Bilingualism and inhibitory control: Possible confounds with the variables “profession” and “level of education”

Abstract

Recent studies have presented controversial results concerning the bilingual advantage (i.e., bilinguals’ tendency to outperform monolinguals on nonlinguistic interference tasks measuring executive functions (EFs) such as executive control (EC), attention, inhibition, problem solving). Recent research has shown that bilinguals tend to show a more robust advantage in overall reaction times (RTs), rather than an advantage on the magnitude of the interference effect. Irrespective of nature, the so-called bilingual advantage has been found in different age groups, but sometimes no bilingual advantage is actually found. This study investigates the consequences of bilingualism on inhibitory control, focusing on two variables that may compete with the bilingual advantage: “profession” and “level of education”. Two groups of highly-educated middle-aged professionals, businesspeople and teachers/professors, divided into bi/monolinguals, were tested in a nonverbal cognitive task, the Simon task, in order to replicate previous studies which have found a bilingual advantage in the interference effect for the same age group. Although bilinguals outperformed their monolingual counterparts, no signifi cant statistical differences were found in the interference effect, and both language groups were faster in the incongruent trials than in the congruent ones, resulting in null interference effects and thus countering the initial idea that participants always take longer to respond to incongruent trials. Results suggest that certain professional activities, as well as higher levels of education might act as confounds with the bilingual advantage.

Keywords: bilingualism, executive functions, inhibitory control.