The Phenomenon of Bilingualism and the Research Done

Language is an important aspect of cognition, as it is how people communicate and use words in order to express their thoughts, emotions, and ideas and to comprehend others’ communicative message. Language is a unique aspect of cognition because it involves many facets of executive functioning and there are multiple areas of the brain like Broca’s and Wernicke’s area that are responsible for language expression and comprehension (Goldstein, 2019). In regards to language, more and more people across the world and specifically in the United States are proficient in more than just one language, known as being bilingual. Bilingualism is typically defined as the proficiency or near-proficiency in two languages that are regularly used by an individual (Baumgart & Billick, 2017). Additionally, it should be noted that bilinguals differ from second language learners as second language learners are in the process of achieving proficiency in a second language (Baumgart & Billick, 2017). For the purposes of this paper, I will be examining the cognitive effects of bilingualism, rather than trilingualism or multilingualism. Specifically, the cognitive advantages in bilinguals in comparison to monolingual speakers that I will be examining are inhibition abilities in selective attention, switching between cognitive tasks, and working memory capacity.

Researching and examining the cognitive benefits to being bilingual is an important and growing research area today in the fields of cognitive psychology, education, and language due to the growing number of bilingual speakers. Bilingualism in the United States as a whole is growing as 2/3 of the US population is bilingual and the percentage of children in public education settings who are bilingual is also increasing (Baumgart & Billick, 2017). There are various cultural benefits to being bilingual such as having stronger relationships with family members who speak the same language, having more involvement in one’s native culture, and having an economic advantage in the global economy, to list a few. The cultural aspects of bilingualism have been extensively researched and studied and it can be stated that there is a general consensus in research that culturally, being bilingual is far more advantageous than disadvantageous and that maintaining both the native first language and the second language should be encouraged. Due to the rising number of individuals who are bilingual, not only is studying and recognizing the cultural aspects of bilingualism significant but analyzing the cognitive benefits and effects on executive functioning that being bilingual has is also equally important.

Researchers, Baumgart and Billick report in their literature, “Positive Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism and Multilingualism on Cerebral Function”, that bilingualism has been shown to increase cognitive skills through executive functioning and that bilingualism increases cognitive control during tasks involving inhibition, attention shifting, and working memory. In an experimental task in which both monolingual and bilingual children were to perform a metalinguistic task by detecting grammatical errors in a sentence, they both performed equally. In another task in which the monolingual and bilingual children had to identify sentences that were grammatically correct, even if they contained false information, bilingual children performed better than monolingual children (Baumgart & Billick, 2017). The bilingual children were able to use selective attention and inhibition in order to ignore the false information in the sentences and to identify correct grammar. Attention is a person’s ability to focus on a stimulus.

Selective attention is a type of attention in which the individual ignores irrelevant or distracting stimuli and attends to the stimuli that is important. Inhibition is the ability to tune out the distracting or irrelevant stimulus in order to selectively pay attention only to what is important (Goldstein, 2019). Additionally, in another experimental task, known as the Stroop task in which subjects have to say the printed color of words that either say the actual color of the text or say a different color than the text, and in the Proactive Interference task in which the subjects are tested on their ability to remember new information after learning previous information, bilinguals performed better than monolinguals consistently (Baumgart & Billick, 2017). In opposition to the cognitive advantages to being bilingual, Baumgart and Billick reported in their literature that bilingual speakers have smaller vocabularies in each respective language and tend to perform slower in tests of identifying pictures or tasks of word recognition (Baumgart & Billick, 2017). Even though bilinguals tend to have a lower proficiency in vocabulary, they still outperformed monolinguals in the Stroop and Proactive Interference tasks, thus showing the independence of the lexical and executive processes that are activated during these tasks (Baumgart & Billick, 2017). Additionally, these researchers suggested that bilingualism can protect against cognitive decline in executive functioning skills in aging adults. It was found that bilinguals show dementia symptoms up to four years after a monolingual starts showing signs of dementia and executive functioning decline. Also, in regards to brain regions associated with dementia, monolinguals show more brain atrophy in the temporal lobe than in monolinguals with the same degree of Alzheimer’s symptoms (Baumgart & Billick, 2017).

