The Bilingual Mind and Brain Book Series 6

Ramesh Kumar Mishra

Bilingualism
and
Cognitive
Control
The Bilingual Mind and Brain Book Series

Volume 6

Series editors
Roberto R. Heredia, Department of Psychology and Communication,
Texas A&M International University, Laredo, TX, USA
Anna B. Cieślicka, Department of Psychology and Communication,
Texas A&M International University, Laredo, TX, USA

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13841

Ramesh Kumar Mishra

Bilingualism and Cognitive

Control
Ramesh Kumar Mishra
Center for Neural and Cognitive Sciences
University of Hyderabad
Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India

The Bilingual Mind and Brain Book Series

ISBN 978-3-319-92512-7    ISBN 978-3-319-92513-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92513-4

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Preface

It is well-recognised that any serious practice of a demanding skill over a period of

time should change the brain: cognitive neuroplasticity could emerge because of
long and persistent training. In this book I propose that the practice of bilingualism
could lead to such noticeable advantageous neuroplasticity lifelong. Much research
has shown that people who are bilingual enjoy a cognitive advantage in attention
and executive control over those who are monolingual. This book, which is pub-
lished in Springer’s book series on bilingualism, summarises these results and con-
textualises them in light of current debates. Currently, no book-length discussions
of bilingualism and cognitive control exist. The state-of-the-art coverage is aimed at
students and researchers in multiple domains, including psycholinguistics, cogni-
tive science, cognitive neuroscience and neurolinguistics among others. This book
is divided into several chapters that stand alone, each of which has been designed to
offer in-depth analysis of one issue within the context of bilingualism and
cognition.
Considering the fact that the beneficial effects of bilingualism on cognition are
currently under intense scrutiny and debate, I have attempted to show what we know
for sure as of now. More controversial issues are also discussed so as to offer the
reader the opportunity to create their own interpretations. This top is of interest
since we want to know whether speaking two languages makes us better than such
things as taking pills or doing a difficult sport. Also, does this cognitive benefit also
extend to domains where one does not need any language? Currently, scientists
stand divided on the issue of bilingualism and its precise impact on our general
cognition. Does bilingualism change the structural and functional patterns of the
brain to such an extent that its functioning becomes much faster and smarter on a
range of difficult tasks and other challenges of life? Additionally, there are differ-
ences of opinion on the exact psycholinguistic processes in bilinguals that allows
recruitment of such control mechanisms. The chapters of this book cover dominant
theories and modes, including empirical data, that exemplify the issues.
The book is written in the style of a monograph; therefore, chapters are not intro-
ductory. There are many excellent textbooks on bilingualism and related issues.
However, at this point in time, there are many shortcomings in the field, some of

v
vi Preface

which are methodological. For example, we have only managed to study bilinguals
in specific locations, mostly university students. The enormous influence of the
sociolinguistic and cultural context on bilingual cognition is only now being appre-
ciated. However, newer methods bring their own problems for analysis and interpre-
tation, although they advance the field. Bilingual illiterates, who still inhabit many
regions of the world, have not been studied. For example, India still has a sizable
number of people who are formally illiterate but are bilinguals. In addition, indi-
vidual differences and how they might explain the bilingualism cognition interface
has not been looked at carefully. What I have written in this book should be inter-
preted keeping these points in mind.
I have researched cognitive control in Indian bilinguals and I discuss this research
at many points throughout this book. Whether bilingualism has an effect on cogni-
tion or not, it is clear that this is a very heterogeneous problem. My own research
has shown the difference between second-language speakers of high and low profi-
ciency on different executive control tasks. In this monograph, I demonstrate this
heterogeneity in research results with cross-linguistic comparisons. The last chapter
of the book offers a detailed summary of the main points and also future directions
for research in this area.

Hyderabad, India Ramesh Kumar Mishra

3 March 2018
Acknowledgments

I have benefited much from collaborative associations with many remarkable schol-
ars during my research on bilingualism. Raymond Klein (Dalhousie University,
Canada) has played an important role in shaping my thinking through collabora-
tions with Jean Saint-Aubin (University of Moncton, Canada). I also have interacted
with Debra Titone (McGill University, Canada) and learnt much about bilingualism
and diversity. I am thankful to Thomas Wynn (University of Colorado, USA) and
Yanjing Wu (Bangor University, Wales) who have read selected chapters and com-
mented. I hope I have been able to incorporate their suggestions. I also thank the
series editors Roberto Heredia (Texas A&M International University, USA) and
Anna Cieślicka (Texas A&M International University) who have been very helpful
with their advice since the project took shape and also for providing comments on
the draft. Thanks are due to Morgan Ryan and Sara Yanny-Tillar from Springer
whose timely comments immensely helped in finishing the project. I have spoken
about the research that finds a place in this book at many talks and seminars and the
questions and discussions have enriched my understanding of the concepts.
Writing a book takes a great amount of time and energy. At the Centre for Neural
and Cognitive Sciences, University of Hyderabad, India, I found a very conducive
atmosphere. I have learnt much from the excellent PhD students who are working
on bilingualism. Most particularly I thank Seema Prasad, my PhD student who has
provided much help in manuscript preparation and editing. I thank my wife Bidisha
and daughter Riya for all their support during the entire course of writing the book.

Hyderabad, India Ramesh Kumar Mishra

vii
Contents

  1 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1
1.1 The Bilingual Advantage Question ����������������������������������������������������   4
1.2 The Components of Control����������������������������������������������������������������   9
1.3 Structure of the Book��������������������������������������������������������������������������  11
1.4 Summary ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  14
References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   15
  2 The Evolution of Bilingualism����������������������������������������������������������������   19
2.1 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  19
2.2 Emergence of Language: Mutation Versus Gradual?��������������������������  22
2.3 Archaeological Proxies and the Evolution
of Complex Cognition������������������������������������������������������������������������  24
2.4 Contextualising the Brain ������������������������������������������������������������������  31
2.5 Development of Attention and Brain Networks���������������������������������  32
2.6 Summary ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  38
References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   39
  3 What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind?
The Core Cognitive Mechanisms������������������������������������������������������������   45
3.1 The Cognitive Basis of Bilingualism��������������������������������������������������  45
3.2 What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? ��������������������������������������������������  45
3.2.1 Translation������������������������������������������������������������������������������  45
3.2.2 Inhibition��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  49
3.2.3 Task Switching������������������������������������������������������������������������  52
3.2.4 Monitoring������������������������������������������������������������������������������  55
3.2.5 Attentional Disengagement����������������������������������������������������  58
3.3 Summary ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  61
References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   62
  4 Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism and Its Criticisms����������������������   67
4.1 Is There Any Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism? ������������������������  67
4.2 Replication������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  69

ix
x Contents

4.3 Publication Bias in Bilingualism Cognitive

Advantage Research����������������������������������������������������������������������������  70
4.4 Core Challenges Against the Advantage Theory��������������������������������  74
4.5 Cognitive Reserve, Bilingualism and Replication Failures����������������  78
4.6 Summary ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  85
References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   86
  5 Neuroscience of Bilingualism������������������������������������������������������������������   91
5.1 Cortical Representation of L1 and L2������������������������������������������������   91
5.2 The Switching Bilingual Brain ����������������������������������������������������������  94
5.3 Executive Control and the Bilingual Brain ����������������������������������������  97
5.4 Cultural Neuroscience and Bilingualism�������������������������������������������� 101
5.5 Studying the Cultural Brain and Bilingualism������������������������������������ 105
5.6 Summary �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 108
References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  108
  6 Bilingualism, Context and Control��������������������������������������������������������  113
6.1 Context, Environment and Bilingualism�������������������������������������������� 113
6.2 Adaptive Bilinguals���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 114
6.3 Faces, Scenes and Interference ���������������������������������������������������������� 115
6.4 Presence of Interlocutors�������������������������������������������������������������������� 118
6.5 Interlocutors and Control�������������������������������������������������������������������� 126
6.6 The Advantage Debate and the Interactive Model������������������������������ 129
6.7 Summary �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 130
References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  131
  7 Attention, Vision and Control in Bilinguals������������������������������������������  133
7.1 The Shades of Attention���������������������������������������������������������������������� 133
7.2 Visuospatial Attention, Eye Movements and Action�������������������������� 135
7.3 Attention, Bilingualism and Advantage���������������������������������������������� 137
7.4 Attentional Disengagement���������������������������������������������������������������� 139
7.5 Eye Movements, Attention and Control���������������������������������������������� 141
7.6 Language, Vision, Attention and Control�������������������������������������������� 145
7.7 Attention, Culture and Bilingualism �������������������������������������������������� 148
7.8 Summary �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 151
References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  151
  8 Conclusion������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  157
8.1 Summarising the Facts������������������������������������������������������������������������ 157
8.2 Areas for Future Research������������������������������������������������������������������ 163
8.2.1 Individual Difference, Executive
Functions and Bilingualism���������������������������������������������������� 163
8.2.2 Performing Bilingualism and Advantage
Research in the real world������������������������������������������������������ 167
Contents xi

8.2.3 The Challenges of Globalisation,

Migration and Conflict������������������������������������������������������������ 169
8.2.4 Finding a Coherent Framework���������������������������������������������� 172
8.2.5 New Frontiers: Beyond Executive Control ���������������������������� 173
8.3 Summary �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 174
References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  175

Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  179
About the Author

Ramesh Kumar Mishra  is a cognitive scientist and chair of the Center for Neural

and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Hyderabad, a major research university
in India. He has published widely in the areas of attention, visual processing, bilin-
gualism and language processing. He has also published on literacy and its influ-
ence on cognition. He has edited or authored three books (Mishra 2015; Mishra
Huettig & Srinivasan 2015; Mishra & Srinivasan 2011; Mani, Mishra & Huettig (in
press)) to date in the area of language–vision interaction. He is also an editorial
board member of the journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. His dual
expertise in cognitive psychology (attention, vision and executive control) and psy-
cholinguistics of bilingualism (language non-selective activation, visual world eye
tracking) helps him to explore in-­depth the cognitive science angle to the bilingual
advantage effect. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Cultural
Cognitive Science (Springer) and is a fellow of the Psychonomic Society.

References

Mishra, R. K. (2015). Attention, Language and Vision. In Interaction Between Attention and
Language Systems in Humans (pp. 161–186). Springer, New Delhi.
Mishra, R. K., Srinivasan, N., & Huettig, F. (Eds.). (2015). Attention and vision in language pro-
cessing. Springer. New Delhi, India.
Mishra, R. K., & Srinivasan, N. (Eds.) (2011). Language-Cognition Interface: State of the Art.
Munich: Lincom Europa.
Mani, N., Mishra, R. K. & Huettig,. F. (Eds.) (in press). The Interactive mind: Language, Vision
and Attention. Macmillan publishers.Basingstoke, UK.

xiii
Chapter 1
Introduction

Introductions to academic books are about what the book contains and why the
author has written it. I have written this book because I am deeply interested in
bilingualism as a model for the mind and brain. I also believe that this model can
explain much about our linguistic and other forms of cognition. This book focuses
on the question of bilingualism, its practice and its possible cognitive consequences.
I consider this book timely since much is happening in the field of bilingualism that
is both controversial and illuminating. The term ‘cognitive influences’ is very broad
and diverse. Most scholars and graduate students who are acquainted with this lit-
erature will narrow it down to executive control functions—a set of higher-order
mental functions that allow us our grip over our action and thought. A key question
has been whether these set of functions are modulated by the practice of bilingual-
ism to the extent that they start becoming better and better in bilinguals. The book
began as a stock-taking enterprise on the myriad issues related to such neuroplasti-
city caused by bilingualism. Both the psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology
including cognitive neuroscience investigations into bilingualism are highly evolved
areas within cognitive sciences today. Considering the diverse range of ideas and
debates in this field, the chapters of the book reflect that complexity. It is not an
introductory book. The book does not attempt a straightforward review of what we
know so far. Instead, it explores the various theoretical issues related to the question
of cognitive advantage as a function of bilingualism and important controversies. It
offers discussions and critique of the most recent studies in this area from different
participating disciplines, including those from cognitive psychology, cognitive neu-
roscience and psycholinguistics among others. I do not address whether bilingual-
ism should influence executive functions, but focus on the constraining factors.
This is not the first book on the question of bilingualism or its cognitive implica-
tions. There have been many excellent textbooks and specialised books in these
areas (e.g. De Groot, 2011; Kroll & De Groot, 2009; Schwieter, 2016). Schwieter
(2016) has published many recent chapters on the issue of control. The books by
Grosjean (1982, 1989) are excellent introductions to bilingualism. These books
alert students to both psycholinguistics and cognitive psychological issues related to

