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The impact of bilingualism on the executive control and orienting networks of attention*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2010

MIREIA HERNÁNDEZ ,
ALBERT COSTA ,
LUIS J. FUENTES ,
ANA B. VIVAS  and
NÚRIA SEBASTIÁN-GALLÉS
MIREIA HERNÁNDEZ
Affiliation:
Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
ALBERT COSTA*
Affiliation:
ICREA & Departament de Tecnologies de la Informació i les Comunicacions, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
LUIS J. FUENTES
Affiliation:
Universidad de Murcia, Spain
ANA B. VIVAS
Affiliation:
City Liberal Studies: Affiliated Institution of the University of Sheffield, Thessaloniki, Greece
NÚRIA SEBASTIÁN-GALLÉS
Affiliation:
Departament de Tecnologies de la Informació i les Comunicacions, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
*
Address for correspondence: Albert Costa, Universitat Pompeu Fabra – Dept. Technology (1st floor), C. Roc Boronat 138, Barcelona 08018, SPAIN [email protected]
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Abstract

The main objective of this article is to provide new evidence regarding the impact of bilingualism on the attentional system. We approach this goal by assessing the effects of bilingualism on the executive and orienting networks of attention. In Experiment 1, we compared young bilingual and monolingual adults in a numerical version of the Stroop task, which allowed the assessment of the executive control network. We observed more efficient performance in the former group, which showed both reduced Stroop Interference and larger Stroop Facilitation Effects relative to the latter. Conversely, Experiment 2, conducted with a visual cueing task in order to assess the orienting network, revealed similar Cueing Facilitation and Inhibition (Inhibition of Return – IOR) Effects for both groups of speakers. The implications of the results of these two experiments for the origin and boundaries of the bilingual impact on the attentional system are discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , July 2010 , pp. 315 - 325
Creative Commons
This is a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States.
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010. This is a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States.

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by three grants from the Spanish Government (SEJ-2005/SEJ2005-01223/CONSOLIDER-INGENIO) and grants PSIC and PSI2008-00464/PSIC, as well as by the “ICREA Academia” prize for excellence in research awarded by the Generalitat de Catalunya to N.S.G. Mireia Hernández was supported by a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Catalan Government. The authors are grateful to Dr. Bialystok, Ms. Ivanova and Ms. Aalia Chatur for their comments on previous versions of this manuscript.

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