs bilinguals with two native languages show the smallest costs, but this is surprising because mixing costs have never produced a bilingual advantage in previous research.
Main Effect of Group for Simon Effect
F(5, 347) = 2.45, p = .03
358 Participants Partitioned by
Age-of-Acquistion of L2
Kapa & Colombo (2013) report no differences in flanker interference between early bilinguals, late bilinguals, or monolinguals.
Pelham & Abrams (2014) report no differences in flanker interference between early and late bilinguals, but both showed an advantage over monolinguals.
Conclusion
The native and early bilinguals in our composite database do not outperform other groups in the antisaccade, flanker, Simon, and switching tasks. These results complement those of Duñabeitia et al. (2014) using Basque-Spanish bilinguals and Gathercole et al. (2014) using Welsh-English bilinguals showing no advantages for bilinguals who are highly proficient, acquire both languages early, and reside in language communities where most people speak the same two languages and switching is ubiquitous. Furthermore these studies use a very large N, use multiple measures of EF, and test across a wide age range.
Main Effect of Group for Mixing Costs
F(5, 347) = 2.45, p = .03
L1 and L2 Proficiency Rating Scale
Proficiency: Listening and speaking skills were self-rated using this scale: 7 (Super Fluency, better than a typical native speaker); 6 (Fluent, as good as a typical native speaker); 5 (Near Fluency); 4 (Advanced Intermediate); 3 (Intermediate); 2 (Advanced Beginner); 1 (Beginner) and 0 (no exposure to an L2).