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Language dominance and inhibition abilities in bilingual older adults*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2013

MIRA GORAL ,
LUCA CAMPANELLI  and
AVRON SPIRO III
MIRA GORAL*
Affiliation:
Lehman College & the Graduate Center of the City University of New York
LUCA CAMPANELLI
Affiliation:
The Graduate Center of the City University of New York
AVRON SPIRO III
Affiliation:
VA Boston Healthcare System & Boston University Schools of Public Health and Medicine
*
Address for correspondence: Mira Goral, Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, Speech Building, room 227, Lehman College 250 Bedford Park Blvd., Bronx, NY 10468, USA[email protected]
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Abstract

This study aimed to examine the so-called bilingual advantage in older adults’ performance in three cognitive domains and to identify whether language use and bilingual type (dominant vs. balanced) predicted performance. The participants were 106 Spanish–English bilinguals ranging in age from 50 years to 84 years. Three cognitive domains were examined (each by a single test): inhibition (the Simon task), alternating attention (the Trail Making test), and working memory (Month Ordering). The data revealed that age was negatively correlated to performance in each domain. Bilingual type – balanced vs. dominant – predicted performance and interacted with age only on the inhibition measure (the Simon task). Balanced bilinguals showed age-related inhibition decline (i.e., greater Simon effect with increasing age); in contrast, dominant bilinguals showed little or no age-related change. The findings suggest that bilingualism may offer cognitive advantage in older age only for a subset of bilinguals.

Keywords

bilingualdominantaginginhibition
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 79 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

*

We thank Tali Swann-Sternberg, Beatriz Munoz, Nicole Murphy, Caroline Cano, and Kay Germano for assistance in data collection and data entry and we thank our participants. We are also grateful to Loraine K. Obler and Martin L. Albert for their input in the early stages of this project and their support throughout. We are also grateful to three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This project was funded in part by NIH/NIA grants R03#AG27532 (PI: Goral) and R01#AG14345 (PI: Albert). Dr. Spiro was also supported by a Merit Review and a Research Career Scientist award from the US Department of Veterans Affairs, Clinical Science Research and Development Service.

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