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A bilingual advantage in task switching? Age-related differences between German monolinguals and Dutch-Frisian bilinguals*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2015

NIENKE HOUTZAGER ,
WANDER LOWIE ,
SIMONE SPRENGER  and
KEES DE BOT
NIENKE HOUTZAGER*
Affiliation:
University of Groningen
WANDER LOWIE
Affiliation:
University of Groningen and University of the Free State
SIMONE SPRENGER
Affiliation:
University of Groningen
KEES DE BOT
Affiliation:
University of Groningen and University of Pannonia
*
Address for correspondence: Nienke Houtzager, Department of Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Oude Kijk in't Jatstraat 26, 9712 EK Groningen, Netherlandshoutzagernienke@gmail.com; n.hoeven.van.der-houtzager@rug.nl
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Abstract

This study investigated whether lifelong bilingualism can be associated with enhanced executive control, particularly mental flexibility, and with a modulation of an age-related decline in these functions. We compared performance of middle-aged and elderly speakers of German and bilingual speakers of Dutch and Frisian in a cued task-switching paradigm. All bilinguals were fluent in the same, closely-related language pairs. Bilinguals incurred significantly lower switching costs than monolinguals, and elderly bilinguals were less affected by an age-related increase in switching costs than monolinguals. Bilinguals did not differ from monolinguals in the size of the mixing costs. Our findings suggest that lifelong bilingualism correlates with enhanced ability to shift between mental sets, as well as increased resistance to proactive interference. The fact that we found significant group differences – while some previous studies did not – may be attributable to the choice of our task and to the cognateness of the languages involved.

Keywords

Bilingualismagingexecutive controlGermanDutchFrisian
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , January 2017 , pp. 69 - 79
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

We would like to thank Kenneth Paap, Fergus Craik and a third, anonymous reviewer who evaluated this manuscript, for their invaluable questions, feedback and suggestions on previous versions of this work.

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