Woumans Evy, Ceuleers Evy, Van der Linden Lize, Szmalec Arnaud, Duyck Wouter
Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University.
Department of Applied Linguistics, University College Ghent.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2015 Sep;41(5):1579-1586. doi: 10.1037/xlm0000107. Epub 2015 Feb 16.
The present study explored the relation between language control and nonverbal cognitive control in different bilingual populations. We compared monolinguals, Dutch-French unbalanced bilinguals, balanced bilinguals, and interpreters on the Simon task (Simon & Rudell, 1967) and the Attention Network Test (ANT; Fan, McCandliss, Sommer, Raz, & Posner, 2002). All bilingual groups showed a smaller congruency effect in the Simon task than the monolingual group. They were also faster overall in the ANT. Furthermore, interpreters outperformed unbalanced, but not balanced, bilinguals in terms of overall accuracy on both tasks. In the ANT, the error congruency effect was significantly smaller for interpreters and balanced bilinguals. Using a measure of switching fluency in language production, this study also found direct evidence for a relation between language control and executive control. This relation was only observed in balanced bilinguals, where fluent switching was correlated with the Simon effect. These findings support the existence of a bilingual advantage and also indicate that different patterns of bilingual language use modulate the nature and extent of a cognitive control advantage in multilingual populations.
本研究探讨了不同双语群体中语言控制与非语言认知控制之间的关系。我们在西蒙任务（Simon & Rudell，1967）和注意网络测试（ANT；Fan、McCandliss、Sommer、Raz & Posner，2002）中对单语者、荷兰语 - 法语不平衡双语者、平衡双语者和口译员进行了比较。所有双语群体在西蒙任务中的一致性效应均小于单语群体。在ANT中，他们整体速度也更快。此外，在两项任务的总体准确性方面，口译员的表现优于不平衡双语者，但不优于平衡双语者。在ANT中，口译员和平衡双语者的错误一致性效应显著更小。通过一项语言产出中切换流畅性的测量，本研究还发现了语言控制与执行控制之间关系的直接证据。这种关系仅在平衡双语者中观察到，其中流畅切换与西蒙效应相关。这些发现支持了双语优势的存在，也表明不同的双语语言使用模式调节了多语言群体中认知控制优势的性质和程度。
