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High proficient bilinguals bring in higher executive control when encountering diverse interlocutors

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Abstract

We examined if bilinguals are sensitive to contextual factors with regard to the presence of interlocutors and if this reflects in how they modulate their executive control. First, we introduced Telugu–English bilinguals to monolingual, bilingual and neutral interlocutors in the form of cartoon characters through an interactive session. Following this, they performed the attention network task (ANT) with the image of interlocutors appearing on every trial before the flankers. High proficient bilinguals (in L2) were overall faster on the ANT (indicating higher executive control) when different interlocutors appeared randomly in a mixed block compared to the low proficient bilinguals. However, this effect was not found when the appearance of the interlocutors along-side the ANT task was blocked. These data demonstrate that high proficient bilinguals brought in higher executive control when the context required higher monitoring (different interlocutors appearing randomly) compared to the low proficient bilinguals. We interpret the findings with regard to the adaptive control hypothesis.

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Data availability

All relevant data analysed in this study are available at https://osf.io/eusqc/?view_only=85e2ae6f1b9d48f1985435085592d02b.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Keerthana Kapiley, Manasa Padmanabhuni and Sangeeth for assistance with the cartoons and the sentences during the familiarization/interaction phase.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Pratik Bhandari

  2. Center for Neural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Science Complex, Hyderabad, Telangana, 500046, India

    Seema Prasad & Ramesh Kumar Mishra

Authors
  1. Pratik Bhandari
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  2. Seema Prasad
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  3. Ramesh Kumar Mishra
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Correspondence to Ramesh Kumar Mishra.

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Appendices

Appendix 1: Correlational analysis for the executive control network

 

RT (Mixed context)

RT (pure context)

Exposure to L2

AoA of L2

L2 proficiency

RT (mixed context)

     

RT (pure context)

0.08

    

Exposure to L2

− 0.06

0.01

   

AoA of L2

0.55***

− 0.22

− 0.05

  

L2 proficiency

− 0.54***

0.26

− 0.08

− 0.65***

 
  1. ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05

Appendix 2: analysis of RT in pure context

To examine whether different types of interlocutors (bilingual vs. monolingual vs. neutral) induced differential demands on performance, we performed an ANOVA on RT (only) in the pure context with group as between-subject factor and interlocutor (monolingual, bilingual and neutral cartoons) and flanker (congruent, incongruent and neutral) as within-subject factors.

There was a significant effect of flanker type, F (2, 68) = 200.44, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.855 but no significant main effect of group, F (1, 34) = 1.23, p = 0.275, η2 = 0.03. The interaction between group and interlocutor condition was not significant either, F (2,68) = 0.23, p = 0.792, η2 = 0.01. None of the other two-way or three-way interactions were significant (p > 0.1).

See Table

Table 3 Descriptive statistics of data from pure context
Full size table

3.

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Bhandari, P., Prasad, S. & Mishra, R.K. High proficient bilinguals bring in higher executive control when encountering diverse interlocutors. J Cult Cogn Sci 4, 201–215 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41809-020-00060-7

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