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Are all interferences bad? Bilingual advantages in working memory are modulated by varying demands for controlled processing*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2015

HWAJIN YANG  and
SUJIN YANG
HWAJIN YANG*
Affiliation:
Singapore Management University, Singapore
SUJIN YANG
Affiliation:
Yonsei University, South Korea
*
Address for correspondence: Hwajin Yang, Ph.D., School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University, 90 Stamford Rd, Singaporehjyang@smu.edu.sg
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Abstract

We investigated bilingual advantages in general control abilities using three complex-span tasks of working memory (WM). An operation-span task served as a baseline measure of WM capacity. Additionally, two modified versions of the Stroop-span task were designed to place varying attentional-control demands during memoranda encoding by asking participants either to read the to-be-remembered item aloud (lower cognitive control; i.e., Stroop-span task) or to name the font color of the to-be-remembered item while still encoding the word for later recall (greater cognitive control; i.e., attention-impeded Stroop-span task). Twenty-six Korean–English bilinguals and 25 English-native monolinguals were tested. We found that bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on the attention-impeded Stroop-span task, but on neither the operation-span nor the Stroop-span task. Our findings demonstrate that bilingualism provides advantages in controlled processing, an important component of WM and other executive functions, suggesting that the demand for controlled processing in WM tasks moderates bilingual effects on WM.

Keywords

bilingualismworking memorycontrolled attentionexecutive attentioninterference
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , January 2017 , pp. 184 - 196
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

We thank Kenneth Paap and two anonymous reviewers for their excellent comments. This research was supported by a research grant from Singapore Management University through a research grant (C242/MSS13S011) from the Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1.

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