Treffers-Daller Jeanine, Ongun Zehra, Hofweber Julia, Korenar Michal
Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom.
Department of Psychology and Human Development, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
Front Psychol. 2020 Oct 23;11:561088. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.561088. eCollection 2020.
This study sheds new light on the relative impact of switching between languages and switching between cultures on Executive Functions (EFs) in bilinguals. Several studies have suggested that bilingualism has a measurable impact on executive functioning, presumably due to bilinguals' constant practice in dealing with two languages, or two cultures. Yet, the evidence on the relative contribution of culture and bilingualism to EFs is not well understood, because disentangling language, culture and immigration status is very difficult. The novelty of our approach was to keep the language pair and immigration status constant, whilst the cultural identity of participants was systematically varied, and measured at the individual level (not just at group level). Two groups of Turkish-English bilinguals, all adult immigrants to the United Kingdom, took part in the study, but one group ( = 29) originated from mainland Turkey and the other ( = 28) from Cyprus. We found that the bilinguals experienced smaller Conflict Effects on a Flanker task measuring inhibition, by comparison with monolingual British participants ( = 30). The key variable explaining EF performance variance at the individual level turned out to be bilinguals' Multicultural Identity Style. In particular those who indicated that they attempted to alternate between different British and Turkish (Cypriot) identity styles were found to have shorter RTs on incongruent trials of the Flanker task. The two multicultural identity variables, Alternating and Hybrid Identity Styles, together explained 32% in RTs over and above Education, Working Memory and Nonverbal reasoning (overall explained variance 49%). Thus, the data provide strong evidence for the impact of culture on EFs. We suggest that, as a result of their daily practice in recognizing cultural cues which highlight the need to switch to a different cultural frame, multicultural bilinguals develop a heightened context-sensitivity, and this gives them an advantage over monolinguals in a Flankers task. Our approach, which draws on models from cross-cultural psychology, bilingualism and executive functioning, illustrates the importance of theory building in which sociolinguistic and cultural variables are integrated into models of EFs.
本研究为双语者在语言切换和文化切换对执行功能（EFs）的相对影响方面提供了新的见解。多项研究表明，双语对执行功能有可测量的影响，推测是由于双语者在处理两种语言或两种文化时的持续练习。然而，关于文化和双语对执行功能的相对贡献的证据尚未得到很好的理解，因为区分语言、文化和移民身份非常困难。我们方法的新颖之处在于保持语言对和移民身份不变，同时系统地改变参与者的文化身份，并在个体层面（而不仅仅是群体层面）进行测量。两组土耳其 - 英语双语者，均为成年后移民到英国的人，参与了这项研究，其中一组（n = 29）来自土耳其大陆，另一组（n = 28）来自塞浦路斯。我们发现，与单语的英国参与者（n = 30）相比，双语者在测量抑制的侧翼任务中经历的冲突效应更小。结果表明，在个体层面解释执行功能表现差异的关键变量是双语者的多元文化身份风格。特别是那些表示他们试图在不同的英国和土耳其（塞浦路斯）身份风格之间交替的人，在侧翼任务的不一致试验中反应时间更短。两个多元文化身份变量，交替身份风格和混合身份风格，共同解释了反应时间中超过教育程度、工作记忆和非语言推理的32%（总体解释方差为49%）。因此，数据为文化对执行功能的影响提供了有力证据。我们认为，由于多元文化双语者在日常实践中识别文化线索，这些线索突出了切换到不同文化框架的必要性，他们发展出了更高的情境敏感性，这使他们在侧翼任务中比单语者更具优势。我们的方法借鉴了跨文化心理学、双语和执行功能的模型，说明了将社会语言和文化变量整合到执行功能模型中的理论构建的重要性。
