A bilingual advantage in task switching
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This study investigated the possibility that lifelong bilingualism may lead to enhanced efficiency in the ability to shift between mental sets. We compared the performance of monolingual and fluent bilingual college students in a task-switching paradigm. Bilinguals incurred reduced switching costs in the task-switching paradigm when compared with monolinguals, suggesting that lifelong experience in switching between languages may contribute to increased efficiency in the ability to shift flexibly between mental sets. On the other hand, bilinguals did not differ from monolinguals in the differential cost of performing mixed-task as opposed to single-task blocks. Together, these results indicate that bilingual advantages in executive function most likely extend beyond inhibition of competing responses, and encompass flexible mental shifting as well.
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On task-switching tasks, bilinguals typically outperform monolinguals, though the specific components (mixing costs/set shifting vs local switch costs/response switching) vary across studies.
“Not surprisingly, these tasks are typically performed better by bilinguals than by monolinguals, although the details of those performances are not yet well understood: Some studies report bilingual advantages on mixing costs indicating set shifting [86, 106] while others report the advantage in local switch costs indicating response switching [80,119].”
From Bilingualism: consequences for mind and brain (2012) · cites this paper as [80]
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- Authors
- PRIOR, A., & MACWHINNEY, B.
- Affiliations
- University of Haifa (IL)
- Carnegie Mellon University (US)
- Corresponding author
- PRIOR, ANAT
- Venue
- Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2009-12-17
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 253-262
- ISSN
- 1366-7289 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-1841
- PMC
- PMC9724810
- OpenAlex
- W2042518312
- Cited by
- 625
- References
- 47
- Citations by year
- 2026: 22 · 2025: 40 · 2024: 28 · 2023: 48 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 39 · 2020: 53 · 2019: 54 · 2018: 82 · 2017: 28 · 2016: 45 · 2015: 42 · 2014: 46 · 2013: 21 · 2012: 25
- FWCI
- 7.61
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Bilingualism Language and Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- KiltHub Repository (submittedVersion)
- KiltHub Repository
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (T32MH019102)
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (T32GM081760)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (F32HD049255, R01HD023998)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Keywords
- bilingualism, task switching, switching costs, executive function, mental set shifting, cognitive flexibility, inhibition
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