Wiseheart Melody, Viswanathan Mythili, Bialystok Ellen
York University, Toronto.
Biling (Camb Engl). 2016 Jan;19(1):141-146. doi: 10.1017/S1366728914000273. Epub 2014 Dec 29.
Many bilinguals routinely switch between their languages, yet mixed evidence exists about the transfer of language switching skills to broader domains that require attentional control such as task switching. Monolingual and bilingual young adults performed a nonverbal task-switching paradigm in which they viewed colored pictures of animals and indicated either the animal or its color in response to a cue. Monolinguals and bilinguals performed similarly when switching between tasks (local switch cost) in a mixed-task block, but bilinguals demonstrated a smaller mixing effect (global switch cost) than monolinguals, indicating better ability to reconfigure stimulus-response associations. These results suggest that regular practice using multiple languages confers a broader executive function advantage shown as improved flexibility in task switching.
许多双语者经常在两种语言之间切换，但关于语言切换技能向需要注意力控制的更广泛领域（如任务切换）的迁移，证据并不一致。单语和双语的年轻人执行了一种非语言任务切换范式，即他们观看动物的彩色图片，并根据提示指出动物或其颜色。在混合任务块中，单语者和双语者在任务之间切换时（局部切换成本）表现相似，但双语者表现出比单语者更小的混合效应（全局切换成本），这表明他们在重新配置刺激-反应关联方面能力更强。这些结果表明，经常使用多种语言进行练习会带来更广泛的执行功能优势，表现为任务切换灵活性的提高。
