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Scherger AL, Urbanczik G, Ludwigs T, Kizilirmak JM. The Bilingual Native Speaker Competence: Evidence From Explicit and Implicit Language Knowledge Using Elicited Production, Sentence-Picture Matching, and Pupillometry. Front Psychol 2021; 12:717379. [PMID: 34603141 PMCID: PMC8483243 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717379] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/30/2021] [Accepted: 08/13/2021] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
The present pilot study investigated potential effects of early and late child bilingualism in highly proficient adult bilinguals. It has been shown that some early second language (eL2) speakers stagnate when it comes to complex linguistic phenomena and that they display subtle difficulties in adulthood. Therefore, we have chosen the complex structure of double object constructions. We investigate the long-term achievement in a combined-method approach using elicited production, explicit comprehension by sentence-picture matching and a measure of implicit linguistic knowledge, namely pupillometry. This eye tracking method is suitable for measuring implicit reactions of the pupils to unexpected or ungrammatical stimuli. For production, ditransitive structures were elicited by means of a game. For comprehension, a sentence-picture matching task was conducted. Two pictures were shown on a monitor that were equal with respect to the involved objects, but the thematic roles of direct and indirect objects were interchanged. Items were controlled for length, gender, animacy, semantic likelihood and word order. Reaction times and accuracy scores were analyzed. To this end, N = 18 bilingual adult speakers of German (+ another language, mean age: 26.5) with different ages of onset participated in this study and were compared to N = 26 monolingual German adult speakers (mean age 23.9). All participants had a proficiency of German above 89% correct in placement and cloze tests. Results show fully comparable productive and comprehensive competencies in monolinguals and bilinguals including the reaction times in the sentence-picture matching task and a word order effect on the reaction times in both groups. In the pupillometry task, we found monolinguals and bilinguals to be sensitive to differing conditions with respect to grammatical and ungrammatical utterances. However, we find between group differences in pupil dilations in that bilinguals react differently to strong grammatical violations than monolinguals. These results are discussed with respect to the term of native speaker competence and the variation within both groups.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anna-Lena Scherger
- Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Language & Communication, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany
| | - Gianna Urbanczik
- Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Language & Communication, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany
| | - Timon Ludwigs
- Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Language & Communication, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany
| | - Jasmin M. Kizilirmak
- University of Hildesheim, Institute for Psychology, Neurodidactics & NeuroLab, Hildesheim, Germany
- German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Cognitive Geriatric Psychiatry, Göttingen, Germany
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Comparing bilingual and monolingual performance on the attention network test: meta-analysis of a literature inspired by Albert Costa. JOURNAL OF CULTURAL COGNITIVE SCIENCE 2020. [DOI: 10.1007/s41809-020-00068-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
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Ware AT, Kirkovski M, Lum JAG. Meta-Analysis Reveals a Bilingual Advantage That Is Dependent on Task and Age. Front Psychol 2020; 11:1458. [PMID: 32793026 PMCID: PMC7394008 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01458] [Citation(s) in RCA: 39] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/18/2020] [Accepted: 06/02/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Debate continues on whether a bilingual advantage exists with respect to executive functioning. This report synthesized the results of 170 studies to test whether the bilingual advantage is dependent on the task used to assess executive functioning and the age of the participants. The results of the meta-analyses indicated that the bilingual advantage was both task- and age-specific. Bilinguals were significantly faster than monolinguals (Hedges' g values ranged from 0.23 to 0.34), and significantly more accurate than monolinguals (Hedges' g values ranged between 0.18 and 0.49) on four out of seven tasks. Also, an effect of age was found whereby the bilingual advantage was larger for studies comprising samples aged 50-years and over (Hedges' g = 0.49), compared to those undertaken with participants aged between 18 and 29 years (Hedges' g = 0.12). The extent to which the bilingual advantage might be due to publication bias was assessed using multiple methods. These were Egger's Test of Asymmetry, Duval and Tweedie's Trim and Fill, Classic Fail-Safe N, and PET-PEESE. Publication bias was only found when using Egger's Test of Asymmetry and PET-PEESE method, but not when using the other methods. This review indicates that if bilingualism does enhance executive functioning, the effects are modulated by task and age. This may arise because using multiple languages has a highly specific effect on executive functioning which is only observable in older, relative to younger, adults. The finding that publication bias was not uniformly detected across the different methods raises questions about the impact that unpublished (or undetected) studies have on meta-analyses of this literature.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Jarrad A. G. Lum
- Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, School of Psychology, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, Australia
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Is there a bilingual advantage on interference-control tasks? A multiverse meta-analysis of global reaction time and interference cost. Psychon Bull Rev 2019; 26:1122-1147. [PMID: 30815795 DOI: 10.3758/s13423-019-01567-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 58] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/22/2022]
Abstract
A contentious issue in contemporary psycholinguistics is whether bilingualism enhances executive functions. Here, we report a meta-analysis of 80 studies (253 effect sizes) comparing performance of monolinguals and bilinguals on non-verbal interference-control tasks, while examining potential moderators of effects on two dependent variables (DVs): global reaction time (RT) and interference cost. We used a multiverse approach to determine how robust conclusions were to several dataset construction and analysis decisions. In our "preferred" analysis, using a broad definition of bilinguals and standard versions of interference-control tasks, there was a very small but significant bilingual advantage for global RT (g =.13), which became non-significant once corrected for publication bias. For interference cost, there was a very small but significant bilingual advantage (g =.11). Effects were not significantly moderated by task or participant age, but were moderated by an interaction between age of second language acquisition (AoA) and the DV. Unexpectedly, larger effect sizes for interference cost were observed for studies involving bilinguals with late as opposed to early AoA. The multiverse analysis produced results largely consistent with the preferred analysis, confirming our conclusion that evidence for a bilingual advantage on interference-control tasks is weak.
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van den Noort M, Struys E, Bosch P, Jaswetz L, Perriard B, Yeo S, Barisch P, Vermeire K, Lee SH, Lim S. Does the Bilingual Advantage in Cognitive Control Exist and If So, What Are Its Modulating Factors? A Systematic Review. Behav Sci (Basel) 2019; 9:E27. [PMID: 30871228 PMCID: PMC6466577 DOI: 10.3390/bs9030027] [Citation(s) in RCA: 62] [Impact Index Per Article: 12.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/02/2019] [Revised: 03/08/2019] [Accepted: 03/10/2019] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
Abstract
Recently, doubts were raised about the existence of the bilingual advantage in cognitive control. The aim of the present review was to investigate the bilingual advantage and its modulating factors. We searched the Medline, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and ERIC databases for all original data and reviewed studies on bilingualism and cognitive control, with a cut-off date of 31 October 2018, thereby following the guidelines of the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) protocol. The results of the 46 original studies show that indeed, the majority, 54.3%, reported beneficial effects of bilingualism on cognitive control tasks; however, 28.3% found mixed results and 17.4% found evidence against its existence. Methodological differences seem to explain these mixed results: Particularly, the varying selection of the bilingual participants, the use of nonstandardized tests, and the fact that individual differences were often neglected and that longitudinal designs were rare. Therefore, a serious risk for bias exists in both directions (i.e., in favor of and against the bilingual advantage). To conclude, we found some evidence for a bilingual advantage in cognitive control; however, if significant progress is to be made, better study designs, bigger data, and more longitudinal studies are needed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maurits van den Noort
- Research Group of Pain and Neuroscience, Kyung Hee University, Seoul 130-701, Korea.
- Brussels Institute for Applied Linguistics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1050 Brussels, Belgium.
| | - Esli Struys
- Brussels Institute for Applied Linguistics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1050 Brussels, Belgium.
| | - Peggy Bosch
- Psychiatric Research Group, LVR-Klinik Bedburg-Hau, 47511 Bedburg-Hau, Germany.
- Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, 6525 Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
| | - Lars Jaswetz
- Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, 6525 Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
| | - Benoît Perriard
- Department of Medicine, Neurology, University of Fribourg, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland.
| | - Sujung Yeo
- College of Oriental Medicine, Sang Ji University, Wonju 26339, Korea.
| | - Pia Barisch
- Institute of Experimental Psychology, Heinrich Heine University, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany.
| | - Katrien Vermeire
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Long Island University (LIU) Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA.
| | - Sook-Hyun Lee
- Research Group of Pain and Neuroscience, Kyung Hee University, Seoul 130-701, Korea.
| | - Sabina Lim
- Research Group of Pain and Neuroscience, Kyung Hee University, Seoul 130-701, Korea.
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