Intra-Bilingual Advantage? Emotion and Cognition in Early and Late Bilinguals Brittany Johnson Advisor: Emily E. Barkley-Levenson, PhD Department of Psychology, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY
Background ● There are several contradictory research publications on the existence of an advantage in executive functioning among bilinguals compared to monolinguals (Antoniou, 2019; Ware et al., 2020). ● Among studies that have found an advantage, participants were typically either young children or elderly adults (Bialystok et al., 2005b; Bialystok et al., 2008). ● While young adults are typically cognitively mature, they usually have not reached emotional maturity and can be cognitively affected under emotional arousal (Icenogle et al., 2019). ● Early bilinguals (learned a second language at a young age) activate less prefrontal cortex activity while language switching, a cognitively taxing process, than late bilinguals (learned a second laguage later in life) (Yapeng et al., 2007). ● Sutton et al., 2007 administered a bilingual emotional Stroop task with early bilinguals where participants responded slower to emotional words.
Results Figure 3. Reaction Times by Block
Objectives • To add to the results of Sutton et al., by comparing early and late bilinguals with the same bilingual emotional Stroop task • Hypothesis 1: All participants will respond faster to emotional words than neutral words ■ Hypothesis 1a.: Early bilinguals will responder faster than late bilinguals to emotionally valenced words • To determine any performance differences in first language (L1) and second language (L2) • Hypothesis 2: Late bilinguals will respond slower to words in their L2 than L1 • Hypothesis 3: Early bilinguals will perform equally in first and second language
Results ● Hypothesis 1: No significant effect of emotional valence was found among participants (F(1,16)= 0.983, p=0.336) ● Hypothesis 1a.: No significant effect of emotional valence was found between groups (F(1,16)= 0.093, p=0.764) ● Hypotheses 2 and 3: No significant difference was found in reaction time between L1 and L2 (F(1,16)= 0.056, p=0.815) across all participants nor in the interaction between L1 vs. L2 and group (F(1,16)= 3.203, p= 0.092) ○ Late bilinguals responded to words presented in their L1 at an average of 994.6528ms (SD=+/- 229.65287) and 1105.2207ms (SD= +/370.49847) to their L2 ○ Early bilinguals responded to words presented in their L1 at an average 1089.9946ms (SD=+/- 423.72310) and 945.6035ms (SD=+/-205.80105) to words presented in their L2 ● There was a significant effect of language (F(1,16)= 7.265, p=.016) in that all participants reacted faster in response to words presented in English (M= 946.680ms, SD= +/- 55.740) than Spanish (M=1123.483ms, SD= +/- 100.597) ● There was no significant difference in reaction time between groups (p=0.819)
Discussion Note. The data reflected in this graph is representative of all participants. EE= Emotion English, ES= Emotion Spanish, NE= Neutral English, NS=Neutral Spanish.
Results Figure 1.2. Self-Reported Language Ability on a Scale of 1-7
Methods
● Unlike the original Sutton et al., 2007 study, participants did not respond differently to neutral vs. emotionally valenced words. ● The effect of language is unsurprising because participants all attend U.S. institutions where English is the dominant language and the task was administered in English. ● There were no performance differences between early and late bilinguals. ○ could be due to small n, similarities of participant groups, or lack of intra-bilingual advantage in terms of selective emotional attention ● Future Studies should include a larger sample size, examine different bilingual categories (ex. balanced vs. unbalanced) and investigate neural correlates of the task.
References Participants: 5 early bilinguals; learned L2 before age 8 (m=2, f=3; Mage=20.46, SDage= +/- 1.33), 13 late bilinguals; learned L2 after age 8 ( m=3, f=9, nonbinary=1; Mage=,20.46 , SDage =+/- 1.33). Recruited through PSY001 at Hofstra for class credit or volunteered through social media posts and/or an email sent to Hofstra’s Spanish Department and Latin American and Carribean Studies Program to enter a raffle for a $50 Visa Gift Card -Exclusionary Criteria: color blindness, clinical depression diagnosis within 6 months Materials: Language History Questionnaire (LQH) 3.0 (Li et al., 2019), SuperLab 6 in conjunction with a SuberLab Remote subscription to administer the bilingual emotional Stroop task(Sutton et al., 2007) Procedure: Participants completed the task remotely via a Qualtrics survey. They virtually provided consent and the existence/lack thereof of exclusionary criteria. They were then walked through how to complete the Stroop task and mail the data file to the researcher, then presented with a link to the LQH 3.0 (Li et al., 2019). Participants then returned the the Qualtrics survey where they self identified as an early/late bilingual and whether they had been placed in Spanish level 4 or above by Hofstra University before being debriefed.
Note. Data self-reported through Li, P., Zhang, F., Yu, A., & Zhao, X. (2019). Language History Questionnaire (LHQ3): An enhanced tool for assessing multilingual experience. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. Very low ability is equal to a rating of 1, and very high ability is indicated by a rating of 7.
Antoniou, M. (2019). The Advantages of Bilingualism Debate. Annual Review of Linguistics, 5(1), 395-415. doi:10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011718-011820 Bialystok, E., Craik, F., & Luk, G. (2008). Cognitive control and lexical access in Younger and older bilinguals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34(4), 859–873. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278 `7393.34.4.859 Bialystok, E., Martin, M. M., & Viswanathan, M. (2005). Bilingualism across the lifespan: The rise and fall of inhibitory control. International Journal of Bilingualism, 9(1), 103-119. doi:10.1177/13670069050090010701 Icenogle, G., Steinberg, L., Duell, N., Chein, J., Chang, L., Chaudhary, N., Di Giunta, L., Dodge, K. A., Fanti, K. A., Lansford, J. E., Oburu, P., Pastorelli, C., Skinner, A. T., Sorbring, E., Tapanya, S., Uribe Tirado, L. M., Alampay, L. P., Al-Hassan, S. M., Takash, H. M. S., & Bacchini, D. (2019). Adolescents’ cognitive capacity reaches adult levels prior to their psychosocial maturity: Evidence for a “maturity gap” in a multinational, cross-sectional sample. Law and Human Behavior, 43(1), 69–85. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000315 Li, P., Zhang, F., Yu, A., & Zhao, X. (2019). Language History Questionnaire (LHQ3): An enhanced tool for assessing multilingual experience. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. Sutton, T. M., Altarriba, J., Gianico, J. L., & Basnight-Brown, D. M. (2007). The automatic access of emotion: Emotional Stroop effects in Spanish–English bilingual speakers. Cognition and Emotion, 21(5), 1077-1090. doi:10.1080/02699930601054133 Ware, A. T., Kirkovski, M., & Lum, J. A. (2020). Meta-Analysis Reveals a Bilingual Advantage That Is Dependent on Task and Age. Frontiers in Psychology, 11. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01458 Yapeng Wang, Gui Xue, Chuansheng Chen, Feng Xue, Qi Dong, Neural bases of asymmetric language switching in second-language learners: An ER-fMRI study, NeuroImage, Volume 35, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 862-870, ISSN 1053-8119, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.09.054. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811906009694)