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 1

R. K. Mishra, Bilingualism and Cognitive Control, The Bilingual Mind
and Brain Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92513-4_1
2 1 Introduction

b­ ilingual language control and cognition. I strongly recommend that beginning stu-
dents read them to acquire the background that will allow him/her to evaluate my
claims in a better informed manner. However, to date, a full-length intense treatment
of cognitive control and bilingualism was missing apart from several review articles
in journals (Bialystok, 2017, 2018). This is a particularly exciting time since the
very question is under attack and many researchers think that the advantage is an
artefact (Paap & Greenberg, 2013). The primary audience of this book is students in
fields such as linguistics, cognitive science and neuroscience. The researchers in the
field who directly work in this area and whose works I cite will either agree or dis-
agree with my assertions. Departing from the conventional approaches, I have
included a chapter on the evolutionary underpinnings of bilingual behaviour in our
species and also on the influence of social context on language control. Of course,
the running theme that connects all the chapters is the issue of bilingualism and its
possible impact on executive control.
The idea that speaking two languages has some influence on executive control
has an interesting history. A few decades ago researchers believed that bilingualism
may, in fact, have a negative effect on a child’s intelligence or cognition. For exam-
ple, in her review, Darcy (1963) noted that bilingualism may not be that good after
all for sound development of intelligence. Pearl and Lambert (1962) were the first
to conduct a systematic comparison between bilinguals and monolinguals and found
that bilinguals were better on non-verbal and verbal tasks. In particular, the bilin-
guals were better at tasks that called for higher mental flexibility. Since then, most
prominently the research by Bialystok & Martin (2004) have consistently found that
bilingual children show superior cognitive abilities than monolingual children on
tasks that call for conflict resolution. David Green’s (1998) inhibitory control model
directly linked the psycholinguistics of language control with inhibitory control in
bilinguals. Since then, cognitive psychologists have tested hundreds of bilinguals
around the world against monolinguals on all kinds of tasks ranging from attention,
memory and perception to mental flexibility. Thus, the field has evolved over a
period of time with collaborative contributions of psycholinguists, cognitive psy-
chologists and now cognitive neuroscientists who explore brain dynamics. Today
the question has narrowed down to what extent, if any, bilingualism influences par-
ticular components of executive control. Although I do not cover this interesting
history in this book, current opinions and controversies stand on these early critical
observations. Grosjean (2010) offers a highly readable and scholarly overview of
the field and breaks down some myths about bilinguals and bilingualism. The field
has also seen much media enthusiasm and coverage on the issue (see, for example,
“Is Bilingualism Really an Advantage?” in The New Yorker, 22 January 2015).
One of my underlying assumptions in this book is that we still don’t understand
many of the issues related to bilingualism and cognition. Existing facts remain
unreconciled and pose many more questions than they answer. While data are dis-
cussed in the chapters, my narrative is more geared towards asking questions that
remain to be answered. Foundational among them is what it is exactly that bilin-
guals do when we say that they are controlling their languages? How do different
bilinguals differ on these very mechanisms? What role does executive control play
1 Introduction 3

in this mechanism? What is the role of culture in this interaction between bilingual-
ism and cognition? Why do proficient bilinguals that know both languages well still
show spontaneous translation in laboratory tasks? How is non-selective language
activation influenced by executive control? Many of these questions are psycholin-
guistic in nature.
Much of my own experimental work on bilinguals has been in India with Indian
bilinguals (Singh & Mishra, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016). Does it matter where you
study bilinguals? I later show that linguistic, ethnic and cultural variables directly
affect both the cognitive and neurobiology of bilingualism. Studying bilingualism
in India can be very enriching and also challenging, unlike in other places. First of
all, India has around 1500 spoken languages and innumerable dialects (Mohanty &
Babu, 1983). English in India has played a key role in shaping its overall bilingual-
ism (Sridhar, 1989). Apart from the mainstream languages, there are many tribal
languages spoken by indigenous people who may be few in number. Not all such
languages have scripts. Further, given that there are four language families and
many ethnic groups who speak them, in the Indian context bilingualism is also
bicultural and at times biscriptal.
English is one of the official languages in India and is learned at school. All post-­
school education is in English, barring a few places where the regional language of
the state is used. Interestingly, the few studies on Indian bilingualism from a psy-
cholinguistic or cognitive science perspective have been on bilinguals with English
as a second language. Therefore, the subjects are mostly university educated stu-
dents or older adults. Compared to this situation, there is little variation within bilin-
gualism in other countries such as the USA or Canada. Furthermore, most Indians
learn three languages at school: Hindi, English and a provincial language. This
makes most educated Indians multilingual. Therefore, studying the psycholinguistic
nature of bilingualism in India could pose issues that may not occur elsewhere. In
my work, I have studied mostly university students who have English as their sec-
ond language. Based on their length of study and experience, their proficiency in
English varies markedly. I have often taken language proficiency as a grouping vari-
able. In India, one can find many bilinguals who may be well-versed in two different
Indian languages belonging to two different language families. Therefore, what we
know about, for example, Hindi–English or Telugu–English bilinguals can’t be gen-
eralised to such other bilinguals without several assumptions. Since most such bilin-
guals can also read and write in these languages, this influences language selection
and control. India still has a large percentage of people who are illiterate; however,
they know two different languages without corresponding literacy knowledge. How
literacy level affects bilingualism is not known. Given this backdrop, generalisa-
tions from studies must be understood within these constraints.
My studies have reported high proficient bilinguals showing advantages in dif-
ferent executive control tasks compared with low proficient bilinguals (Singh &
Mishra, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016). However, considering the current debate in the
field, replication failures and other studies which totally deny any advantages, I
remain sceptical. I review studies from both sides with the aim of seeing where the
agreements and disagreements lie precisely. Of course, there have been allegations
4 1 Introduction

of publication bias towards the studies showing an advantage. The various retrac-
tions and data abuses and failures in the area of social psychology are an example
(Pashler & Harris, 2012). This book attempts to look deep into these studies with an
open attitude as far as possible. Replication failures are frequent in many disciplines
and psychologists have been very cautious in recent times. The tone and tenor of
replication failures in the area of bilingualism and cognitive advantage have been
different in this regard. Here, peers have failed to see significant differences between
bilinguals and monolinguals on standardised cognitive psychological tasks.
However, my approach in talking about these studies and contextualising them has
not been to throw the baby out with the bath water. If many researchers have
observed advantage consistently, then it is important to see how and why they
achieved these results. Those who have replicated and did not gain the same answer
are also liable to answer questions regarding whether they had any flaws in their
methods and approaches, including participant selection. To examine this, I devote
an entire chapter (Chap. 4) to studies that have obtained null results.

1.1  The Bilingual Advantage Question

Bilingual minds and cognitive processes are fundamentally different from those of
monolinguals (Grosjean, 1989). Bilinguals speak two languages, and many are also
bi-literate. Often the bilinguals’ two languages come from two different cultures
(e.g. Chinese–English). Therefore, the semantic memory system of the bilingual is
a construct of two different cultures and interactions between them. Bilinguals
access words in each language with regard to their unique cultural attributes (Lee,
2002). This complexity affects bilingual language learning and lexical retrieval.
Over half a century of work with bilingual naming has demonstrated these effects.
Psycholinguists have been most interested in the question of language switching
and its cognitive impact. Simple object naming tasks have revealed intricate balance
and also failures (cost) when bilinguals produce words in both languages (Meuter &
Allport, 1999). These psycholinguistic processes have an important link to the ques-
tion of bilinguals’ cognitive control. Although the bilingual brain entertains two
representations unconsciously and simultaneously, it must also control them. This
control has been hypothesised to recruit executive functions such as inhibition
(Green, 1998). This book explores the nature of this control during language man-
agement in many of its chapters.
Because bilinguals know two languages, they need to select a language appropri-
ately and switch between the languages. Language control in bilinguals is an out-
come of such constant switching between two languages. Green’s original proposal
(Green, 1998) referred to a general purpose inhibitory control system that helps
bilinguals in their language selection. Since then, the debate has been around the
concept of inhibition. The question is whether bilinguals indeed inhibit the language
that they are currently not attending to or whether they a priori select one. This book
shows that apart from the inhibition model there are currently many other approaches
1.1  The Bilingual Advantage Question 5

that emphasise attention disengagement, monitoring and also social contextual

influences on the switching that contributes to language control (Valian, 2015).
Most of these studies have used one of the other attention or executive control tasks
to compare bilinguals and monolinguals. Researchers assume that tasks such as the
Stroop or the Simon task capture the component of executive function that has been
strengthened in bilinguals compared with monolinguals. At the heart of the issue
lies finding the exact task that mimics what bilinguals do when they switch between
languages.
What bilinguals do precisely as they fluently handle both languages is a question
that has linguistic, neural and cognitive underpinnings. The classic object-naming
task that reveals the switch cost in bilingual naming assumes inhibition of the non-­
target language (Meuter & Allport, 1999). Theories developed from such tasks point
towards an inhibitory control account. However, as many other studies have shown,
bilingual language control is context dependent. Bilinguals use the knowledge of
their interlocutors to decide which language to use (e.g. Woumans et  al., 2015).
Such contextual awareness indicates a bilingual’s superior social cognition. This is
something I have discussed in Chap. 2, which is on the evolution of bilingualism.
Researchers are beginning to look at bilingual language control as a tussle between
top-down control and bottom-up environmental forces. For example, the adaptive
control hypothesis (Green & Abutalebi, 2013) and the bilingual ecology model
(Green, 2011) deal with these issues. Therefore, bilingual language control in the
real-world scenario could be very different than what is captured on laboratory
tasks. We still don’t know how fluent bilinguals control their languages as they
switch and shift between different interlocutors who speak different languages.
Chapter 8 examines these social and contextual issues in an elaborate manner. The
epicentre of the bilingual advantage debate lies in the interface of language control
and performance on the executive control tasks. Thus, one can say the predominant
framework is more cognitive psychological than linguistic, although the psycho-
logical and the linguistic interact in many of the tasks. Since the predominant style
of investigation has focused on testing bilinguals on non-linguistic control tasks, I
focus on these tasks more. Of course, there is a solid tradition of research that has
explored how bilinguals and monolinguals process sentences in their first and sec-
ond language, for example. In summary, in this book I attempt to sample some
cutting-edge theories and data that researchers are currently pursuing in order to
understand whether bilingualism bestows cognitive advantage.
Valian (2015) comprehensively reviewed the bilingual advantage question. Apart
from a literature survey, she pointed out a few important facts. She suggested that it
is not clear which task actually may capture the mechanism of bilingual processing.
I also think this way of looking at the scenario is justified since all tasks are based
on certain specific assumptions. Unless the psycholinguistic processes that bilin-
guals use every day in different situations are clear to us, we can’t be certain which
non-linguistic tasks will capture their modulator effects. If one assumes that bilin-
guals inhibit, then one thinks that the Stroop task is a good task to show this.
However, there are multiple conjectures about the exact cognitive psychological
processes at work when one is performing the Stroop task itself. Further, Valian also
6 1 Introduction

wondered whether monolinguals with superior skills in some domains would per-
form just as well as bilinguals. In my commentary to that keynote article (Mishra,
2015), I suggested that bilingualism should be viewed as a skill and any benefits
from it should be seen as an effect of its practice. Bilinguals who may have compe-
tence in two languages but do not use the two languages consistently may not ben-
efit in terms of executive control. However, there are alternative views to this
use-based theory.
As one read this book, you will notice a strange dichotomy between behavioural
studies and neuroimaging studies. Do we assume that positive results from behav-
ioural studies supporting our hypothesis should also be seen with neural data and
vice versa? Most positive evidence has come from behavioural studies. Most repli-
cation failures also have used manual key press data to argue against the effect.
Methods bring their own constraints to data interpretation and our theoretical under-
standing. It is possible that the subtle effects of bilingual advantages can’t be tracked
by gross measures such as the reaction time-based studies. How do we then go
about synchronising both neural and behavioural data? Recently, measurements
using eye movements show that there are subtle differences between bilinguals and
monolinguals in saccadic tasks (Singh & Mishra, 2012, 2015). These differences do
not manifest in reaction time data. Interestingly, many brain imaging studies have
consistently found evidence supporting the neural mechanism for bilingual advan-
tage (e.g. Abutalebi et al., 2011). Unlike replication failures with behavioural data,
there are few currently available with neural data. Whatever the reasons for this, this
point can’t be overlooked when we are trying to generate a holistic understanding of
the issues. I have devoted a separate chapter to the cognitive neuroscience of bilin-
gual language control (Chap. 5). In addition, Chap. 7 discusses many eye tracking
studies on attention and visual processing in bilinguals. The reason being, both posi-
tive and negative findings should be looked at when considering the methods and
the specific assumptions behind them.
A serious lacuna can also be noticed in the diversity of bilinguals that have been
studied. Most studies have come from well-known traditional bilingual areas such
as the French-speaking part of Canada, Belgium, the Basque country, Luxemburg or
parts of the USA. Researchers have not studied other cultures and bilinguals that
may differ more widely on many measures. It is one thing to study Chinese–English
bilinguals who are students in the UK and another to study such individuals in
Beijing. The difference is obvious since both types of bilinguals live in different
bilingual contexts. While one practises bilingualism within a largely monolingual
environment (Chinese in Beijing), the other manages within a largely second-­
language context (in the UK). Therefore, randomly picking one group and studying
them on executive control tasks may not reveal how their different environments
have influenced their control. These issues were raised by Green (2011). Further,
researchers often take participants whose first language may differ and create a
homogeneous group. They are all bilinguals, but they are not similar types of bilin-
guals since their usage history may differ considerably. We cannot be sure that they
have been practising bilingualism similarly unless we collect background data on
this issue. In a recent article, Surrain & Luk (2017) reviews the classifying criteria
1.1  The Bilingual Advantage Question 7

for ­bilinguals in a large number of studies and notes that there appears to be no
unanimity. Different authors have used different sets of criteria with objective and
subjective methods to evaluate language proficiency, and studies often do not pres-
ent the language backgrounds of their participants. These issues make interpretation
of results difficult. Recently, Anderson et  al. (2018) developed a comprehensive
language assessment questionnaire which takes usage context into account. I per-
sonally think that even if there is some advantage it is not to be found in all kinds of
bilinguals. It is affected by a host of factors that include their language histories, the
current level of practice and the cultures from which they come. Unfortunately,
these factors will also confound the development of any general theory of bilingual
language use and control.
I have written this book with the intention of narrating the state of the art without
being an advocate for bilingual advantage. For the sake of clarity, I mention data and
results that have supported the advantage theory and also the null results. The null
results and replication failures are also discussed where they were not methodologi-
cally sound. The central question is: is there a bilingual advantage? Given the many
null results and replication failures, many researchers now believe that there is no
advantage as such. One can’t write a book today in cognitive psychology without
giving special attention to the replication failures. Replication failures are common
in different branches of science. Although psychologists have come under attack in
recent times, this also applies to neuroscience (Button et al., 2013). Both direct and
conceptual replications can fail for different reasons. Mishra, Hilchey, Singh, and
Klein (2012) studied Hindi–English bilinguals using the Posner’s Cueing Task and
took second-language proficiency as the grouping factor. Their rationale was that
those bilinguals who have higher proficiency in the second language indulge more
in bilingual conversations. They may also switch more often, and therefore their
executive control system may get engaged more. They found that high-proficient
Hindi–English bilinguals could disengage attention faster and thus displayed an
early inhibition of return. Inhibition of return indicates the attention system’s inabil-
ity to move to a previously attended location. The authors proposed that bilinguals
may be good at disengaging attention faster and this could be linked to bilingualism.
Later, Bialystok and colleagues (Chung-Fat-Yim, Sorge, & Bialystok, 2017;
Grundy, Chung-Fat-Yim, Friesen, Mak, & Bialystok, 2017) using other tasks also
have proposed similar theories of attention, disengagement and bilingualism. More
recently, Saint-Aubin et  al. (in press) failed to replicate Mishra et  al.’s work in
Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. Moncton is French-speaking and has many
bilinguals with English as their second language. The idea of their study was to see
if the findings from Mishra et al. could be replicated in the Canadian context. The
results showed that bilingualism did not explain performance on the cueing task. It
is quite possible that cultural and contextual differences may explain this non-repli-
cation. Importantly, such cross-cultural replication is the need of the hour as replica-
tion failures raise many more new questions than they answer. I have devoted an
entire chapter addressing this issue (Chap. 4).
More recently, the question of bilingualism and advantage has been looked at
from a global socio-political perspective. Does bilingualism lead to a lower
8 1 Introduction

i­ncidence of adult neurological diseases in different countries? Klein, Christie, and

