The importance of bilingual experience in assessing bilingual advantages in executive functions

• Main Authors: YANG, Hwajin, HARTANTO, Andree, YANG, Sujin
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2016
• Subjects: Bilingualism; Executive functions; Bilingual experience' Bilinguals' interactional context; Age of active bilingualism; Cognitive Psychology; Multicultural Psychology
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1900; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/3157/viewcontent/the_importance_of_bilingual_experience.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Paap, Johnson, and Sawi (2015) contend that bilingual advantages in executive functions (EF) do not exist, and that there is no compelling evidence that a certain bilingual experience hones a specific component of EF (p. 272). We believe that this conclusion is premature, because Paap et al.'s approach was not sufficiently refined to effectively capture the real-world complexity of bilingualism. In this commentary, we draw on the adaptive control hypothesis (Green & Abutalebi, 2013) and argue that studies of bilingualism should consider specific bilingual experiences that potentially moderate bilingual advantages through substantial demand for language control (for similar commentaries, see Marzecová, 2015, and Woumans & Duyck, 2015). Based on this framework, we address two issues that have received relatively little attention in the literature and even less in this discussion forum: the interactional context of bilinguals' conversational exchanges and the age of active bilingualism.