The role of bilingual interactional contexts in predicting interindividual variability in executive functions: A latent variable analysis

• Main Authors: HARTANTO, Andree, YANG, Hwajin
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2019
• Subjects: Bilingual interactional context; Adaptive control hypothesis; Executive functions; Control process model of code-switching; Goal maintenance; Multicultural Psychology; Social Psychology
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3034; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4291/viewcontent/the_role_of_bilingual.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Despite a growing number of studies on bilingual advantages in executive functions (EF), their findings have been inconsistent. To shed light on this issue, we aimed to address both the conceptual and methodological limitations that have prevailed in the literature: failure to consider diverse bilingual experiences when assessing bilingual advantages or to address the task impurity problems that can arise with EF tasks. Drawing on the adaptive control hypothesis and control process model of code-switching, we adopted theory-driven and latent variable approaches to examine the relations between bilingual interactional contexts and EF. By administering 9 EF tasks to 175 bilingual participants over multiple sessions, we found that bilinguals' dual-language context significantly predicted the latent variable of task-switching, while a dense code-switching context significantly predicted 2 latent variables of inhibitory control and goal maintenance. These findings remained robust after controlling for potential confounds of demographics, socioeconomic status, nonverbal intelligence, and unintended languageswitching tendency. Our study suggests that bilingual interactional context is a key language experience that modulates bilingual advantages in EF.