Parkvall (2016) took the incidence rate for Alzheimer’s disease from 93 countries
and then plotted the number of bilinguals and monolinguals in each country and
correlated this with the incidence rate. When the mean number of languages was
correlated with the percentage of people with Alzheimer’s in each country, the
results indicated that the number of languages spoken in the country grew as the
incidence of AD decreased. This was a first of its kind report which applied a statis-
tical approach to publicly available data to see if bilingualism has any effect on life
expectancy and cognitive reserve at a mass level. Of course, the limitations of such
a method was acknowledged by the authors. But this approach opens up the possi-
bility to examine the bilingualism hypothesis at a very large scale in many coun-
tries. In Chap. 8, I stretch this theme to also include the possible connections
between bilingualism and social issues such as conflict management. At present,
large-scale datasets are not available, although much can be done in this direction.
Issues may include understanding and promoting bilingualism at schools, such as
the dual immersion programmes in many countries (e.g. the USA) and their possible
impact.
There have also been recent attempts to connect the practice of bilingualism to
national and global policies on education, culture and conflict management.
Geopolitical forces have led to dynamic shifts in the world order and societies,
which are more evident now than before. For example, after the UK’s decision to
move out of the European Union (EU), many scholars are wondering what impact it
may have on language policy in the UK and more widely in the EU. Many research-
ers are speculating about what the language landscape of the UK will look like after
it cuts tie with EU (Kelly, 2017). Situations like these offer new possibilities for
researchers to test hypotheses regarding bilingualism and its connection to cogni-
tion and culture at a broader level. The EU, a political and economic organisation
consisting of many European countries, emphasises the use of most European lan-
guages and also English in different countries. In a recent book on the issue of
Brexit’s impact on language policy and planning in the UK, the authors reflect on
the many issues that could emerge after the Brexit (Kelly, 2017). Mehmedbegovic
(2017) proposed that bilingualism is necessary for the success of policy in a multi-
cultural world. Such writings indicate a growing interest in bilingualism and its
benefits to policy makers. If Brexit leads to fewer multilinguals as a result of fewer
immigrants, then this may also lead to a higher incidence of dementia. Such situa-
tions may impact economics and trade adversely (Hogan-Brun, 2018). It may just
be speculation, but given the study by Klein and colleagues (2016), one can think in
this direction. Bilingualism not only enhances one’s chances of employability but
also strengthens cultural assimilation. More and more multinational companies that
operate globally are looking for a workforce that knows more languages. In this age
of constant and persistent armed forces deployment at many locations in the world
for maintenance of world peace, the people on the ground must speak two or more
languages. The key question that is emerging now from recent political events
around the world is whether the rise of nationalism in many countries and shifts in
1.2  The Components of Control 9

power will lead to a decrease in bilingualism or multilingualism? The study of bilin-

gualism and cognition can’t stay away from such important questions.

1.2  The Components of Control

Chapter 3 covers the most important theoretical issues that are being implicated cur-
rently in addressing the bilingualism–cognitive advantage debate. Soon after Green
(1998) proposed his inhibitory control theory, which linked bilingual language con-
trol to a domain-general executive control, many researchers sought evidence in
tasks such as the Stroop or Simon tasks. The assumption was that bilinguals must
inhibit an inappropriate language by applying executive control and selecting the
correct one. Constant practice of this mechanism must enhance inhibitory control.
Today, many researchers have started to focus on mechanisms such as selective
attention, flexibility in switching, monitoring and goal maintenance. At the same
time, theories of executive control in human cognition and performance are being
re-examined (Miyake et al., 2000). In this book, I have suggested that all this rests
on our assumption of what exactly bilinguals do in order to achieve flawless lan-
guage control. Whatever mechanisms we assume to be the cause will guide us
towards an appropriate non-linguistic task that measures it.
For any mechanism that is proposed to be linked to executive control, results
have been mixed. Let us consider the case of language switching—a very common
feature of bilingualism. However, the frequency of switching differs across bilin-
guals’ cultures. Importantly, we assume that switching involves a cognitive cost.
Researchers think that linguistic and non-linguistic switching should correlate in
bilinguals. For example, Prior and Gollan (2011) found that Spanish–English and
Mandarin–English bilinguals who switch more do well on executive control tasks.
Similarly, Verreyt, Woumans, Vandelanotte, Szmalec, and Duyck (2016) found that
Dutch–French bilinguals in Belgium who switch more show higher executive con-
trol. However, Paap and Greenberg (2013), who examined many bilinguals with
different types of language pairs, did not find any correlation between frequency of
switching and executive control advantage.
Most studies that have examined switching have used the cued object naming
task. How about switching when it is voluntary? Gollan and Ferreira (2009) exam-
ined voluntary switching by asking speakers to name objects. They could use any
language to name but should maintain a balance between the choices. This certainly
led to some top-down constraint on language selection. Nevertheless, the bilinguals
switched only 25% of the time. Switching is cognitively costly and hence is not
preferred. The frequency of switching could be linked to proficiency (Costa &
Santesteban, 2004). Highly proficient speakers also switch a lot. Most research
interest has been in understanding the effect of switching and whether the general
purpose executive control system governs switching. However, others report that if
the speakers are ideally balanced then such a switch cost is not seen. Gollan and
Ferreira asked younger and older Spanish–English bilinguals to either name objects
10 1 Introduction

with their dominant language, less dominant language or mix languages as they
liked. Balanced bilinguals mixed languages even when they paid a switch cost.
Importantly, when free mixing was allowed, the less balanced bilinguals performed
the same as the balanced bilinguals. Further, when speakers switched voluntarily,
their naming was facilitated. This means that the freedom to choose one’s language
leads to better performance.
Bilinguals also switch along with their interlocutors. This social angle to the
question of switching has provided novel insights. Gambi and Hartsuiker (2016)
created a situation where one participant switched voluntarily between the two lan-
guages. The speaker was asked to name pictures in blocks. It was observed that
speakers were slow in naming objects in a language which was not earlier used by
the switching participant. This means speakers were trying to accommodate the
switching internally as they were planning their language. This bottom-up influence
on language selection suggests that switching is not always top-down. Pickering
and colleagues (Pickering & Garrod, 2004) have shown that during such joint
actions, participants try to synchronise their actions. This has also been seen in other
joint action tasks. In one experiment, Dolk et al. (2013) showed that participants
paid a higher cost in a Simon task when a Chinese cat kept constantly and randomly
waving its hands. Participants tried to synchronise their actions with the cat. Such
examples suggest the contagious nature of joint actions, and language switching is
no different.
Bilinguals also constantly monitor their environment to select the appropriate
language for a particular interlocutor (this is discussed at length in Chap. 6). Many
current studies show that bilinguals are sensitive towards their interlocutors and
select their language (Bhatia, Sake, Prasad, & Mishra, 2017; Li, Yang, Scherf, & Li,
2013; Woumans et al., 2015). This sensitivity towards potential interlocutors in the
environment cannot arise without good monitoring. When it comes to language and
bilingual use, monitoring includes the management of two languages. Monitoring
can also include managing two tasks or occasional conflicts. Since interlocutors can
change dynamically in the social setting, how do bilinguals control their language
in such a situation? Monitoring also involves detecting conflict in order to reduce
the cognitive cost. Conflict can arise when one can’t be certain about an interlocu-
tor’s languages. Neuroimaging studies show that the anterior cingulate cortex
(ACC) shows higher activity during error monitoring and even when one competes
with multiple responses (Carter et al., 1998). Detecting conflict and preparing the
appropriate response is central to cognitive systems (Botvinick, Barch, Carter, &
Cohen, 2001). Therefore, monitoring is central to both managing conflict and also
to ensuring fewer errors. Monitoring suffers in a range of psychiatric and neurologi-
cal conditions (Charles et al., 2017; Taylor, Fitzgerald, & Abelson, 2016); however,
the ability to monitor and minimise conflict improves with experience. For example,
it has been shown that with higher interpreting experience, monitoring ability also
increases (Dong & Zhong, 2017). But it should be noted that suggesting monitoring
as a key mechanism for bilingual language control does not mean that inhibitory
control is not useful.
1.3  Structure of the Book 11

The term ‘cognitive flexibility’ these days is used commonly to indicate fluent
behaviour achieved through practice. Flexibility also includes the ability to main-
tain conflicting information in the working memory to be ready to use when
demanded. This idea conflicts directly with the ‘strong inhibition’ theory of an inap-
propriate response. If a response is inhibited in this trial because it is not task-­
appropriate and if the same response becomes relevant on an upcoming trial, how
does one retrieve it? Bilinguals have to constantly switch flexibly between their
languages as any language may become relevant next. Does bilingualism bestow
cognitive flexibility? Bilingual children apparently show cognitive flexibility in
drawing objects at an early age (Adi-Japha, Berberich-Artzi, & Libnawi, 2010); that
is, when asked to draw objects that do not exist, their drawings show a kind of flex-
ible blending of features unique to those objects. Neuroimaging evidence suggests
that the ACC modulates cognitive flexibility in bilinguals distinctively compared
with monolinguals when they attempt novel tasks (Becker, Prat, & Stocco, 2016).
Bilinguals can also flexibly shift between stimulus–response mapping during task
switching (Wiseheart, Viswanathan, & Bialystok, 2016). These pieces of evidence
suggest that bilingualism configures the neural networks differently, giving an edge
to bilinguals in mental flexibility on linguistic and non-linguistic tasks.
Thus, be it switching, monitoring or deployment of selective attention, they are
all functionally linked at an underlying level. Further, recent research has also indi-
cated the influence of bilingualism on working memory (Bialystok, Poarch, Luo, &
Craik, 2014). If we can find tasks that capture that very cognitive system which has
been enhanced by bilingualism, it will be fantastic. However, tasks are simplified
constructs that each have their own impurity. For example, it is very difficult to say
whether inhibition, selective attention or monitoring is involved in the Stroop task.
At this point in time, psycholinguistic studies into language control using switching
as a model have revealed many insights. The effect of individual difference factors
and context is being explored by current researchers. This book aspires to provide a
synthesis of these diverse theories and facts.

1.3  Structure of the Book

Chapter 2 explores the evolutionary underpinnings of bilingualism. Disciplines

such as cognitive archaeology are now contributing on the issue of the evolution of
human cognitive capacities in both spatial and temporal terms. The key question is
whether the capacity to be bilingual emerged at a certain point in our evolutionary
history. Work on the evolution of language has been very divisive, and different
people have proposed diverse theories (Berwick & Chomsky, 2015; Tattersall,
2016). However, there has been very little theorising on the evolution of bilingual-
ism. The chapter also explores the evolution of social cognitive abilities in humans
that might have made bilingualism possible. In order to understand the cognitive
capacities that are influenced by bilingualism, it is important also to consider which
capacities in the history of our evolution were crucial to accommodate bilingualism
12 1 Introduction

in the brain. Crucial cognitive skills such as monitoring, switching, shifting and
inhibiting are early capacities to emerge in our history. The same capacities are also
used in many non-linguistic operations. The chapter attempts to synthesise data
from multiple domains to suggest that evolutionary psychological theories can bet-
ter inform us about bilingualism and its relation to the brain.
Chapter 3 is about the conceptual constructs on which the bilingual advantage
debate is based. Without knowing the psycholinguistics of bilingualism well, it is
not easy to link general cognitive advantage with language control. Researchers try
to administer tasks that they think mimics a certain linguistic or non-linguistic oper-
ation. For example, the chapter discusses translation, inhibition, monitoring, switch-
ing and social attention. These are the core mechanisms that different researchers
have implicated for cognitive advantage. Once these mechanisms are defined, then
it is possible to develop causal models of cognitive control. Whether bilinguals
inhibit or select a language more efficiently is a matter of how one conceptualises
the mechanism. The chapter provides a preview to the later chapters where these
concepts reappear more frequently.
Chapter 4 discusses the replication failures that have led to newer questions and
controversies. Beyond the facts, I also discuss many metascientific issues related to
replications and their interpretation. Based on their failed efforts, many authors have
called for the field to abandon its investigation of cognitive advantage and move on
(Goldsmith & Morton, 2018). I argue that this may not be the right approach as of
yet as null results should encourage us to explore alternative explanations. It is very
important to find out whether some bilinguals show no advantage at all. If bilinguals
do not practice their two languages with other bilinguals continuously there is no
challenge for the brain and there is possibly no cognitive advantage. Given this, it is
possible that studies that have obtained null results have considered bilinguals who
may have less practice of bilingualism. Merely including participants who say that
they know two languages is not enough to expect advantage if compared against
monolinguals. Further, methodological diversity across studies make it difficult to
arrive at a coherent theory.
Chapter 5 focuses on the bilingual brain. Neural data tells how bilingualism
sculpts the neural structures since infancy. Many recent studies show that bilinguals
use key neural structures such as the ACC to monitor conflict. Abutalebi et al. (2011)
proposed that the ACC actually could have evolved to serve bilingual conflict. A
conflict could relate to the selection of the correct language and also with interlocu-
tors. The adaptive control hypothesis (Green & Abutalebi, 2013) essentially links
neural responses to contextual constraints in bilingual language selection and con-
trol. Many studies that have used the EEG methodology have revealed how bilin-
guals plan and process language. Insights from the brain mechanisms could cast
new light on the biological basis of language. Importantly, these areas have been
found to be active for both linguistic and non-linguistic conflict tasks. I discuss the
neural basis of second-language processing and also how bilingual brains react dif-
ferently to conflict and attention tasks. There is an emerging consensus that bilin-
gual and monolingual brains are essentially similar structurally; however, they
differ with regard to functional connectivity during tasks. This functional
1.3  Structure of the Book 13

c­ onnectivity helps bilinguals to sort conflict and remain focused on communicative

