Cognitive advantage in bilingualism: an example of publication bias?

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Abstract

It is a widely held belief that bilinguals have an advantage over monolinguals in executive-control tasks, but is this what all studies actually demonstrate? The idea of a bilingual advantage may result from a publication bias favoring studies with positive results over studies with null or negative effects. To test this hypothesis, we looked at conference abstracts from 1999 to 2012 on the topic of bilingualism and executive control. We then determined which of the studies they reported were subsequently published. Studies with results fully supporting the bilingual-advantage theory were most likely to be published, followed by studies with mixed results. Studies challenging the bilingual advantage were published the least. This discrepancy was not due to differences in sample size, tests used, or statistical power. A test for funnel-plot asymmetry provided further evidence for the existence of a publication bias.

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Most cited references 19

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Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: evidence from the Simon task.

Ellen Bialystok, Fergus I M Craik, Raymond W. Klein … (2004)

Previous work has shown that bilingualism is associated with more effective controlled processing in children; the assumption is that the constant management of 2 competing languages enhances executive functions (E. Bialystok, 2001). The present research attempted to determine whether this bilingual advantage persists for adults and whether bilingualism attenuates the negative effects of aging on cognitive control in older adults. Three studies are reported that compared the performance of monolingual and bilingual middle-aged and older adults on the Simon task. Bilingualism was associated with smaller Simon effect costs for both age groups; bilingual participants also responded more rapidly to conditions that placed greater demands on working memory. In all cases the bilingual advantage was greater for older participants. It appears, therefore, that controlled processing is carried out more effectively by bilinguals and that bilingualism helps to offset age-related losses in certain executive processes. ((c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)

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Publication prejudices: An experimental study of confirmatory bias in the peer review system

Michael Mahoney (1977)

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Cognitive control and lexical access in younger and older bilinguals.

Ellen Bialystok, Fergus Craik, Gigi Luk (2008)

Ninety-six participants, who were younger (20 years) or older (68 years) adults and either monolingual or bilingual, completed tasks assessing working memory, lexical retrieval, and executive control. Younger participants performed most of the tasks better than older participants, confirming the effect of aging on these processes. The effect of language group was different for each type of task: Monolinguals and bilinguals performed similarly on working memory tasks, monolinguals performed better on lexical retrieval tasks, and bilinguals performed better on executive control tasks, with some evidence for larger language group differences in older participants on the executive control tasks. These results replicate findings from individual studies obtained using only 1 type of task and different participants. The confirmation of this pattern in the same participants is discussed in terms of a suggested explanation of how the need to manage 2 language systems leads to these different outcomes for cognitive and linguistic functions. (c) 2008 APA

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Psychol Sci

Title: Psychological science

ISSN (Electronic): 1467-9280

ISSN (Print): 0956-7976

Publication date (Electronic): Jan 2015

Volume: 26

Issue: 1

Affiliations

[1 ] Human Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology, University of Edinburgh angela.debruin@ed.ac.uk.

[2 ] Department of History, Human Sciences and Education, University of Sassari.

[3 ] Human Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology, University of Edinburgh Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, Psychology, University of Edinburgh.