Mor Billy, Yitzhaki-Amsalem Sarin, Prior Anat
University of Haifa, Israel.
University of Haifa, Israel
J Atten Disord. 2015 Jun;19(6):527-41. doi: 10.1177/1087054714527790. Epub 2014 Mar 29.
The current study investigated the combined effect of ADHD, previously associated with executive function (EF) deficits, and of bilingualism, previously associated with EF enhancement, on EF.
Eighty University students, Hebrew monolinguals and Russian Hebrew bilinguals, with and without ADHD participated. Inhibition tasks were a Numeric Stroop task and a Simon arrows task. Shifting tasks were the Trail Making Test (TMT) and a task-switching paradigm.
Participants with ADHD performed worse than controls, but we did not find a bilingual advantage in EF. The negative impact of ADHD was more pronounced for bilinguals than for monolinguals, but only in interference suppression tasks. Bilingual participants with ADHD had the lowest performance.
Bilingualism might prove to be an added burden for adults with ADHD, leading to reduced EF abilities. Alternatively, the current findings might be ascribed to over- or under-diagnosis of ADHD due to cultural differences between groups. These issues should be pursued in future research.
当前研究调查了之前与执行功能（EF）缺陷相关的注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）和之前与EF增强相关的双语能力对EF的联合影响。
80名大学生参与其中，包括希伯来语单语者和俄语-希伯来语双语者，有ADHD和无ADHD的学生都参与了。抑制任务包括数字斯特鲁普任务和西蒙箭头任务。转换任务包括连线测验（TMT）和任务切换范式。
患有ADHD的参与者表现比对照组差，但我们未发现双语能力在EF方面具有优势。ADHD对双语者的负面影响比对单语者更明显，但仅在干扰抑制任务中如此。患有ADHD的双语参与者表现最差。
双语能力可能对患有ADHD的成年人来说是额外的负担，导致EF能力下降。或者，当前的研究结果可能归因于由于不同群体之间的文化差异对ADHD的过度诊断或诊断不足。这些问题应在未来的研究中继续探讨。
