Exploring the Neural Mechanisms of Executive Function in Bilinguals Compared to Monolingual Speakers

Poster Session D - Monday, April 15, 2024, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Yara Odeh¹ (yodeh@my.yorku.ca), Lara Pierce², Nusrat Iftikhar³, Zahra Wakif⁴; ¹York University

Research suggests that the experience of bilingualism may confer some advantage in certain domain-general executive functions (EF). Several behavioural studies have demonstrated that bilingual speakers outperform monolingual speakers on certain EF tasks, showing faster reaction time and higher accuracy during monitoring, inhibition, and switching (Costa et al., 2009). However, a comparable number of studies demonstrate no behavioural advantage on EF tasks for bilingual compared to monolingual speakers (Paap & Greenberg, 2013). Neural measures might be more sensitive to identify experience-driven variation in EF processing that arises from hearing and using more than one language. However, relatively few studies have explored neural mechanisms underlying these tasks in bilingual compared to monolingual speakers (Cespón & Carreiras, 2020), and fewer have explored how variation in the bilingual experience (age of second language (L2) onset, duration of exposure) predict neural processing during EF tasks. The current study presents event-related potential data from adult bilingual (n = 30) and monolingual (n = 30) participants. EEG is recorded while participants complete 3 tasks: a) Flanker task to measure inhibition and monitoring, b) Stop-signal task to measure inhibition and monitoring, c) Task-Switch paradigm to measure switching. Amplitude and latency of two components, the N200 and P300, will be extracted and compared across groups. Larger N200/smaller P300 amplitude and faster P300 latency for bilinguals suggest bilingualism to be associated with more efficient neural processing during EF tasks. Linear regression will test whether age of L2 acquisition and duration of L2 exposure predict N200/P300 amplitude/latency in the bilingual group.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Other