goals. However, some studies have shown that bilinguals may have higher white
matter density than monolinguals (Anderson et  al., 2017). As I have maintained
throughout, many of these neuroimaging studies show bilingual advantage, which is
often not translated into behavioural results. The key issue now is how to integrate
neural and behavioural findings towards a holistic theory of bilingual language pro-
cessing, control and cognition. Refinements in behavioural methods and our under-
standing of the tasks as well as increasing sophistication in neuroimaging techniques
should reveal how bilingualism changes both structural and functional connections
of the brain early on.
Chapter 6 discusses the influence of context on bilingual language and cognitive
processing. It emphasises that bilingual control should be explored with regard to
real communicative scenarios. How is control exercised in the face of diverse inter-
locutors? Green and Abutalebi (2013) proposed the adaptive control hypothesis,
which links language selection to environmental stimuli. The critical question is
how bilinguals select their languages in a social setting where there are interlocu-
tors. Each interlocutor is identified as having competence with two languages. At
times, however, proficiency in these languages may differ a lot. Thus, in a social
setting, the challenge for the bilingual speaker is to choose the appropriate language
for the interlocutor. These selections can be dynamic as interlocutors may replace
one another. Therefore, any model of bilingual language selection and control has
to take into account these variables. In Chap. 2, I make the point that the evolution
of social cognition in Homo sapiens has been the most important thing in our evo-
lutionary history. The bilingual’s ability to infer from interlocutors’ faces which
language to use is a good example of such sophisticated social cognitive skills.
Current research (Blanco-Elorrieta & Pylkkänen, 2017; Molnar, Ibáñez-Molina, &
Carreiras, 2015; Woumans et  al., 2015) suggests that bilinguals are very good at
predicting the language of the interlocutor with a slight visual glance. These data
have enriched our understanding of how bilingualism aids in social cognition and
communication.
Most researchers agree that attention plays a key role in goal-directed action.
Among the many cognitive mechanisms that bilingualism researchers have explored,
attention appears to be central. Chapter 7 focuses on attention, vision and language
in bilingual cognitive processing. Attention has been now hailed as the mechanism
which can explain how bilingualism may modulate neural structures and cognitive
performance. Attention, of course, is widely studied within cognitive psychology
and cognitive neuroscience. Many tasks are regularly employed in measuring the
movement of attention in the spatial domain as well as the effect of deploying atten-
tion. Visual world eye-tracking data have shown language non-selective attention in
bilinguals. Similarly, studies have shown a difference between bilinguals and mono-
linguals on attention tasks. Most recently, Bialystok (2017) has suggested that bilin-
gualism may modulate selective attention. In Chap. 7, I discuss both linguistic and
non-linguistic aspects of attention control in bilinguals. I also discuss many visual
world eye-tracking studies that show how linguistic processing influences attention.
This chapter aims to offer a thorough up-to-date account of how attention has been
14 1 Introduction

used as a mechanism to explain both language processing and cognitive control in

bilinguals.
Chapter 8 provides a lengthy summary of the main themes discussed in the book
and future perspectives. The chapter emphasises that abandoning the research ques-
tion is not a viable idea, but that efforts must be made to sharpen the hypothesis,
much like the search for dark matter in cosmology (de Grasse Tyson, 2017). We
often see that some people are cognitively much smarter than others. It is also the
case that sometimes these people are bilinguals. Thus, the key linking hypothesis
between superior cognitive performance in different unrelated tasks and bilingual-
ism is not an unreasonable hypothesis. We know other complex skills such as music
and even sport strengthen the neural structure bestowing cognitive advantage
(Babiloni et al., 2010; Gaser & Schlaug, 2003). In Chap. 8, I suggest that a complete
cognitive exploration of bilingualism with regard to the brain and the mind has to
take context and actual language use very seriously. I also discuss possibilities for
expanding the domain of research considering changes we see today around the
world. Massive immigration of people because of social upheavals and rising
nationalism in many countries that do not promote multiculturalism offers unique
possibilities to study the impact of bilingualism. What happens when refugees
struggle to learn the language of the host? Cognitive control studies should now
move out of laboratories and into social settings. I cite studies that show that this is
being addressed by researchers in many other disciplines such as socio-linguistics
and culture studies. I also ask the big question: how does the executive control of
bilinguals help achieve conflict resolution in wider social issues? Of course, at this
point these ideas are only speculative.

1.4  Summary

Whether there is an advantage in bilingualism or not rests on the understanding of

several variables, which could be cultural, socio-economic, linguistic, emotional
and also pedagogical. Neuroplasticity as a result of bilingualism leading to a visible
advantage cannot happen alone but rather in consonance with many of these other
variables. Therefore, the hunt to find the effects on cognition that are uniquely as a
function of practising two languages could be problematic. Socio-economic and
cultural factors differ very much across countries. Bilinguals in the USA are not
similar to bilinguals in Belgium or India. Therefore, if findings are not replicated,
the reasons could lie in such factors. Official policy and language teaching and
learning environments may differ a lot. The community support for bilingualism in
an area influences the quantum of practice and to what extent young language learn-
ers use the second language. Therefore, it is not easy to isolate only the effect of
bilingualism and examine it in an experimental context. Much research in the fields
of cultural and socio-psychology demonstrates how pervasive these variables that
researchers often find very hard to integrate into experiments may be. Researchers
indeed have questioned whether socio-economic factors underlie the effects one
References 15

sees in such experiments. I did not intend this book to be just a way to take stock of
what we know so far relating to the advantage issue. Apart from this, the book also
delves into newer questions such as that of context and socio-political forces that
shape bilingualism across the world. I show that there is a gap between behavioural
and neuroimaging findings. The chapter on replications shows how these studies
can also be questioned on methodological grounds. Currently, the whole of psycho-
logical sciences is being scrutinised a great deal. However, neuroplasticity induced
by the extreme and continuous practice of any skill is also a fact. The book attempts
to take a bi-partisan stand on this issue, looking at the evidence available so far. The
question of bilingualism is very important since it demonstrates the enormous abil-
ity of the human brain to be accommodating and the social skills that are critically
important, now more than ever before.

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Chapter 2
The Evolution of Bilingualism

2.1  Introduction

Bilingualism is defined as the fluent and voluntary use of two languages. The great
geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky said that nothing in biology makes sense except
in light of evolution. How did bilingualism evolve in our species? Was it selected by
natural selection since it offered cognitive, neural and social benefits? Or did it
evolve as the next logical thing out of social and cultural pressure after our ancestors
had their languages and a good amount of social skills were in place? Should the
debate exploring the evolution of bilingualism wait until one settles how first-­
language capacity emerged?
Debates on language evolution were banned by the Société de Linguistique de
Paris in 1866 (Harris, 1988)—at that time, everybody agreed that the question was
intractable, and no energy should be spent on it. However, the study of language
evolution is now a well-developed field (Fitch, 2016; Oller, Dale, & Griebel, 2016).
Now and then one finds a new book provoking a newer hypothesis on the evolution
of language (Botha, 2016; Berwick & Chomsky, 2017). However, it is still not clear
if the evolution of language was cultural or biological and we know little about
origins of bilingualism. In a recent special issue of Topics in Cognitive Sciences
(Oller et al., 2016) there was not a single article on the evolution of bilingualism.
Similarly, in their ambitious work on language evolution, Berwick and Chomsky
(2017) write little on bilingualism. Probably many have assumed that there is noth-
ing special about bilingualism as far as its evolution is concerned. Some proposals
on the evolution of bilingualism (Roberts, 2013) consider bilingualism to be older
than monolingualism. In this chapter, I examine debates in language evolution,
paleoanthropology and social cognition to trace the evolution of skills that led to
bilingualism. If it is important to know the cognitive consequences of bilingualism,
it is also important to examine how it has evolved. Lack of a fossil record and a
comparative species to look into for answers has led to no clear hypothesis on the
evolution of bilingualism. There is no evidence of any other species using two

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 19

R. K. Mishra, Bilingualism and Cognitive Control, The Bilingual Mind
and Brain Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92513-4_2
20 2  The Evolution of Bilingualism

c­ ommunication systems at will. Bilingualism uses core computational and neural

mechanisms, including heightened social cognitive skills, which humans possess.
We need a neural and social evolutionary theory of bilingualism as a complex men-
tal skill.
An inquiry into the evolution of bilingualism is an inquiry into the evolution of
those core cognitive systems that make bilingualism possible in the brain—in par-
ticular, the ability of the brain to manage two languages at will and negotiate many
social and cultural contexts using executive control. The brain uses sophisticated
forms of conflict management and monitoring in managing two languages (Green,
1998; Kroll & Bialystok, 2013). The following appear to be possible contributing
factors to the evolution of bilingualism. Many of these ideas will be elaborated later.
(a) Learning and exchanges in two languages were possible when Homo sapiens
developed sophisticated social cognition that enhanced their theory of mind and
intentionality (Corballis, 2016).
(b) The brain’s ability to monitor, switch and shift at will and inhibit responses with
regard to context.
(c) Emergence of the executive control system that includes working memory and
selective attention.
(d) Social and cultural evolution (Sterelny, 2016).
It is also possible that bilingualism developed as our ancestors left Africa and
interacted with others on their way to different continents. Even if they met, how-
ever, why did learning one another’s language appeared significant and which neu-
ral and cognitive systems supported such an endeavour? A science writer in The
Guardian wrote that “Language evolution can be compared to biological evolution,
but whereas genetic change is driven by environmental pressures, languages change
and develop through social pressures. Over time, different groups of early humans
would have found themselves speaking different languages. Then, to communicate
with other groups – for trade, travel and so on – it would have been necessary for
some members of a family or band to speak other tongues.” (Gaia Vince, “Why
being bilingual works wonders for your brain?”, Aug 2016) Data from human evo-
lution and migration studies suggest that once out of Africa, our ancestors did make
it to other continents, meeting and interacting with other early hominins who were
different than them (Walter et al., 2000). For example, apart from the Homo sapiens
in Eastern Africa, there were the Neanderthals in Northern Europe, the Homo erec-
tus and the Denisovans in China (Korisettar, 2016). If these different hominins met
and they had a language (communication system) of some sort, then this was the
beginning of bilingualism. Many believe that no other early hominin had similar or
competing cognitive abilities like Homo sapiens. Then two groups of speakers with
distinct languages and brains capable of social cognition tracking one another’s
intentionality (Oesch & Dunbar, 2016) met, bilingualism may have emerged.
However, a dominant view in contemporary studies of language evolution states that
no other early hominins had any form of language than the Homo sapiens (Tattersall,
2016). This means that although there was a social interaction between these differ-
ent species, there was no linguistic interaction. Nevertheless, such interactions did
2.1 Introduction 21

enrich the neural systems supporting social cognition, which perhaps later came
handy for bilingualism.
Why was the phenotype for bilingualism selected by evolution? Bilingualism
might well have evolved to keep early hominins cognitively fit. Gaia Vince, the writer
I previously quoted, also suggested that “Such results suggest bilingualism helps
keep us mentally fit. It may even be an advantage that evolution has positively selected
in our brains, an idea supported by the ease with which we learn new languages and
flip between them and by the pervasiveness of bilingualism throughout world history.
Just as we need to do physical exercise to maintain the health of bodies that evolved
for a physically active hunter-gatherer lifestyle, perhaps we ought to start doing more
cognitive exercises to maintain our mental health, especially if we only speak one
language.” It’s certainly a provocative hypothesis that natural selection preferred
bilingualism since it offered cognitive advantage and also protection against serious
brain diseases. Much recent research has suggested that long-­term practice of bilin-
gualism protects the brain better against Alzheimer’s disease (Craik, Bialystok, &
Freedman, 2010). Current research on older bilinguals shows that they have superior
cognitive reserve (Bialystok, Craik, & Freedman, 2007; Woumans, Santens et  al.,
2015). Cognitive reserve is the brain’s immunity against terrible neurodegenerative
diseases. We can assume that since using two languages offered cognitive, neural and
social benefit, brains evolved to permanently adopt its use.
The evolution of material and complex symbolic culture made brains entertain
new challenges. The complexity of material culture and need to socially cooperate
probably led to the evolution of linguistic communication Deacon (2016).Thus, as
the population grew and society became complex, individual brains had to be obser-
vant of others. Kim Sternly, in his book The Evolved Apprentice (Sterelny, 2012)
proposed that the human mind arose in cooperation. When early hominines learned
to cooperate, they also influenced how they lived and thought—including transfer-
ring these skills to the next generation. Abilities such as conflict monitoring and
goal maintenance must have come about through group interaction at such times. If
humans had stayed solitary, then most of these abilities would not have evolved.
Even in the context of bilingualism, speakers and listeners have to constantly keep
track of others’ intentions and speech plans. Thus, social cooperation and its cogni-
tive demands must have helped maintain communication with others. Hominins
learned to work together and produce complex objects that became part of their
cognitive heritage. While one set of cognitive abilities might have been necessary to
produce complex tools and artefacts, once mass produced with others, they in turn
also influenced the emergence of newer cognitive skills. These skills had direct
interface with social cooperation and language emergence. Since bilingualism had
to be practised with others like a game, a complex maze of a socially supportive
structure was necessary. Merlin Donald wrote “Language is, in this sense, not a
feature of the brain per se. It is a cognitive epiphenomenon, a socially constructed
(Searle, 1969) cultural over-write imposed on a brain which is essentially primate in
its design. Language thus has its origin in a distributed cognitive system, while it is
performed by a local cognitive system, that is, the brain of an individual. It is the
child of an interactive cultural imagination, that is, of groups of brains in collision.”
22 2  The Evolution of Bilingualism

No doubt, social and cultural forces shaped the evolution of brain networks that
later adapted to newer challenges. The brain’s ability to support bilingualism was
one such important milestone.

2.2  Emergence of Language: Mutation Versus Gradual?

While the evolution of Homo sapiens from primates is not disputed, many have
taken the view that this important symbolic behaviour could be of accidental emer-
gence—because of a mutation (Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch, 2002). Others hold the
developmental, gradualist and evolutionary view (Lieberman, 2016). Was there a
sophisticated neurocognitive machinery in place already before language emerged?
Chomsky has long held the view (without much material evidence to support the
claims) that the question is not about the evolution of a communication system but
the emergence of a sophisticated computational apparatus for symbolic thought
(Berwick & Chomsky, 2017). This has nothing to do with communication and artic-
ulation; therefore, the social, cognitive and evolutionary angles are redundant. This
computational capacity for symbolic behaviour emerged as a sudden mutation in a
select group of Homo sapiens (Berwick & Chomsky, 2017; Bolhuis, Tattersall,
Chomsky, & Berwick, 2015). This was without any evolutionary precedence—
without any trace of gradual development.
Chomsky and colleagues propose that the core computational capacity support-
ing language emerged some 60,000–80,000 years ago. This is after 2 million years
of anatomically modern humans’ (Homo sapiens) emergence on Earth. Formalists
like Chomsky do not appeal to domain-general cognitive or neural capacities but
assume them to be important for hosting the algorithmic structures that lead to sym-
bolic computation necessary for language activity. ‘Merge’ means to blend two dif-
ferent structures and make a different one. This is the essence of language and
thought according to Chomsky. Unless the algorithm did merge, the combinatorial
and recursive aspects of language could not be realised. Figure 2.1 shows a sche-
matic description of ‘merge’ in the Chomskyan framework. The system in place
takes any two fragments and applies some rules and blends them together, ­producing

