Bilingual Advantage Effects Of Proficient Chinese-English Bilinguals In The Condition Of Different Working Memory Demands

The effects of lifelong bilingualism on cognitive functioning have been examined thoroughly in previous research,especially in executive functions.Bilingual advantage effect was defined as the positive effects of bilingualism on brain structure and cognitive system.Researches on children and the elderly were consistently showed bilingual advantage effect on executive functions,however,there were inconsistent results of the effects of bilingualism on executive functions in young adults.There were two reasons for this issue,on the one hand,experimental tasks that previous research used mostly were simple and lack of executive function demandes,so it can’t distinguish executive functions between young bilingual adults and young monolingual adults,who were at the peak of cognitive abilityies.On the other hand,b ilingual advantage effects were modulated by the specific task conditions,which mainly involved task materials that were linguistic or nolinguistic,tasks that evaluated which component of executive functions,task demands that have more executive function demands or less executive function demands.The current research mainly investigated bilingual advantage effects of young adults were whether modulated by the working memory demands of executive function demands.The participants were two groups included proficient Chinese-English bilinguals who were English major college students and had passed TEM-8,and nonproficient C hinese-English bilinguals who were nonEnglish major college students and didn’t pass CET-4.The current research included two parts named research 1 and research 2.Research 1 consisted of two studies which aimed to investigate bilingual advantage effects in the inhibitory control tasks of different working memory demands,and working memory demands could be divide into the storage demands of working memory and the processing demands of working memory.The study 1 was aimed to investigate bilingual advantage effects on the inhibitory control tasks of different storage demands of working memory by a go/no-go task and a modified go/no-go task,and the go/no-go task meant the low working memory demands inhibitory control task,while the modified go/no-go task meant the high storage demands of working memory inhibitory control task.The results of study 1 indicated proficient bilinguals and nonproficient bilinguals had no difference in the go/no-go task and the modified go/no-go task,and it meant proficient bilinguals didn’t show bilingual advantage effects on the the low working memory demands inhibitory control task and the high storage demands of working memory inhibitory control task.The study 2 investigated bilingual advantage effects on the inhibitory control tasks of high processing demands of working memory by a conditional go/no-go task,and the results showed proficient bilinguals had more advantages on the accuracy of lures in the conditional go/no-go task,which meant proficient bilinguals showed b ilingual advantage effects on the inhibitory control tasks of high processing demands of working memory.Research 2 aimed to investigate bilingual advantage effects on the attention shifing of different working memory demands,and the mix cost could reflect attention shifing of high working memory demands,while the switch cost could reflect attention shifing of low working memory demands.The results of research 2 indicated proficient bilinguals had lesser mix cost than nonproficient bilinguals,and it meant b ilingual advantage effects were only showed in the attention shifing of high working memory demands.In summary,the current research had the following conclusions: working memory demands of a task could modulate bilingual advantages of proficient bilingual adults in executive functions;bilingual advantage effects of proficient bilingual adults might occurr in the executive function tasks of high working memory demands.