The effects of bilingualism on executive functions: an updated quantitative analysis
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REVIEW
The effects of bilingualism on executive functions: an updated quantitative analysis John G. Grundy
Received: 28 February 2020 / Revised: 12 July 2020 / Accepted: 7 August 2020 Ó Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
Abstract Several researchers have suggested that learning and using a second language requires domain-general executive functions, and many have shown that bilinguals outperform monolinguals on tasks that tap into these processes. However, recent behavioral studies and meta-analyses reporting failed replications have called into question whether or not bilingualism leads to changes in domain-general executive functions. The present paper argues that there are several reasons, often overlooked, that lead to failed replications, and that when group differences do appear on EF tasks, despite these issues, performance favors bilinguals far more often than monolinguals. The present paper reports a Bayesian analysis of 167 independent studies to support this claim with a Bayes Factor classified as ‘‘decisive’’ evidence for the alternative (BF10 = 2.91 9 108), ruling out chance outcomes that would predict an equal number of studies favoring monolinguals to studies favoring bilinguals. These findings could not be explained by publication bias, year of publication, or sample size. Critically, these findings are not at odds with recent meta-analyses examining overall effect sizes, but rather, highlight the need to determine when, rather than if, bilinguals outperform monolinguals on EF tasks. J. G. Grundy (&) Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-1041, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Keywords Bilingualism Executive functions Meta-analysis Cognition
Introduction Bilinguals constantly deal with linguistic conflict between competing language representations (Bobb et al. 2020; Kroll et al. 2012; Krolle et al. 2014), switch between languages and environmental contexts (Green and Abutalebi 2013), and manipulate large amounts of information in mind while learning their second languages (Linck et al. 2014). Neuroimaging research suggests that these tasks often require domain-general executive function networks and processes (de Bruin et al. 2014; Hernandez et al. 2001). In line with this, several studies have reported that bilinguals are faster and more accurate on behavioral tasks that assess domain-general executive functions (review in Bialystok 2017). Bilinguals outperform monolinguals on tasks described as requiring working memory (review in Grundy and Timmer 2017), task-switching (Prior and MacWhinney 2010; Stasenko et al. 2017; Wiseheart et al. 2016) and inhibition (Bialystok et al. 2004; Costa et al. 2009; Esposito et al. 2013). However, several recent studies failing to replicate these findings (e.g. Anto´n et al. 2014; Paap and Greenberg 2013; Ratiu and Azuma 2015) and two recent meta-analyses (Donnelly et al.
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J Cult Cogn Sci
2019; Lehtonen et al. 2018) have called into question whether or not bilingualism affec
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