Fig. 2.1  The mechanism of ‘merge’ as per Chomsky’s system. A sentence is expressed as a col-
lection of phrases. Each phrase is headed by a lexical word. The individual nodes are smaller frag-
ments of language. These fragments need to be combined to form large sentence-like units. Phrase
structure rules operate on similar structures
2.2  Emergence of Language: Mutation Versus Gradual? 23

longer phrases. This procedure further goes on and on recursively. This had nothing
to do with oral language or the existence of the vocal apparatus or neural structures
in the hominids to support such an ability. No other early hominoids, even if they
were contemporaries of our ancestors, had this ability; therefore, their brains could
not configure complex symbolic structures. Within linguistics, others have offered a
functionalist and gradualist account of language evolution (Jackendoff, 2012;
Newmeyer, 2016). A functionalist account focuses on the cognitive and cultural
aspects of language evolution more than the formal structures that define linguistic
symbolic structures. In the absence of a verifiable fossil record or archaeological
proxies, we do not know when the language faculty and computational apparatus
evolved.
Ian Tattersall, a well-known paleo-anthropologist, while reviewing Chomsky’s
book (Berwick & Chomsky, 2017) observed that if you leave the writing systems, it
is tough to say anything about the evolution of human language in any objective
manner (Tattersall, 2016). There is simply no evidence that can point towards a
particular timeframe when hominids began speaking using syntax. Tattersall (2014)
also rejects the various proxies such as archaeological artefacts and handmade stone
weapons that archaeologists bring to argue for the position that such Homo sapiens
did have a sophisticated cognitive system which was conducive for language evolu-
tion. Therefore, the proposal that ‘merge’ was an outcome of a genetic mutation has
to be accepted without corresponding physical evidence. No evidence from
increased skull size or head dimension in modern humans will be sufficient to
endorse the fact that they indeed gave rise to a symbolic capacity. Bolhuis et  al.
(2015) wrote that “Questions of evolution or function are fundamentally different
from those relating to the mechanism, so evolution can never “explain” mecha-
nisms. For a start, the evolution of a particular trait may have proceeded in different
ways, such as via common descent, convergence, or exaptation, and it is not easy to
establish which of these possibilities (or combination of them) is relevant. More
importantly, evolution by natural election is not a causal factor of either cognitive or
neural mechanisms. Natural selection can be seen as one causal factor for the his-
torical process of evolutionary change, but that is merely stating the essence of the
theory of evolution.” Is this acceptable to others who are still searching for fossil
evidence to account for language evolution?
Explaining a random mutation that created at once a powerful computational
mechanism such as ‘merge’ may seem problematic evolutionarily. Supporting the
evolutionary–incremental view, Lieberman (2016) wrote that “Humans are the only
living species that possesses language, but its evolution does not appear to involve
any singular evolutionary mechanism that is in any sense unique to human. The
evolution of human language hinges on natural selection acting on heritable biologi-
cal variation.” Lieberman believes that the evolution of human language is not an
outcome of any specific evolutionary process unique to humans. Further, he states
that evolutionary processes that are specific to humans shaped language and no
brain mechanisms appear to be specific to speech or language. A full appraisal of the
biological bases of human language remains in the distant future. Lieberman also
proposes that most brain structures that today subserve language and higher
24 2  The Evolution of Bilingualism

1500cc

H.neanderthalensis/sapiens

1000cc
Volume

H.heidelbergensis

H.erectus
H.ergaster
500cc
“rudolfensis/habilis”
s.tchadensis A.afarensis/africanus

6.0 mya 3.0 mya 2.0 mya 1.0 mya .5 mya 0

Time

Fig. 2.2  Evolution of brain size in different early hominoids over time. (Bolhuis, Tattersall,
Chomsky, & Berwick, 2014)

c­ ognition are “recycled’. Does this mean that these structures developed to serve
other core functions but later forces of natural selection adopted them for language?
With regard to brain areas, those such as the frontal and parietal areas and the visual
cortex were probably present even in most archaic humans (Fig. 2.2) when they had
no language. Following this logic, most brain areas that are implicated for bilingual-
ism, such as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and other attentional areas, were
present much before language arose.
Others have argued that we must look at gestures and their evolution as a precur-
sor to language (Goldin-Meadow, 2016). Even current work with bimodal bilin-
guals has shown some of the core mechanisms to bilingualism such as shifting,
switching and parallel language activations are similar across modalities (Emmorey,
Luk, Pyers, & Bialystok, 2008). Some have suggested that cultural evolution shaped
how brains evolved and therein the various cognitive abilities (Morgan et al., 2015;
Thompson, Kirby, & Smith, 2016). In Sect. 2.3 I look at cognitive archaeology with
the hope of finding proxies that may indicate the emergence of cognitive systems
that probably supported the seamless manipulation required for the practice of
bilingualism.

2.3  A
 rchaeological Proxies and the Evolution of Complex
Cognition

Bilingualism is an instance of complex cognition that calls for both contextual sen-
sitivity and control. When did complex cognition in hominins emerge? Probably the
first cognitively radical transformation in our early ancestors happened when they
stood erect and walked with hind limbs. This led to several changes both cognitively
2.3  Archaeological Proxies and the Evolution of Complex Cognition 25

Fig. 2.3  Early hominoid footprints discovered at Laetoli, Tanzania by Mary Leakey. (Photo cour-
tesy of the University of Chicago website)

and otherwise. Figure 2.3 shows early Australopithecus afarensis footprints discov-

ered by Mary Leakey and others in 1975. This evidence has been taken as the first
suggesting bipedalism in our earliest ancestors. When early hominins could walk on
two legs, their hands became free for more complex actions. The emergence of
bipedalism has been considered one of the earliest landmarks in the evolution of
hominoid cognition (Donald, 1991). When the forelimbs were free, they could be
used for more fine and complex actions such as tool and weapon making or maybe
even art. The footprints found at Laetoli, Tanzania have been dated to be 3.5 million
years old. Anatomically modern Homo sapiens evolved around 2 million years ago.
According to current estimates, language evolved around 60–80,000  years ago
(Berwick & Chomsky, 2017). Bipedalism must have led to extensive use of hand
gestures for communication as hands became free. And we all know what role ges-
tures might have played in the subsequent evolution of human language (Corballis,
1999).
Similarly, substantial structural modifications in the hominin brain led to the
emergence of complex cognition. Although the development of cranial capacity and
expansion of frontal lobes in Homo sapiens is a very popular theory to account for
our intriguing mental skills (Wynn & Coolidge, 2017), recently much more interest-
ing proposals have emerged. The internal carotid arteries supply blood to the human
skull. Seymour, Bosiocic, and Snelling (2016) propose that more than brain size, the
dimension of these arteries increased significantly in Homo sapiens leading to
greater blood flow to support a high metabolism rate (Fig. 2.4). This makes sense
since most studies in brain imaging research measure the volume of blood flow to
the brain and different areas during demanding cognitive activity. Thus, bipedalism
and brain modification allowed Homo sapiens to execute tasks that called for com-
plex thinking, computation as well as control. As for language, gestures emerged as
key companions to communication.
Modern Homo sapiens were one of the early hominins who apparently devel-
oped a distinctive frontal lobe and greater cognitive abilities (Tattersall, 2014).
Figure 2.5 shows the many subspecies of hominins that preceded the Homo sapiens.
The Neanderthals were one of these subspecies and have been studied a lot from
different perspectives with fossil records. One of the most intriguing questions has
been whether Neanderthals had any language. While the Neanderthals may have
had some capacity for speech (Le May, 1975), it was not suitable for the complex
26 2  The Evolution of Bilingualism

Fig. 2.4  Increase in internal carotid in Homo sapiens compared with other early hominins.
(Seymour et al., 2016)

Mya H.sapiens Mya

0 0
H.floresiensis
H.neanderthalensis
H.heidelbergensis

H.erectus
1 H.mauritanicus/antecessor
1

H.georgicus

H.habilis
Au.sediba H.ergaster
2 P.robustus 2
K.rudolfensis P.boisei

Au.garhi
Au.africanus P.aethiopicus
3 3

Au.bahrelghazali
K.platyops Au.afarensis

4 Au.anamensis 4

Ar.ramidus

5 5

Ar.kadabba
6 O.tugenensis 6

S.tchadensis

7 7

Fig. 2.5  Time course of human evolution: modern Homo sapiens. (Tattersall, 2014)
2.3  Archaeological Proxies and the Evolution of Complex Cognition 27

manoeuvring which human speech requires. How nuanced it was is open to discus-
sion. Neanderthals’ incapacity for complex speech might have led to their ultimate
demise (Lieberman, 1992). The Neanderthals did not develop much social cognition
as a result of their separate evolutionary track compared with modern humans.
Pearce, Stringer, and Dunbar (2013) suggest that the Neanderthals’ brain developed
a superior capacity for visual cognition as they had much larger occipital lobes,
whereas the modern humans developed a bigger parietal and frontal lobe and with
it came superior social cognition. Gunz, Neubauer, Maureille, and Hublin (2010)
suggested that Neanderthal infants had a similar cranial capacity at birth to modern
Homo sapiens infants, but during development, the brain of Homo sapiens became
more globular while for Neanderthals it did not. Further, for Homo sapiens the fron-
tal region developed remarkably while for Neanderthals development was restricted
to the posterior of the brain. The emergence of symbolism indicating sophisticated
cognitive ability is fundamental in understanding how language, art, mathematics
and music might have evolved. Current evidence suggests that Neanderthals could
make symbolically rich jewellery long before anatomically modern humans popu-
lated Europe (Finlayson et al., 2012). Such Neanderthal jewellery made from ani-
mal tooth and bones may suggest not just a sense of aesthetics but also cognitive and
motor skills; however, more complex symbolism emerged around 50,000 years ago
with modern Homo sapiens (Rossano, 2010).
Others have proposed that the Neanderthals had the modern human’s capacity
for speech and language including some syntax (Dediu & Levinson, 2013). This
capacity must have allowed them to interact with modern humans. Neanderthals and
modern humans did have an interaction for an extended period before their disap-
pearance. However, it is not clear if Neanderthals’ speech capacity allowed them to
interact profitably with modern humans. Dediu and Levinson (2013) even suggest
that the current language diversity can be seen as coming from these two distinct
evolutionary sources. The African languages may have come from modern humans
and the European languages from the Neanderthals. Did this period of interaction
set the first precursor to bilingualism? Both Neanderthal and modem humans must
have tried to learn one another’s communication system. However, in the absence of
solid evidence, this remains a conjecture at best. Berwick, Hauser, and Tattersall
(2013), commenting on the proposal of Dediu and Levinson (2013), wrote that “Our
language phenotype is a competence consisting of three systems—syntax, seman-
tics, and phonology—that are internal to the mind/brain, along with two mediating
interfaces, the first linking the representational/computational systems to external
speech or sign, the second linking language to internal thought. The internal combi-
natorial computations are generative and rule-governed, engaging representations
that are both language-specific and domain-general. Generalized claims such as
Dediu and Levinson’s require evidence for all of these processes. But most of them
do not leave fossil evidence, and genetic clarification is unlikely given how poorly
we understand simpler phenotypes. For example, though the language is expressed
through articulate speech today, the anatomical capacity for speech cannot by itself
be taken as a proxy for language. The peripheral organs have to connect with the
internal phonological, syntactic and semantic representations, and nothing in the
28 2  The Evolution of Bilingualism

Table 2.1  The cognitive processes implicated in bilingualism by different authors and the tasks
used to identify them
Cognitive process Task
Inhibitory control/conflict resolution/ Stroop task, Simon task, stop-signal task, Flanker task,
conflict monitoring Attentional Network Task (ANT)
Attentional control/selective attention Dichotic listening task, Posner cueing task, visual
search, ambiguity resolution in figures
Switching/set shifting Non-linguistic task switching, card sorting tasks
Working memory maintenance Word span, digit span tasks

fossil record is ever likely to tell us: (a) what those representations were like; or (b)
whether the human brain had yet formed the necessary connections between, e.g.,
phonological representations and vocal output. This does not bode well for the type
of argument Dediu and Levinson advance, but let us examine the evidence they
present.”
What about evolution of general cognitive structures in our prehistory? The
emergence of working memory, for example, has remained hotly debated (Belfer-­
Cohen & Hovers, 2010). It is important to me here since working memory capacity
has been implicated in a big way in language and cognition (Wen, 2016). Further,
contemporary theorisation considers working memory and selective attention as
primarily the same processes involving the frontoparietal brain networks (Engle,
2002). Brain imaging data suggest that learning to knap stones in a complex manner
over an extended period uses the frontoparietal network (Stout, Toth, Schick, et al.,
2008). This network plays a key role in selective attention. More recently bilingual-
ism has been shown to enhance selective attention itself (Chung-Fat-Yim, Sorge, &
Bialystok, 2016). However, switching and shifting call for inhibition and the ACC
has been shown to perform this job (Abutalebi & Green, 2008; Abutalebi et  al.,
2011; see Table 2.1).
With newer evidence, the evolutionary timeline is pushed further back, suggest-
ing an even earlier emergence of certain cognitive powers in Homo sapiens (Lewis
& Harmand, 2016). Spatial cognition emerged 500,000  years ago (Wynn, 2002).
However, working memory capacity in humans developed much later (Wynn &
Coolidge, 2017). Working memory is linked to selective attention and also is a core
component of the executive control system (Engle & Kane, 2004). This aided in
complex goal-oriented action planning and creation of more subtle artefacts. Such
hominoids could plan future action and inhibit undesirable actions. This must have
been the first stages of evolution of the fluid intelligence that comprises of key cog-
nitive systems. It is likely that this enhancement in working memory is also linked
to the emergence of the computational structures that led to language. If we can
assume that these hominids were already using one or more languages, then it is
possible also to assume that working memory provided the necessary cognitive glue
for bilingualism (Chung-Fat-Yim et al., 2016). The emergence of working memory
capacity matches with the time when the frontal lobes enlarged (Coolidge, Wynn,
Overmann, & Hicks, 2015). More specifically the central executive component of
the working memory was probably the key responsible for more complex actions
2.3  Archaeological Proxies and the Evolution of Complex Cognition 29