From this literature, I can conclude that bilingualism has been proven to show increased skills in executive functioning skills such as selective attention and inhibition. I can also conclude that bilinguals have a cognitive advantage for developing symptoms of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease later in life than a monolingual speaker would.
In researchers Dong and Li’s literature, “The Cognitive Science of Bilingualism” they focus on the advantages bilinguals have in cognitive processing in regards to inhibitory control and switching between tasks. Dong and Li state that increased executive functioning is one of the main cognitive advantages to using and learning two unique languages (Dong & Li, 2015). Their findings report that bilinguals are cognitively advantaged compared to bilinguals in executive functioning tasks regarding attention switching to relevant information, inhibiting irrelevant stimuli, and managing a complex set of tasks. In regards to inhibition, through the Simon, Stroop, and Flanker task, it was concluded that bilinguals performed better than monolinguals in ignoring, or inhibiting irrelevant stimuli. In tasks where monolinguals and bilinguals had to respond to a stimulus by clicking a button in response to conflicting information, bilinguals showed faster reaction times in every tasks (Dong & Li, 2015). This suggests that bilinguals possess more efficient inhibition skills in ignoring irrelevant or contradictory information. Moreover, this literature also found that bilinguals are better at switching between tasks, which would make sense considering that bilinguals are consistently switching between using two different language systems. In an experiment in which bilingual and monolingual speakers had to switch between stating an object’s color or shape, bilinguals showed faster reaction times, suggesting that bilinguals are better at switching between tasks (Dong & Li, 2015). Lastly, this literature noted that the cognitive effects seen in bilingual individuals may be dependent on factors such as age, difficulty of the task, proficiency in the language, age of acquisition of the second language, and the frequency of use of the two languages (Dong & Li, 2015). I believe that these factors are important to consider because it shows that no two bilingual individuals share the same exact experiences and that the cognitive advantages may vary between bilingual individuals. For example, in regards to age, children and adults show more of the cognitive advantages in inhibition and task switching than do bilingual young adults. Also, in regards to language proficiency, higher proficient bilinguals will outperform less proficient bilinguals (Dong & Li, 2015). From this literature, I can conclude that this research concurs with other literature in the conclusion that bilingual speakers are cognitively advantaged compared to monolingual speakers in regards to cognitive inhibition abilities. Additionally, I can conclude that the performance of bilinguals in terms of their cognitive abilities in inhibition and task switching should be looked at with consideration of several factors that could influence a bilingual’s performance.

Researchers Grundy and Timmer in their literature, “Bilingualism and Working Memory Capacity”, reported that previous research has suggested, and they are in agreement of the idea that bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals in tasks pertaining to cognitive flexibility, task-switching skills, and conflict monitoring. They also reported that previous research has suggested that bilinguals have a larger capacity for working memory than monolinguals do, due to the idea that there is a relationship between working memory and executive functioning (Grundy & Timmer, 2016). But previous research showed unclear results on whether bilingualism has an effect on working memory capacity. Working memory is a limited-capacity system that stores information for a temporary time and manipulates information for learning and comprehension purposes. Working memory involves holding information and processing that information (Goldstein, 2019). The researchers put the idea to the test and conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis in order to analyze the working memory capacity in bilingual speakers. The purpose of the study was to look at whether bilinguals have a greater working memory capacity than monolingual speakers do. The research found that due to the demand on working memory because of the competing two languages, then working memory capacity is greater overtime and can lead to a more skilled proficiency in the second language (Grundy & Timmer, 2016). But, it is important to note that the increased working memory capacity in bilinguals could also be due to having greater proficiency in the second language. Additionally, in working memory span tasks, bilinguals typically outperform monolinguals, no matter the linguistic nature of the task, whether it be a digit span or a reading span task (Grundy & Timmer, 2016). A span task is a list of numbers of words that a person can remember from a given list (Goldstein, 2019). By remembering more items from a span task, it can be inferred that bilinguals have a greater working memory capacity to hold and manipulate more information. From the results of this study, it can be concluded that working memory capacity is greater for bilingual individuals, but it should be further studied to better understand this idea.

It can be concluded that bilingualism creates predominantly positive effects not only culturally but also cognitively. Therefore, bilingualism should be supported and strengthened across various settings. Through this extensive research, I furthered my knowledge about the executive functioning skills that are a part of bilingual language usage. I learned that inhibition in selective attention, task switching, and working memory capacity, are all key facets to bilingualism and that bilingual individuals perform higher in these functions than monolingual individuals. In application to the real world, if more research was conducted and understand about why being bilingual is cognitively and culturally advantageous, then the United States could implement more bilingual education opportunities for children and could encourage more people to be bilingual. Also, bilingualism could be more encouraged in workplace settings since there is an economic advantage in the global market to being bilingual. Additionally, the research on the cognitive benefits of being bilingual could help aid professions such as psychologists, teachers, and speech pathologists in knowing more about bilingualism and the cognitive processes behind it. In closing, bilingual individuals have been found to show higher performance in certain areas of executive functioning in comparison to monolinguals.