Previous research has shown that bilingual children perform better than comparable monolinguals on tasks requiring control of attention to inhibit misleading information. The present paper reports a series of studies that traces this processing difference into adulthood and eventually aging. The task used in all groups, from children to older adults, is the Simon task, a measure of stimulus-response incompatibility. The results showed that bilinguals performed better than monolinguals in early childhood, adulthood, and later adulthood. There was no difference in performance between monolinguals and bilinguals who were young adults, specifically university undergraduates. Our interpretation is that performance is at its peak efficiency for that group and bilingualism offers no further boost. The results are discussed in terms of the effect of bilingualism on control of attention and inhibition through the lifespan.
Ben-Zeev, S. (1977). The influence of bilingualism on cognitive strategy and cognitive development. Child Development, 48, 1009-1018.
2.
Bialystok, E. (1986). Factors in the growth of linguistic awareness . Child Development, 57, 498 - 510.
3.
Bialystok, E. (1988). Levels of bilingualism and levels of linguistic awareness. Developmental Psychology, 24, 560-567.
4.
Bialystok, E. (1993). Metalinguistic awareness: The development of children's representations of language. In C. Pratt & A. Garton (Eds.), Systems of representation in children: Development and use (pp. 211-233). London: Wiley and Sons.
5.
Bialystok, E. (2001). Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy, and cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press.
6.
Bialystok, E., & Codd, J. (1997). Cardinal limits evidence from language awareness and bilingualism for developing concepts of number. Cognitive Development, 12, 85-106.
7.
Bialystok, E., & Majumder, S. (1998). The relationship between bilingualism and the development of cognitive processes in problem-solving. Applied Psycholinguistics, 19, 69-85.
8.
Cromdal, J. (1999). Childhood bilingualism and metalinguistic skills: Analysis and control in young Swedish-English bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 20, 1-20.
9.
Dagenbach, D., & Carr, T. (1994). Inhibitory processes in attention, memory, and language. New York: Academic Press .
10.
Dempster, F.N. (1992). The rise and fall of the inhibitory mechanism: Toward a unified theory of cognitive development and aging. Developmental Review, 12, 45-75.
11.
Diamond, A. (2002). Normal development of prefrontal cortex from birth to young adulthood: cognitive functions, anatomy, and biochemistry. In D. T. Stuss & R. T. Knight (Eds.), Principles of frontal lobe function (pp.466-503). New York: Oxford University Press.
12.
Dunn, L.M., & Dunn, L.M. (1981). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service .
13.
Hakuta, K. (1986). Mirror of language: The debate on bilingualism . New York: Basic Books.
14.
Harnishfeger, K.K., & Bjorklund, D.F. (1993). The ontogeny of inhibition mechanisms: A renewed approach to cognitive development. In R. Pasnak & M. Howe (Eds.), Emerging themes in cognitive development, Volume 1 (pp.28-49). New York: Springer Verlag.
15.
Hasher, L., & Zacks, R.T. (1988). Working memory, comprehension, and aging: A review and a new view. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Vol. 22 (pp.193-225). San Diego: Academic Press.
16.
Hasher, L., Zacks, R.T., & May, C. (1999). Inhibitory control, circadian arousal, and age . In D. Gopher & A. Koriat (Eds.), Attention and performance: XVII. Cognitive regulation of performance: Interaction of theory and application (pp. 653-675). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
17.
Hasher, L., Stoltzfus, E.R., Zacks, R.T., & Rypma, B. (1991). Age and inhibition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 17, 163-169.
18.
Hernandez, A.E., & Kohnert, K.J. (1999). Aging and language switching in bilinguals. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 6, 69-83.
19.
Jacoby, L.L. (1991). A process dissociation framework: Separating automatic from intentional uses of memory. Journal of Memory and Language , 30, 513-541.
20.
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1992). Beyond modularity: A developmental perspective on cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
21.
Lu, C-H., & Proctor, R.W. (1995). The influence of irrelevant location information on performance: A review of the Simon and spatial Stroop effects. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 2, 174-207.
22.
McDowd, J.M. (1997). Inhibition in attention and aging. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 52B, 265-273.
23.
McDowd, J.M., & Shaw, R.J. (2000). Attention and aging: A functional perspective . In F. I. M. Craik & T. A. Salthouse (Eds.), The handbook of aging and cognition, Second Edition (pp.221-292). Mahwah, NJ; Erlbaum.
24.
Merriman, W.E., & Kutlesic, V. (1993). Bilingual and monolingual children's use of two lexical acquisition heuristics. Applied Psycholinguistics , 14, 229-249.
25.
Reynolds, A.G. (1991). The cognitive consequences of bilingualism. In A. G. Reynolds (Ed.), Bilingualism, multiculturalism, and second language learning: The McGill Conference in honor of Wallace E. Lambert (pp.145-182). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
26.
Rosenblum, T., & Pinker, S.A. (1983). Word magic revisited: Monolingual and bilingual children's understanding of the word-object relationship. Child Development, 54, 773-780.
27.
Salthouse, T.A. (1994). The aging of working memory. Neuropsychology, 8, 535-543.
28.
Simon, J.R., & Wolf, J.D. (1963). Choice reaction time as a function of angular stimulus-response correspondence and age. Ergonomics, 6, 99-105.
29.
Spieler, D.H., Balota, D.A., & Faust, M.E. (1996). Stroop performance in healthy younger and older adults and in individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer's type. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 22, 461-479.
30.
Stuss, D.T. (1992). Biological and psychological development of executive functions. Brain and Cognition, 20, 8-23.
31.
Tipper, S.P. (1992). Selection for actions: The role of inhibitory mechanisms. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1, 105-112.
32.
Tipper, S.P., & Mclaren, J. (1990). Evidence for efficient visual selectivity in children . In J. T. Enns (Ed.), The development of attention: Research and theory (pp.197-210). Elsevier Science Publishers.
Weschler, D.A. (1974). Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation .
35.
Williams, B.R., Ponesse, J.S., Schachar, R.J., Logan, G.D., & Tannock, R. (1999). Development of inhibitory control across the lifespan . Developmental Psychology, 35,205-213.
36.
Zacks, R.T., & Hasher, L. (1994). Directed ignoring: Inhibitory regulation of working memory. In D. Dagenbach & T. H. Carr (Eds.), Inhibitory processes in attention, memory and language (pp.241-264). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
37.
Zelazo, P.D., & Frye, D. (1997). Cognitive complexity and control: A theory of the development of deliberate reasoning and intentional action. In M. Stamenov (Ed.), Language structure, discourse, and the access to consciousness (pp.113-153). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