and many executive control-related functions in hominins (Coolidge & Wynn, 2009)
around 100,000 years ago. Current research shows that language itself requires mul-
timodal integration of both visual and verbal information in real time and this calls
for working memory (Huettig, Olivers & Hartsuiker, 2011; Mishra, 2009). Children
with poor working memory capacity and attentional ability also show deficits in
language learning and use. Working memory and complex task planning led to
higher sophistication in artefacts such as shells and weapons (Henshilwood &
Dubreuil, 2009). The symbolic nature of this activity may have been a precursor to
language. Cognitive archaeological theories may have caveats. Tattersall (2016)
asks whether archaeological artefacts should be should be taken seriously as proxies
for cognitive mechanisms. For example, it is not clear what the links could be
between the findings that Homo heidelbergensis could make a sophisticated stone
tool and if they had necessary cognitive resources for a language.
Working memory and executive control may not be enough for linguistic interac-
tion. A sophisticated machinery for social cognition should be in place. Among
other skills, hypersociality has been suggested to have been an important trait that
evolved in Homo sapiens particularly (Marean, 2016). These Homo sapiens could
create robust social networks which changed many things. In addition to hypersoci-
ality, they also developed elaborate psychology to learn complex skills. Strong
social skills and cognition led to the establishment of ethnolinguistic communities.
The manner in which the social cognitive skills and executive control skills syn-
chronised and led to complex cognition in Homo sapiens was unique. Prosociality
seems to build a strong platform for shared systems that may include language,
culture and also technology (Hare, 2017). For example, the evolution of joint atten-
tion to any task could be one manifestation of prosociality.
Joint attention is central to learning and also the performance of a joint action
(Moore & Dunham, 2014). Language use among monolinguals or bilinguals is an
example of joint action. Prosocial attributes can facilitate such joint actions. Humans
have evolved this special talent to coordinate their thought and action with regard to
others. Language and communication depend heavily on this attribute. Joint actions
also entail a high degree of cognitive flexibility. This may include synchronising
responses and inhibiting them when inappropriate to the context. Bilingual lan-
guage use includes all of this within a social context (Green & Abutalebi, 2013).
Infants quickly show many social skills that include orienting towards faces and
sounds that are relevant and also interest in the environment (Machluf & Bjorklund,
2015). For example, the orienting of attention and gaze as a function of social cogni-
tion offers clues about how complex mutual cognition such as language learning
may be achieved Posner (2011). Unless infants are tuned to socially relevant stimuli
such as faces and eyes, there might not be much language learning.
Speakers and hearers continuously synchronise their speech acts with one
another (Pickering & Garrod, 2004). Although Berwick and Chomsky (2017) sug-
gest that computational capacity for language appeared in anatomically modern
humans some 60,000–80,000 years ago, it is not clear from their account if it co-­
evolved with social skills and psychology for learning. It is likely that bilingualism
developed as a function of such hyper-sociality (since bilinguals must also transact
30 2  The Evolution of Bilingualism

across cultures) and sophisticated, complex cognition. Although there is more or

less agreement that apart from Homo sapiens other early hominins (with whom they
overlapped and at times interbred) did not have language, Homo sapiens themselves
developed bilingualism because of their social cognitive skills supported by a newly
evolved neural mechanism for manipulating two languages.
The emergence of bilingualism, therefore, can probably be understood as a con-
sequence of language diversification and intermixing. Unless different groups of
Homo sapiens developed different language at distant locations, we do not expect a
situation for bilingualism to arise. Although, by this time, the Homo sapiens had
evolved the ability to learn and handle two languages. What is important is to find
out if the modern Homo sapiens powered by their extraordinary cognitive and social
skills and enlarged parietal and frontal areas were in a position to learn one anoth-
er’s language and become bilingual? Assuming that language itself is of relatively
recent origin (60,000–80,000  years; other anthropologists date the emergence of
complex cognition to 50,000–45,000 years only), and the diversity of languages to
be acquired as two systems must have taken time, we can assume that bilingualism
is probably of recent origin. However, to my knowledge, there have not been any
strong suggestions so far on this topic, except one which holds bilingualism to be
older than monolingualism. It is possible that in this intervening period, brain net-
works for switching, shifting and inhibiting developed that fully supported bilin-
gualism as and when the social and cultural encounter happened.
It could be that linguistic and cognitive functions were later adaptations by
mechanisms and neural structures already in place. Ardila (2016) proposes that
many contemporary cognitive functions seen in humans such as working memory,
inhibition, goal planning, and so on can be seen as modifications on some pre-­
adapted traits (see Table 2.2).
Ardila (2016) says that both linguistic skills and sophisticated executive control
functions evolved in parallel in our 1,500,000 years of evolution. Thus, most com-
plex functions can be traced back to some fundamental functions. Human cortex
had already developed the ability to select context-appropriate action and inhibit

Table 2.2  Different cognitive actions and the processes that serve them
Cognitive ability Pre-adaptation(s)
Grammatical language Perception of actions
Calculation abilities Finger knowledge
Spatial relations in language
Reading Visual perception
Cross-modal associations
Spatial perception
Writing Constructive abilities
Cross-modal associations
Praxic abilities
Meta-cognitive executive functions Perception of actions (grammatical
language)
Adapted from Ardila (2016)
2.4  Contextualising the Brain 31

others that were not required, which came handy when bilingualism emerged.
Similarly, with growth in the linguistic and social complexity of language use and
learning, the demands of bilingualism necessitated changes in cortical functions
without corresponding changes in the structure. This is what Ardila says when he
cites Ridley (2004), suggesting that a great many human cognitive functions have
evolved with few changes in the brain structure.

2.4  Contextualising the Brain

Deacon (1997) proposed that the utility value of language influenced selection pres-
sure on the genetic modification that led to its faster acquisition. This is evident with
the fluidity with which children acquire a language. Selection favoured biological
changes that led to the development of critical brain structures necessary for manag-
ing two languages. Hagen (2008) speculates on the evolution of bilingualism and
offers some interesting suggestions. His theory refers to social situations that might
have led to bilingualism. Hagen thinks that Lenneberg’s notion of a critical period
of language development is not useful when one wants to account for how our
ancestors learned the second language. Gradually developing needs for social and
cultural interaction then must have made adults acquire the language of their inter-
locutors for trade or to maintain social harmony. Thus, the notion of a critical period
cannot explain how adults could learn a second language and become bilinguals.
Although mastering a second language is more effortful for adults than for children,
with the right kind of motivation adults can also learn a second language.
Further, bilingualism must have helped in social conflict resolution. Hagen
(2008) also provides a range of archaeological evidence that suggests our ancestors
were always at war and often very violent. These violent wars were necessary for
gaining control over the other hunter-gatherers in the vicinity. Hagen wonders,
given this background, how it is possible that adults who were at war found time to
learn the language of their enemies—it was neither useful nor possible to learn the
language of your enemy when what is important is to fight and kill and survive.
However, this does not explain why today many adults learn the languages of others
even when there are wars and other communal violence. Commenting on Hagen
(2008), Hirschfeld (2008) echoes a similar thought. He says that our hunter-gatherer
ancestors lived in peaceful security and multilingualism was a selected evolutionary
trait since it was helpful. It is possible that with evolution and changing circum-
stances our social brain has evolved to acquire skills that may not be useful at once
but would contribute towards the development of a larger culture. Thus, learning the
language of the enemy might help in negotiating and conflict resolution. Natural
selection must, therefore, have preferred bilingualism since it was good for our
ancestors’ social life in many ways—both for the transaction of ideas and also
resolving conflict.
Bilingualism is cultural; it involves exchanges between two cultures related to
languages involved. Herrmann, Call, Hernández-Lloreda, Hare, and Tomasello
32 2  The Evolution of Bilingualism

(2007) have suggested that humans have a specially evolved faculty for cultural
intelligence. This allows them to understand the intentions of others, to acquire new
skills from others and also to develop a social bond. However, we do not know at
what stage of evolution or because of which factors such a specialised skill might
have evolved. As Hagen (2008) proposes, if humans were constantly at war with one
another, it is less likely that such cultural intelligence might have evolved easily.
Even if human brains had the necessary hardware to engage in symbolic activity
such as language use, it called for cultural evolution to start this process (Arbib,
2016). Cultural evolution led to shared awareness and transfer of symbolic knowl-
edge. Learning one another’s language for good was also linked to this parallel
evolution of language-ready brains and language-using brains. Thus, mere develop-
ment of the computational ability (of the type Chomsky proposes) was not enough.
Humans had to understand that this rich symbolic capacity called for shared action.
And such actions called for the exercise of crucial cognitive skills such as monitor-
ing, inhibition and conflict resolution. Work in the area of computational compara-
tive neuroprimatology informs that the widely popular mirror neuron system as seen
in both humans and higher primates might have evolved both as a result of biologi-
cal and cultural evolution (Ramachandran, 2000). Central to its claims lies the
observation that agents mentally simulate others’ actions even when they are not
performing these actions. Taking others’ perspective is also linked to this hypothe-
sis, which is probably central to bilingual communication.
Contemporary studies show that bilingual speakers know which language to use
to whom just by looking at the face of an interlocutor Woumans, Martin et  al.,
(2015). Bilingual speakers also show the influence of cues present in their environ-
ment on language planning (Li, Yang, Scherf, & Li, 2013). Thus, bilingual speakers
tag language to particular faces and scenes. The ability of the brain to tag language
to specific contexts should have evolved to support bilingualism. Therefore, apart
from cognitive mechanisms, the sensitivity of the brain to such contextual cues was
essential for bilingualism. Although we have no idea about the exact nature of the
evolution of bilingualism, we can make an attempt to join the dots. This has to be
relating to the cognitive systems that helped both in achieving control and contextu-
alised actions socially.

2.5  Development of Attention and Brain Networks

The last section in this chapter deals with the evolution of core brain systems that
have been implicated in complex cognition. Much of the evidence has come from
brain imaging studies in the last few decades. No fossil record will tell us how the
brain networks for complex linguistic and social functions developed in earlier
times. Developmental neuroscience data throw light on the evolving networks
shaped by experience and learning. Data from rs-fMRI (resting state functional
magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI]) show that critical functional networks in the
human cortex start developing during gestation itself (Hoff et  al., 2013). These
2.5  Development of Attention and Brain Networks 33

networks further keep developing in strength and size until age 2 years and beyond.
Children normally turn out to be good bilinguals if they grow up in a bilingual con-
text from an early age (Bialystok, 1991). Further, children can also learn a second
language very quickly when they are 6 or 7 years or even younger. It is likely that
by this time their brain networks supporting attention and working memory as well
as abilities to switch voluntarily have matured. However, children with develop-
mental language impairment or autism do not show such ability. Developmental
dyslexia, for example, seems to manifest similarly for both first and second lan-
guages. Alerting, orienting and executive control networks appear to differently
subserve cognitive control in bilinguals. However, it is hard to say based on current
findings whether these networks develop in bilingual children differently or if there
is a different maturational time course compared with monolinguals. Rueda,
Rothbart, McCandliss, Saccomanno, and Posner (2005) trained 4- and 6-year-old
children on executive attention task and measured both behavioural and brain activ-
ity on the Attentional Network Task (ANT). They found that significant improve-
ments were observed between ages 4 and 6 years. EEG (electroencephalogram) data
showed increased amplitude for the N2 component in the frontal areas (ACC), sig-
nifying increasing cognitive control.
Core primary brain networks are already in place in neonates and resemble
adults’ networks, while some significant higher-order networks develop over 2 years
(Gao, Alcauter, Smith, Gilmore, & Lin, 2015). This may suggest that even when
there is no language production and much active use, some brain networks are
already in place (Fig.  2.6). As cognitive demands grow, more sophisticated net-
works and connections develop. Here one can ask, do such developments differ

Fig. 2.6  Brain networks in children and adults. The connections among nodes indicate dynamic
functional connectivity during cognitive processing. (Fair et al., 2007)
34 2  The Evolution of Bilingualism

between children/infants exposed to bilingualism and those who remain in monolin-

gual contexts? Does language context and use as well as exposure change brain
networks differently? It has to be kept in mind that these networks that are later
implicated in the control of higher cognition and language are already in place
whether the child finds himself in a monolingual or bilingual community. However,
the language environment and early input should play a role in how these networks
mature in bilinguals and monolinguals.
Both attention orienting and executive control evolve steadily over childhood
(Posner, Rothbart, Sheese, & Voelker, 2014). Children develop the ability to orient
attention towards relevant stimuli and also to disengage attention when needed. This
flexibility also includes the capacity to monitor changes in the environment. Posner
and colleagues have mapped the different trajectories of these developments in both
very young infants and children. Importantly, performance at 7 months predicts per-
formance at 7  years. Thus, children with different abilities in executive control
acquire and use language differently. Since managing two languages calls for extra
executive control resources, it is likely that only those with a well-endowed capacity
for attention control are going to be better bilinguals. While it is tempting to view
superior executive control as a by-product of managing two languages, is it also
possible that efficient brain networks help one become an excellent bilingual in the
first place? Naturally, not everyone can be an effective user of language or a bilin-
gual due to sensory and motor deficits, even if bilingualism is rampant in the envi-
ronment. I wish to argue that sensory, executive and motor resources required for
the efficient practice of bilingualism are much higher (inhibition, switching and
shifting) than for monolingualism. Therefore, developmental neuroscience data
should be looked at carefully to answer some of these questions. Understanding
these will help in speculating how they might have evolved during evolution to sup-
port bilingualism.
Unfortunately, we do not have much neural evidence of neural changes when
children learn a second language. Only well-executed and controlled longitudinal
studies can reveal how one becomes bilingual and who can maintain the level of
skill needed to benefit later as a function of plasticity. It is clear from current research
that it is the quantum of bilingualism in practice expressed through variables such
as proficiency and fluency (Singh & Mishra, 2012, 2013) that predict executive
control advantage. Therefore, it is logical to expect that those bilinguals who had
trouble in the early acquisition or sustenance of bilingualism are not going to show
any plasticity-related changes in the brain. Although it is not an evolutionary ques-
tion, it is important to know how some core mechanisms that support bilingualism
evolved and how much time they took to mature. There is also little agreement with
regard to a ‘critical period of bilingualism’. If some children have weak attention
components, and therefore they could not be skilful practitioners of bilingualism,
then they are going to perform poorly on control tasks measured later, independent
of their bilingual status. This, of course, has entered into debates concerning the
influence of bilingualism on executive control but has not been studied carefully
with properly designed longitudinal studies.
2.5  Development of Attention and Brain Networks 35

Fig. 2.7  Important default mode networks of the adult human brain. (Van Den Heuvel & Pol,
2010)

