Research School of Psychology, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
ARC Centre of Excellence for Dynamics of Language, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2019 Aug;26(4):1122-1147. doi: 10.3758/s13423-019-01567-z.
A contentious issue in contemporary psycholinguistics is whether bilingualism enhances executive functions. Here, we report a meta-analysis of 80 studies (253 effect sizes) comparing performance of monolinguals and bilinguals on non-verbal interference-control tasks, while examining potential moderators of effects on two dependent variables (DVs): global reaction time (RT) and interference cost. We used a multiverse approach to determine how robust conclusions were to several dataset construction and analysis decisions. In our "preferred" analysis, using a broad definition of bilinguals and standard versions of interference-control tasks, there was a very small but significant bilingual advantage for global RT (g =.13), which became non-significant once corrected for publication bias. For interference cost, there was a very small but significant bilingual advantage (g =.11). Effects were not significantly moderated by task or participant age, but were moderated by an interaction between age of second language acquisition (AoA) and the DV. Unexpectedly, larger effect sizes for interference cost were observed for studies involving bilinguals with late as opposed to early AoA. The multiverse analysis produced results largely consistent with the preferred analysis, confirming our conclusion that evidence for a bilingual advantage on interference-control tasks is weak.
在当代心理语言学中，一个有争议的问题是双语是否增强了执行功能。在这里，我们报告了一项对 80 项研究（253 个效应量）的荟萃分析，这些研究比较了单语者和双语者在非言语干扰控制任务上的表现，同时考察了两个因变量（DV）的潜在调节因素：总体反应时间（RT）和干扰成本。我们使用多元宇宙方法来确定在几个数据集构建和分析决策中，结论的稳健性如何。在我们的“首选”分析中，使用双语者的广泛定义和干扰控制任务的标准版本，双语者在总体 RT 上有一个非常小但显著的优势（g=.13），但在纠正出版偏倚后，这一优势变得不显著。对于干扰成本，双语者有一个非常小但显著的优势（g=.11）。但任务或参与者年龄并不能显著调节效应，而第二语言习得年龄（AoA）与 DV 之间的相互作用却能显著调节效应。出乎意料的是，对于 AoA 较晚的双语者参与的研究，干扰成本的效应大小更大。多元宇宙分析产生的结果与首选分析基本一致，证实了我们的结论，即在干扰控制任务上，双语者具有优势的证据是微弱的。
