The Effect Of Bilingual Language Experience On Executive Functions Of Unbalanced Chinese-English Bilinguals

The relationship between bilingual language experience and executive functions has been a hot topic in the field of psycholinguistics.Language acquisition involves participation of executive functions and it also affects the development of executive functions.Recent studies showed bilingual advantages in both verbal and non-verbal tasks.However,the results are not consistent.Whether bilingualism confers cognitive advantages is still an open question calling for further study.This study takes second language proficiency and language switching frequency into account as the key parameters of bilingual language experience to investigate whether bilingual language experience has effect on executive functions of bilinguals.Fifty-seven subjects participated in the study.They were divided into two groups according to their bilingual language experience.The high-level group included 30 MTI candidates who have passed TEM-4,and the low-level group included 27 non-English major freshmen.Based on the executive function model proposed by Miyake et al.(2000),this study explored the effect of bilingual language experience on three sub-functions of executive function(inhibition control,attention shift,and memory update).Firstly,the subjects were asked to complete the second language proficiency self-assessment,the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices,and the bilingual switching questionnaire(BSWQ)to investigate their IQ,language use and other background information.Then the Flanker task,the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test(WCST),and the N-back task were used to measure their inhibition control,attention shift and memory update respectively.The results are presented as follows.1)With regard to the attention shift,the group with more bilingual language experience performed better in reaction time and accuracy,indicating that the bilingual language experience has effect on the attention shift.2)In terms of the inhibition control,there was no significant difference in behavioral data between the two groups,indicative of no effect on the inhibition control.However,the group with more bilingual language experience performed better in Flanker effect and reaction time under both congruent and incongruent conditions than the group with less bilingual language experience,indicating bilingual advantages.3)In terms of the memory update,the group with more bilingual language experience performed better in reaction time and accuracy,suggesting that the bilingual language experience has positive influence on the attention shift.The results suggest that bilingual language experience has significant effects on unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals’ attention shift and memory update,although no significant effect was found on the part of inhibition control,which lends support to the bilingual advantage hypothesis.However,this study also suggests that not all components of executive functions are equally susceptible to bilingual language experience,which calls for further study in the future.