Chen Jiejia, Li Zitong, Xiong Zhiheng, Liu Guangyuan
School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality, Ministry of Education, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2025 Jan 26;15(2):134. doi: 10.3390/bs15020134.
The bilingual effect on executive functions (EFs) has garnered considerable attention, with most studies focusing on the visual domain and largely overlooking the auditory domain. Furthermore, research has predominantly concentrated on specific subcomponents of executive functions, with few studies systematically examining all three key subcomponents. This raises two important questions: (a) Is the bilingual effect specific to certain modalities (modality-specific), or a more general phenomenon (modality-general)? (b) Is the bilingual effect concentrated in a specific component of executive functions (process-specific), or does it extend to all three components (process-general)? To explore these questions, this study recruited monolingual Chinese and bilingual Chinese-English participants, using matched visual and auditory Stroop, N-back, and task-switching tasks to assess inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility in both groups. The results showed that, after controlling for variables like intelligence, socioeconomic status, and age, bilingualism significantly predicted performance in both auditory and visual working memory tasks, explaining 34% and 19% of the variance, respectively. However, no evidence was found to support a bilingual effect in inhibitory control or cognitive flexibility. In conclusion, these results suggest that bilingual effects are not only process-specific (affecting only working memory) but also modality-general (providing advantages in both visual and auditory modalities).
双语对执行功能（EFs）的影响已引起了相当大的关注，大多数研究集中在视觉领域，而在很大程度上忽略了听觉领域。此外，研究主要集中在执行功能的特定子成分上，很少有研究系统地考察所有三个关键子成分。这就提出了两个重要问题：（a）双语效应是特定于某些模态（模态特定），还是更普遍的现象（模态一般）？（b）双语效应是集中在执行功能的特定成分上（过程特定），还是扩展到所有三个成分（过程一般）？为了探究这些问题，本研究招募了单语中文和中英双语参与者，使用匹配的视觉和听觉Stroop、N-back和任务切换任务来评估两组的抑制控制、工作记忆和认知灵活性。结果表明，在控制了智力、社会经济地位和年龄等变量后，双语显著预测了听觉和视觉工作记忆任务中的表现，分别解释了34%和19%的方差。然而，没有证据支持双语在抑制控制或认知灵活性方面的效应。总之，这些结果表明，双语效应不仅是过程特定的（仅影响工作记忆），而且是模态一般的（在视觉和听觉模态中均具有优势）。