The rs-fMRI data shows that during infancy important brain networks tracking
different perceptual and cognitive tasks develop in a hierarchy. The primary net-
works appear first, followed by the attention networks and, finally, all the important
executive control networks appear and long-distance functional connectivity devel-
ops (Clohessy, Posner, & Rothbart, 2001). Gao et  al. (2015) measured the brain
activity of infants in a longitudinal design starting from 1 month to 1 year of life and
examined the maturational features of nine important brain networks. Most impor-
tantly, the authors wanted to know whether socio-economic variables influence how
these networks change with time. The study revealed different maturational time-
points for different networks and their appearance followed the predicted patterns.
Importantly, socio-economic variables correlated with the strength of default mode
network and the sensorimotor network. Thus, the ability to learn from stimuli lies
with the efficiency of such networks. In contemporary cognitive neuroscience, anal-
ysis of the default mode networks of the human brain along with resting state net-
works has assumed significance (Fig. 2.7). It comprises important brain areas that
show high functional connectivity with one another. The assumption is that such
networks play a crucial role in important cognitive functions (Raichle, 2015).
Using the cueing paradigm, Posner and Petersen (1990) proposed three impor-
tant subsystems of the human attention system: alerting, orienting and executive
control. Behavioural studies with both children and adults show individual differ-
ences in the functioning of these networks. Brain imaging data show different
­cortical and subcortical networks that subserve these functions. For example, the
ventral and dorsal orienting systems support orienting. In a large sample study of
children, Mezzacappa (2004) observed that only children from financially sound
homes did well on executive control tasks. More specifically, they were better on the
36 2  The Evolution of Bilingualism

alerting network. Older children were better in the orienting network. These data
indicate a strong and early influence of socio-economic factors on the development
and efficiency of important attention network during infancy and childhood. If that
is so, then it is also possible that infants from well-to-do houses and where addition-
ally bilingualism is in practice may develop superior attention networks compared
with children from lower socio-economic homes and where parents speak one lan-
guage. Albeit, this conjecture has been controversial recently where researchers
have not been able to replicate findings where the modulating role of socioeconomic
variables on bilingual executive control advantage is concerned.
Cognitive psychological studies have shown that attention does not return to a
location soon after it has been disengaged from one location (inhibition of return)
(Klein, 2000); therefore, attention moves to newer locations and objects. This move-
ment of attention must have been important for our early survival. This inhibition of
return of attention to a recently attended location has been suggested to facilitate
foraging. Even archer fish, which do not have very well-developed cortexes, show
inhibition of return of attention (Gabay, Leibovich, Ben-Simon, Henik, & Segev,
2013). Our early ancestors must have often needed inhibition of return to survive
and it also comes in handy when finding new objects (Klein, 2000). Interestingly,
highly proficient bilinguals have been shown to disengage attention from stimuli
rapidly and are capable of deploying it to novel objects. It appears that attentional
mechanisms such as inhibition of return are ancient and have helped both for sur-
vival and cognition.
Nevertheless, it is important to know whether infants (Fig. 2.8) from bilingual
and well-to-do homes are already in possession of superior and efficient attention
networks compared with their monolingual peers, before they become fluent bilin-
guals? Or do these existing advantages lead them to become good bilinguals in the
first place? Those who have acquired both languages at birth would have practised
bilingualism longer than those who have learnt the second language later. They have
managed language conflict longer and, therefore, bilingualism should have a greater
effect on their brain networks than the late bilinguals. It is becoming very clear that
executive control, and attention in particular, play a central role in both acquisition
and maintenance of many important cognitive skills. Of course, these systems keep
maturing throughout adulthood, tackling newer challenges.
The ACC mediates conflict monitoring (Botvinick, Nystrom, Fissell, Carter, &
Cohen, 1999). Many recent studies that have used brain mapping during language
and attention tasks in bilinguals and monolinguals have implicated the important
role of this area in conflict management during language selection. With regard to
the question of the evolution of such important brain networks that might have sup-
ported bilingualism, comparative neuro-automatic studies show that the ACC is an
older structure and its white matter has changed significantly in recent evolution in
humans. Allman, Watson, Tetreault, and Hakeem (2005) report that the Von
Economo neurons increase in their number between infancy and early childhood in
the ACC and anterior insula. This suggests a gradual neurodevelopmental increase
in the executive control system that is important for bilingual language support.
Acquisition of a second language changes neural organisation both functionally and
2.5  Development of Attention and Brain Networks 37

Fig. 2.8  Structural connectivity of brain networks in infants using DTI (diffusion tensor imaging).
(Ment, Hirtz, & Hüppi, 2009)

structurally. Importantly, early acquisition and constant practice of a second lan-

guage boost the cortical density of critical brain regions that also control cognitive
systems such as attention and working memory. Mechelli et al. (2004) measured
structural plasticity using whole brain voxel-based morphometry in Italian–English
early bilinguals, Italian–English late bilinguals and English monolinguals. Brain
imaging data showed that the cortical thickness of the left inferior parietal cortex
was higher for the early bilinguals than in the late bilinguals and monolinguals.
Are there brain areas that are critical to learning a second language? Although
successfully learning a second language is again an outcome of complex interac-
tions between motivation, cultural–linguistic contexts and age of acquisition, some
brain areas seem to play a key role. Recently, Barbeau et al. (2016) trained adults in
the second language for 2 weeks and measured brain activity using fMRI at two
timepoints. The inferior parietal lobule (IPL) showed higher activity at the second
timepoint. Others have found that the grey matter density activity in this area cor-
relates with higher second-language proficiency and competence (Abutalebi,
Canini, Della Rosa, Green, & Weekes, 2015). The authors make an interesting
assertion based on the results suggesting that the activity of the IPL may actually
indicate one’s later success in learning a second language rather than being a conse-
quence of language learning. Other evidence suggests that this area also plays a key
role in spatial attention, although its right homologue plays even a greater role in
covert attention. Neuroimaging investigations show that in the bilingual brain, the
38 2  The Evolution of Bilingualism

lateral prefrontal sites control both syntactic and rule-based representations.

Additionally, the basal ganglia control inputs to the prefrontal areas (Buchweitz &
Prat, 2013). Therefore, the bilingual brain shows this typical neural organisation
which seems to accommodate language control. Constant practice of bilingualism
leads to plasticity-related changes in the frontal lobes, IPL and ACC (Abutalebi
et al., 2013). Children who are early and simultaneous bilinguals should develop
these brain areas and their specialisations much more for language control than late
bilinguals.
Albeit the empirical study of ‘consciousness’ has been elusive in cognitive sci-
ences, it is now possible to theoretically understand what exactly it does. I have
mentioned that working memory and selective attention were important systems
that have played a key role in cognitive evolution. Consciousness has been proposed
to include goal planning, conflict resolution, task switching, and so on (Hommel,
2017). These are important aspects of executive control systems. Consciousness
feeds these systems in many task scenarios. Actions are planned and executed only
when one is conscious with regard to the action’s outcome. Let us see the utility of
such theoretical thinking for bilingualism. Bilinguals need to select one of the lan-
guages, considering its contextual appropriateness voluntarily. This selection is also
dependent on understanding what is on the interlocutor’s mind. Therefore, volun-
tary control of action is important to handle languages better. However, it is not
clear if language selection is similar to other actions in a cognitive sense. Studies
have shown that bilinguals can voluntarily switch between two languages and also
other tasks (Gollan & Ferreira, 2009; Gollan, Kleinman, & Wierenga, 2014). It is
tough to say when consciousness emerged in Homo sapiens in the way it is under-
stood scientifically today. However, if consciousness is understood as the mecha-
nism that is closely related to action and executive control (Hommel, 2017), then it
was in place before the computational capacity for language emerged. In his model,
Chomsky does have an intentional–conceptual component, but we do not know any-
thing about its evolution or if it was specific to the language system or other sys-
tems. Given this scenario, apart from just executive control systems, aspects related
to consciousness and action control should be studied with regard to the question of
bilingualism.

2.6  Summary

In this chapter, I have explored the evolution of bilingualism with regard to the
material and cognitive conditions that led to its emergence. In the absence of any
material record, it is unwise to abandon the evolutionary developmental view and
wholeheartedly adopt a mutation view. While there may not be any evidence to
show that language or bilingualism evolved incrementally, we also cannot explain
why a strange mutation might have suddenly happened. Data from cognitive archae-
ology and related fields can point to which cognitive skills must have arisen more or
less at what timepoint. It appears that core mechanisms required to handle two
References 39

languages evolved when Homo sapiens developed sophisticated social cognition.

Bilingualism became a norm, and further practice of it influenced brain systems.
Bilingualism also spread socially as it helped forge economic and cultural relations.
However, its evolutionary selection probably had a larger agenda that included
enhancing cognitive reserve. It was essential for general cognitive health.
Although no fossil proxy can indicate the timeline of the evolution of monolin-
gualism or bilingualism, available evidence we can still help us make some sound
guesses here. Bilingualism seems to have evolved out of cultural pressure, but more
so when the Homo sapien brain developed the neural and cognitive resource for
social cognition, especially when the brain had the right networks to shift, switch
and inhibit responses. Many of these systems had their origin in earlier times, and it
may be possible that many early hominins had these capacities. However, their use
in language management is probably very recent. I emphasise that to understand
how the brain acquired bilingualism, we have to know what the brain needs to prac-
tice bilingualism: linguistics, cognitive archaeology and language evolution.
Evolutionary psychology and cognitive anthropology have attempted to understand
how humans developed language and cognition in general. In this chapter I have
discussed the various perspectives on this issue. I think that bilingualism emerged
as an interaction between socio-cultural forces and neural development. It is not yet
settled whether anthropological artefacts should be used as proxies for mapping the
origin of complex cognitive behaviour. More recently, even our understanding of
the routes and nature of human migration out of Africa is changing (Pagani et al.,
2016). New evidence suggests that anatomically modern humans might have
emerged in Asia Liu et al. (2010). Human teeth dating back 100,000 years ago were
found in a cave in China. While some believe that we had no contact with the
Neanderthals, others have gone as far as attributing the currently seen language
diversity to the Neanderthals. Further, the range of cognitive systems that control
bilingualism in the brain is not finite, nor are they the result of neural activity in
specific networks. What is known is the mechanism that is likely involved in lan-
guage switching and monitoring, including inhibition. However, one can only spec-
ulate when the systems might have evolved.

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Woumans, E., Santens, P., Sieben, A., Versijpt, J., Stevens, M., & Duyck, W. (2015). Bilingualism
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Oxford University Press.
Chapter 3
What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? The Core
Cognitive Mechanisms

3.1  The Cognitive Basis of Bilingualism

Bilinguals manage two languages during speaking. However, this language man-
agement has different connotations with regard to different things. A key question is
if they exercise ‘control’ during such management. Language management is linked
to how they have acquired their two languages, current proficiency, environment,
age and other factors. Many excellent textbooks have discussed these issues exhaus-
tively (Kroll & De Groot, 2009). Psycholinguistic models such as the revised hier-
archical model (RHM) (Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Fig. 3.1) or the bilingual interactive
activation (BIA+) model (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 1998) speak of developmental
connections between the native (L1) and the second (L2) langauge non-selective
activations, respectively. Importantly, most of these models make assumptions
about the underlying psychological or neurological mechanisms. These assump-
tions have a crucial bearing on the question of control. The models and their assump-
tions have influenced our understanding of domain-general executive control and its
relation to language control. Questions related to switching and shifting have been
critical in linking cognitive control to such processes.

3.2  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind?

3.2.1  Translation

What bilinguals do depends on what kind of bilinguals they are. Simultaneous,

sequential early and late bilinguals process their second language differently. Most
bilinguals in the world learn a second language later in life—they may achieve
native language-like proficiency through immersion and practice. A fundamental
observation has been that in such bilinguals, language control mechanisms are

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 45

R. K. Mishra, Bilingualism and Cognitive Control, The Bilingual Mind
and Brain Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92513-4_3
46 3  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? The Core Cognitive Mechanisms

Fig. 3.1  The revised

hierarchical model (RHM)
of Kroll and Stewart
(1994). As L2 proficiency
increases, bilinguals no
longer rely on translation
into native language

linked to their performance on L2 neural representations of languages may be dif-

ferent for those who acquired both languages together as opposed to separately. For
example, the switch cost during naming differs for balanced and nonbalanced bilin-
guals; non-balanced bilinguals translate the second-language words into the first
language as they learn the second language, which gradually changes with profi-
ciency (Kroll & Stewart, 1994). Interestingly, even high proficient bilinguals show
unconscious translation between the languages when using their second language
(Mishra & Singh, 2016; Sunderman & Priya, 2012).
Let us consider the translation recognition task (Sunderman & Priya, 2012). In
this task, pairs of words (one in L1 and the other in L2) are given to participants to
judge. At times, the second word is phonologically related to the translation of the
first word. Studies have shown that bilinguals take more time in rejecting these pairs
since they quickly activate the translation of the first word and this interferes with
their processing of the second word. Interestingly, this is seen in bilinguals who
have already mastered the second language. We can also label such activations as
language non-selective cross-language activation. Many eye tracking visual world
studies have also shown such unconscious parallel language activation (e.g.
Blumenfeld & Marian, 2007; Mishra & Singh, 2014, 2016). For example, using the
visual world paradigm, Mishra and Singh (2016) demonstrated that Hindi–English
bilinguals automatically translate spoken words into the other language. Unbalanced
but high (L2) proficient Hindi–English bilinguals listened to a spoken word and
looked at four pictures on a computer screen (Fig. 3.2). One of the pictures was a
phonological cohort of the translation of the spoken word. Eye movement data
showed that listeners immediately oriented their gaze towards the object whose
name overlapped with the translation of the spoken word (Fig. 3.3).
These findings suggest that the Hindi–English bilinguals, who were clearly
unbalanced, spontaneously activated the translations of the spoken words. Due to
spreading activation, these words further activated the phonologically related forms.
These activations have been suggested to be automatic since experimental partici-
pants do not seem to have conscious control over them. For instance, Wu et  al.
(2013) showed that native language is automatically activated when words in the
3.2  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? 47

Fig. 3.2  Sample trial. In this example, the spoken word gulab (‘rose’) was presented. The display
consisted of the phonological competitor of rope, a phonological competitor of rose and three
unrelated distractors (Mishra & Singh, 2016)

second language are incidentally processed in a task that did not require explicit
language processing. However, the question of translation is critical as it forms the
core assumption in a major model (RHM). Why do high proficient bilinguals trans-
late? Shouldn’t the need to translate decrease as L2 proficiency increases? Ma,
Chen, Guo, and Kroll (2017) observed that low proficient L2 learners showed higher
semantic interference in a translation recognition task. A similar finding was also
shown by Guo, Misra, Tam, and Kroll (2012) with high proficient bilinguals. This
means that the low and high proficient bilinguals activate translations for either
similar or different necessities. While high proficient bilinguals have now been
shown to activate translations, it is not certain that it is only for reasons of need.
There have been suggestions that bilinguals activate translation equivalents if they
have more time in hand. For example, Ma et al. (2017) did not find translation effects
at a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) but only at a long SOA. But data from a
visual world eye-tracking paradigm suggests that both low and high proficient bilin-
guals show translation affects around 200 ms of word onset (Mishra & Singh, 2014).
Recently, Costa, Pannunzi, Deco, and Pickering (2017) have suggested that these
effects may have little to do with translations. They argue that the English lexicon
of second-language speakers is organised differently to that of native English speak-
ers (Fig. 3.4). Taking the example of Chinese–English bilinguals, they argue that an
association between train and ham is formed independently in the English lexicon
of Chinese–English speakers because of the association between their translations
huo che and huo tui. Thus, ham might be activated while listening to train because
of this direct association and not because their ­corresponding translations are acti-
48 3  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? The Core Cognitive Mechanisms

