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Cognitive control in bilinguals: Advantages in Stimulus–Stimulus inhibition*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2013

HENRIKE K. BLUMENFELD  and
VIORICA MARIAN
HENRIKE K. BLUMENFELD*
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
VIORICA MARIAN
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
*
Address for correspondence: Henrike K. Blumenfeld, School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182-1518, USAhblumenf@mail.sdsu.edu
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Abstract

Bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals at suppressing task-irrelevant information and on overall speed during cognitive control tasks. Here, monolinguals’ and bilinguals’ performance was compared on two nonlinguistic tasks: a Stroop task (with perceptual Stimulus–Stimulus conflict among stimulus features) and a Simon task (with Stimulus–Response conflict). Across two experiments testing bilinguals with different language profiles, bilinguals showed more efficient Stroop than Simon performance, relative to monolinguals, who showed fewer differences across the two tasks. Findings suggest that bilingualism may engage Stroop-type cognitive control mechanisms more than Simon-type mechanisms, likely due to increased Stimulus–Stimulus conflict during bilingual language processing. Findings are discussed in light of previous research on bilingual Stroop and Simon performance.

Keywords

bilingualisminhibitionStroop taskSimon task
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , July 2014 , pp. 610 - 629
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

*

We would like to thank Margarita Kaushanskaya, Marcel Giezen, Ashley Adams, Cynthia Thompson, James Booth, members of the Bilingualism and Psycholinguistics Laboratory at Northwestern University, and members of the Bilingualism and Cognition Laboratory at San Diego State University for helpful discussions of this work; and Jenny Vinh Truong, Michelle Ortega, Amy Tellez, Michael Meirowitz, Sebnem Uzuner, Diana Garcia, Daniela Cherbowsky, Natalie Spino, Paula Alvarez, Scott Schroeder, Zahra Ali, Nancy Mariscal, and Kali Brogan for research assistance. We also thank Ping Li, Jared Linck and an anonymous reviewer for feedback on previous versions of this manuscript. This project was supported in part by a John and Lucille Clarke Dissertation Scholarship, San Diego State University Grants Program grant 242338, and an American Speech-Language Hearing Foundation New Investigator grant to the first author, and by grant NICHD 1R01HD059858 to the second author.

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