On the bilingualism effect in task switching

In one task-switching experiment, we compared bilinguals and monolinguals to explore the reliability of the bilingualism effect on the n-2 repetition cost. In a second taskswitching experiment, we tested another group of bilinguals and monolinguals and measured both the n-1 shift cost and the n-2 re...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Branzi, Francesca Martina, 1984-, Calabria, Marco, Gade, Miriam, Fuentes, Luis J., Costa, Albert, 1970-
Format: article
Status:Versión aceptada para publicación
Publication Date:2018
Country:España
Institution:Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Repository:Repositorio Digital de la UPF
OAI Identifier:oai:repositori.upf.edu:10230/36876
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10230/36876
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S136672891600119X
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Bilingualism
Executive control
Task switching
N-2 repetition cost
Description
Summary:In one task-switching experiment, we compared bilinguals and monolinguals to explore the reliability of the bilingualism effect on the n-2 repetition cost. In a second taskswitching experiment, we tested another group of bilinguals and monolinguals and measured both the n-1 shift cost and the n-2 repetition cost to test the hypothesis that bilingualism should confer a general greater efficiency of the executive control functioning. According to this hypothesis, we expected a reduced n-1 shift cost and an enhanced n-2 repetition cost for bilinguals compared to monolinguals. However, we did not observe such results. Our findings suggest that previous results cannot be replicated and that the n-2 repetition cost is another index that shows no reliable bilingualism effect. Finally, we observed a negative correlation between the two switch costs among bilinguals only. This finding may suggest that the two groups employ different strategies to cope with interference in task-switching paradigms.