Conflict monitoring and resolution: Are two languages better than one? Evidence from reaction time and event-related brain potentials

Abstract An advantage for bilingual relative to monolingual young adults has been found for cognitive control tasks, although this finding is not consistent in the literature. The present investigation further examined this advantage using three tasks previously found to be sensitive to the effect....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Brain research 2012-03, Vol.1446 (Mar 29), p.71-90
Main Authors: Kousaie, Shanna, Phillips, Natalie A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
Adolescent
Adult
Behavioral psychophysiology
Bilingualism
Biological and medical sciences
brain
Brain - physiology
Brain Mapping
cognition
Cognition - physiology
Cognitive control
Conflict (Psychology)
Electroencephalography
Electrophysiology
ERN
Event-related brain potentials (ERP)
Evoked Potentials - physiology
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Judgment
languages
Male
monitoring
Multilingualism
Neurology
Neuropsychological Tests
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Photic Stimulation - methods
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychomotor Performance
Reaction Time - physiology
resource allocation
Semantics
Young Adult
young adults
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Summary:Abstract An advantage for bilingual relative to monolingual young adults has been found for cognitive control tasks, although this finding is not consistent in the literature. The present investigation further examined this advantage using three tasks previously found to be sensitive to the effect. Furthermore, both behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) measures were included. Monolingual (n = 25) and highly proficient bilingual (n = 26) young adults completed a Stroop, Simon, and Eriksen flanker task while electrophysiological recording took place. Behaviorally there were no language group differences on any of the tasks. The ERP measures demonstrated differences between monolinguals and bilinguals with respect to conflict monitoring, resource allocation, stimulus categorization, and error-processing; however, these differences were not consistent across tasks. Given the similar behavioral performance across the groups the observed differences in brain responses may not represent an advantage for bilinguals. The results are discussed with respect to previous findings.
ISSN:0006-8993
1872-6240
DOI:10.1016/j.brainres.2012.01.052