Journal of Student Research 2014

Journal of Student Research

such as executive function (EF) and creativity (Bialystok, Craik, Klein, & Viswanathanan, 2004; Bialystok & Craik 2010). It has been found that while bilinguals enjoy some cognitive benefits, they have also shown deficits in verbal tasks requiring rapid lexical access and retrieval, such as verbal-fluency tasks (Bialystok & Craik 2010). Beyond the immediate cognitive advantages, there is also evidence that lifelong bilingualism maintains cognitive functioning and delays the onset of dementia in old age. In a study of 184 patients from a memory clinic in Toronto, Bialystok, Craik, & Freedman (2007) found that on average, bilinguals showed symptoms of dementia 4 years later than monolinguals. However, despite recent studies finding cognitive advantages for bilinguals, these results have not been consistent. Other studies have found no such advantage or have been unable to replicate findings by Bialystok, so the topic remains controversial and in need of further investigation (Paap & Greenberg, 2013; Salvatierra& Rosselli, 2010). If bilinguals do have a cognitive advantage over their monolingual peers, where does this advantage stem from? Previous research suggests that there is parallel activation of semantically linked items in both languages associated with a particular concept (Green, 1998). The bilingual has to inhibit one language while selecting for the appropriate language. It is believed that the demand to continually manage two languages strengthens the Supervisory Attentional System, a system that is hypothesized to be a broad cognitive conflict system, and that these advantages extend to non-linguistic tasks. This theory of competition between two semantic units may also explain why bilinguals perform less well on verbal tasks; for example, they may respond more slowly on picture-naming tasks, produce fewer words in verbal fluency tasks, and perform less well on lexical decision tasks (Hilchey & Klein, 2011). The overarching brain mechanism that facilitates many instances of cognitive conflict and control is referred to as the executive control system. Executive functions (EFs) are fundamental cognitive mechanisms linked to the pre-frontal cortex that regulate and control our behavior and cognitive processes such as planning, working memory, attention, inhibition, task switching, and problem solving. Because EF is such a fundamental aspect of cognition, deficits in it can have detrimental consequences on people’s lives and well-being,

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