Fig. 3.3  Proportion of fixations for the translation competitor and distractors. Parallel activation
was higher when the spoken word was in L2. High proficient bilinguals activated the translations
earlier than low proficient bilinguals (Mishra & Singh, 2016)

vated. The same probably goes for Indians and others who learn English as a second
language at school. Thus, the translation route might not be active in bilinguals who
achieve high proficiency but still might show the effects normally attributed to
translation. Even bimodal bilinguals translate signs into words and vice versa.
Giezen and Emmorey (2016) found that bimodal bilinguals who knew ASL
(American Sign Language) showed facilitation in the production of ALS signs for
pictures when they were preceded by words phonologically related through transla-
tions. One can say that these individuals have learnt the sign language later in life
and they must have learnt these signs through translation. Therefore, the translation
route is still active when they have to function unimodally. The fluency of such
bimodal bilinguals in controlling the co-activation of these two systems is also
linked to their executive control (Emmorey, Giezen, & Gollan, 2016). Nevertheless,
it is clear that all kinds of bilinguals show automatic contact between the lexicons
of their two languages at phonological and semantic level. This contact is often
dubbed as non-selective parallel activation. The need to control one while focusing
on another is linked to such spurious activations. Therefore, understanding the
nature and extent of cross-linguistic activations during bilingual language process-
ing is critical in understanding the control involved.
3.2  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? 49

Fig. 3.4  Illustration from Costa et al. (2017) showing the structure of the L1 and L2 lexicon in
Chinese–English speakers as a function of second-language learning. By the end of learning, asso-
ciations are formed between the two unrelated words train and ham because of the association
between their corresponding translations in Chinese: huo che and huo tui

3.2.2  Inhibition

Inhibition is the mechanism that has attracted most interest and controversy in
defining how bilingualism influences cognitive control. Inhibition means to inhibit
an emerging response which is not goal appropriate. As discussed in the last section,
bilinguals activate both lexicons simultaneously even if there is no need for it in a
given situation. Therefore, they need to inhibit one response in order to articulate
the correct language. Activating both languages irrespective of the current goal is
one significant characteristic of the bilingual mind itself. The bilingual mental con-
trol model of (Green, 1998) first proposed a general purpose inhibitory control
mechanism at work in the bilingual brain. Later, many neuroimaging studies have
shown that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and some prefrontal areas coordi-
nate this activity in the bilingual brain. Green’s suggestion was that a general pur-
pose control system (also used for non-linguistic tasks) in the bilingual brain inhibits
task-inappropriate language. This led to the idea that bilinguals should differ from
monolinguals on a non-linguistic tasks such as the Stroop or the Stop Signal task.
Early studies by Bialystok, Craik, Klein, and Viswanathan (2004) found such
effects, which were then replicated by others. For example, Mishra and colleagues
found that highly proficient Hindi–English bilinguals show a lower Stroop cost than
low proficient bilinguals on an oculomotor version of the Stroop task (Singh &
Mishra, 2012).
50 3  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? The Core Cognitive Mechanisms

Picture naming has been classically used to study the mental dynamics of lan-
guage control (e.g. Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Costa & Santesteban, 2004).
Researchers often ask participants to name pictures in mixed blocks or pure blocks—
mixed blocks elicit language switching. There is a cost involved in switching between
languages which has been interpreted to indicate inhibition (Meuter & Allport,
1999). Bilinguals have been shown to apply sustained inhibition to their first lan-
guage, particularly if they are unbalanced bilinguals. This is because in such bilin-
guals the native language words activate strongly and have to be inhibited (Peeters &
Dijkstra, 2017). Of course, different types of bilinguals, depending on their language
fluency and dominance, may show different levels of switch cost. Switch cost appar-
ently indexes the reactive form of inhibitory control (Philipp & Koch, 2009). Is there
a proactive type of inhibition involved in language production?
Braver has offered theoretical accounts for reactive and proactive types of inhibi-
tory control Braver (2012). But Green’s initial idea which led to many studies with
bilinguals considered a reactive form of control. It is evident that Green had in mind
the cued naming paradigm with mixed languages where people switch between
languages based on the instruction. Recently Ma, Li, and Guo (2016) allowed peo-
ple more preparation time as they named digits or pictures. It was observed that they
were able to overcome the need to apply the reactive type of inhibition and applied
a more proactive type of control. This was reflected in the switch costs. Proactive
control can be understood as top-down control which sets action plans for succes-
sive trials. Proactive control in this context does not mean that applying it will lead
to no activation of the unwanted lexicon. Inhibitory processes can also continue
over time. For example, if one inhibits a response on a certain trial then when the
same item comes up it will also be inhibited. This means that inhibition continues to
be applied when items that were previously not considered become relevant again
(Koch, Gade, Schuch, & Philipp, 2010). This is also seen during cued language
naming. People take a long time to name in the language that was inhibited in the
previous trials because re-activating an inhibited language is cognitively costly.
Are there other types of inhibitory mechanism? Forstmann et al. (2008) distin-
guished between two types of inhibitory systems. One is selective and applies to
specific types of stimuli and the other, which is a general inhibitory system, is non-­
selective. The general non-selective system is top-down. Shao, Roelofs, and Meyer
(2012) found that selective and non-selective inhibitions are applied differently dur-
ing object naming with monolinguals. When distractor pictures are presented with
target objects to be named, speakers have to inhibit those. These objects could share
meaning or form with the target objects. Speakers’ scores on the Stop Signal task
correlated with their non-selective inhibition in object naming but not with selective
inhibition. In the context of bilingual object naming one can think of inhibiting one
language schema which is top-down and non-selective while selective inhibition
relates to specific objects. Using event-related potential (event-related potential),
Shao et al. (2014) further showed that quantum of selective inhibition applied to
reduce distractor interference during object naming correlates with the N200 com-
ponent. This component has been linked with inhibitory processes. While these
explanations with regard to monolingual naming are straightforward, it is difficult
3.2  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? 51

to explain how selective inhibition works for the bilingual. For the bilingual speaker,
every object presented for naming activates its name in both the languages.
But do bilinguals indeed inhibit a response or are other mechanisms involved?
As of now, we don’t know the answer. In their meta-analysis, Hilchey and Klein
(2011) argue that if two groups differ in inhibition in a Stroop-like task, then the
difference between the groups should only be observed in the performance on the
incongruent trials. The incongruent trials in a Stroop-like task require conflict reso-
lution. However, when they performed the meta-analysis they found that bilinguals
were faster on all types of trials, not necessarily only on incongruent trials. This
means that it was not inhibition leading to lower Stroop effects but a superior execu-
tive control system which was responsible for the overall faster reaction times in
bilinguals. The general overall speed advantage is linked to executive control.
Hilchey and Klein (2011) proposed that the inhibitory control account is insufficient
and argued for a superior executive processing advantage in bilinguals. However,
they offered no theoretical explanation as to why bilinguals should show even this
overall reaction time benefit. Mishra and colleagues have also observed that apart
from specific Stroop advantage, bilinguals were also faster on neutral as well as
congruent trails (Singh & Mishra, 2012, 2013, 2016). They suggested that both a
general speed advantage and an inhibitory control advantage can be present in such
bilinguals. However, this does not sort out the theoretical difficulty of explaining
what exactly is leading to such effects.
My intention here is not to get into the many psycholinguistic theories on naming
but rather on how inhibition as a control system is involved in naming. Of course,
one can imagine a bilingual speaker as two monolinguals and each language may
require some sort of control system. Nevertheless, the current arguments and debates
focus on whether there is a general purpose control system common for both lin-
guistic and non-linguistic systems and whether the manifestations of this control
system is mostly or exclusively in the domain of inhibitory control. The data on
proactive or non-selective inhibition point towards a top-down mechanism.
Whatever the mechanism may be, the other important issue is whether the exercise
of such a control system leads to enhancement of capacity, which in turn extends to
non-linguistic inhibition. Although theoretically plausible, the data in support of
these arguments are controversial. It is possible that the experiments so far have not
been able to pinpoint the exact type of inhibitory mechanism that bilinguals use dur-
ing language control, which should only be seen on certain tasks. A wide range of
tasks that have been used to measure inhibition have their impurity (Miyake et al.,
2000). To what extent a particular task mimics the process under debate is also
questionable. The gross assumption is that tasks such as the Stroop or Stop Signal
task do call for inhibition, which is then seen in the dependent variables. Nevertheless,
inhibition is certainly a key mechanism in different aspects of language control both
in monolinguals and bilinguals. However, how far linguistic inhibition is function-
ally linked to the enrichment of executive control remains contested.
52 3  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? The Core Cognitive Mechanisms

3.2.3  Task Switching

Inhibition of one language and selection of another may involve switching—switch-

ing between languages requires executive control (Green, 1998). Brain imaging
data show that frontal control areas are active when bilinguals switch between lan-
guages. For example, in an early brain imaging study, Price, Green, and Von Studnitz
(1999) found different cortical areas to be active when bilinguals switched between
languages and when they translated words. While translation engaged the ACC,
switching was found to engage Broca’s area. Different bilinguals differ in their
degree of switching depending on a range of factors. The social context within
which they live and use language decides how often they switch, and their language
proficiency decides if they pay a higher or a lesser cost while switching. Switching
is, therefore, a diagnostic feature of bilingualism. It can involve switching between
two tasks or action plans.
Language switching has been examined widely in different populations using the
picture naming task (Meuter & Allport, 1999). When bilinguals switch from the
dominant to the less dominant language they pay a cost, and this cost has been
shown to be asymmetrical. Higher costs are seen when switching from the less
dominant to the more dominant language than vice versa. Others have observed that
early and balanced bilinguals may not show this asymmetry (Bobb & Wodniecka,
2013). But why does switching matter when we are trying to understand bilingual
language control? Switching matters as it involves executive control in a big way.
Many brain imaging studies have shown that areas that are involved in general exec-
utive control show activity in switching (Hernandez, Martinez, & Kohnert, 2000).
For example, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is active when people switch between
languages.
Could switching be the key to understanding the cognitive advantages that bilin-
gualism may bestow? One way to understand this is to have bilinguals divided into
good and bad switchers and then examine them in executive control tasks. The idea
is that if someone switches a lot he must be exercising executive control a lot. Or we
can indirectly examine whether bilinguals are better than monolinguals in task
switching. Prior and Mcwhinney (2010) found that bilinguals are better (incurred
lower switch cost) at task switching than monolinguals. Switching also indicates
flexibility in mental set shifting. Wiseheart, Viswanathan, and Bialystok (2016) also
reported that bilinguals demonstrate lower switch cost when they shift between non-­
verbal tasks. Balanced and non-balanced bilinguals may show different switch
rates. Verreyt, Woumans, Vandelanotte, Szmalec, and Duyck (2016) administered
Flanker and Simon tasks to bilinguals who were either balanced or unbalanced
based on their switching. Balanced bilinguals who were frequent switchers outper-
formed others on these executive control tasks.
The frequency and types of code-switching in bilinguals should be a straight
outcome of their socio-linguistic context. Why do bilinguals code-­switch and how
often? If we know these data, it will be important in explaining any executive con-
trol advantage they may display. Let’s take the case of Brussels in Belgium. Brussels
3.2  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? 53

is officially bilingual. It is important to know that Belgium has been a zone of both
language and political conflict where bilingualism has played a crucial role. While
the upper part of Belgium is predominately Dutch-speaking and the lower portion is
French, Brussels is bilingual. Treffers-Daller (2010) observed that while older bilin-
guals in Brussels switched more, this is not the case with the younger bilinguals.
One of the reasons the author pointed out was to do with knowledge of the correct
version of Dutch. People who knew this purer version switched more. The younger
generation might not switch more because of their heightened awareness of social
conflict and also to assert their ethnicity. Although there are numerous studies
examining both the links between switching and executive control as well as costs
in mixed naming, it is not clear how such mechanisms may differ in various
contexts.
In one study, Lawson and Sachdev (2000) examined the nature and extent of
code-switching in bilinguals in Tunisia. Code-switching was observed only when
speakers spoke with their in-group members and not outsiders. That is, bilinguals do
not code-switch when they perceive someone as an outsider ethnically. In Basque
country, schools make sure that teachers switch between Basque and Spanish regu-
larly so that children use both languages as their first languages (Lasagabaster,
2011). However, we do not know whether the bilinguals there switch a lot. Of
course, there won’t be much switching if bilinguals have to stay with monolinguals
who speak only one language. In many speech communities, switches may be more
intra-sentential, and in some others they may be more inter-sentential (Poplack,
1988). Poplack reported the difference in the extent of code-switching among
Puerto Rican speakers of Spanish and English in New York, USA, and the French–
English bilinguals in Ottawa, Canada. The socio-linguistic reasons for their switch-
ing in their contexts are different. The reasons for code-switching and its quantum
in a certain bilingual population could be many (Gardner-Chloros, 2009). This
means that the quantum of code-switching in the everyday speech of bilinguals is
also dependent on who he/she talks to. This leads to a very important link between
levels of social conflict, the frequency of switching in certain bilingual places and
the degree of executive control these bilinguals may require.
Code-switching and frequency directly influence the engagement of the execu-
tive control mechanism (Poplack, 2001). Bilinguals also code-switch more when
they are in the bilingual ‘mode’ than when they are in the monolingual mode
(Grosjean, 2008). While in monolingual mode, bilinguals should inhibit the activa-
tion of the language not in use. While in bilingual mode, both languages are active.
Switching, if any, therefore, should happen when bilinguals are in the bilingual
mode. More often the bilingual speakers of a community converse in the bilingual
mode; they are likely to switch more. Therefore, the number of bilinguals and
monolinguals and the frequency in which they have interactions also decides the
quantum of bilingual mode experienced. When the bilinguals are in a minority
within a community, they are less often in the bilingual mode and, therefore, they
have less opportunity to switch. If they are in the majority, then they have more
chances to mix and switch languages. An interesting point on this is related to the
executive control of bilinguals in a bilingual majority as opposed to a bilingual
54 3  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? The Core Cognitive Mechanisms

minority context. In the first context, they switch more often and in the latter con-
text, they switch less but inhibit the inappropriate language more often while at least
conversing with monolinguals. It’s understandable that even when bilinguals are
communicating and switching language, the unused language has to be inhibited.
However, the nature of inhibition in these two cases is probably different.
Bilinguals also switch if they come across any language cue that forces their
systems to reconfigure. The influence of social context on bilingualism is discussed
in detail in Chap. 6, but some examples are necessary here. Bilinguals are sensitive
to cues that are linked to particular languages. In one study, Zhang, Morris, Cheng,
and Yap (2013) found that Chinese–English bilinguals became slower speaking in
English when they saw a Chinese face. Similarly, in another study, Roychoudhuri,
Prasad, and Mishra (2016) found that Bengali–English bilinguals were slower in
naming objects in English when they saw some Bengali-specific culture pictures.
These studies show that bicultural bilinguals activate their native language instantly
when they see a visual cue related to that language. However, such activation comes
into conflict with naming in English. Thus, bilinguals switch covertly when they
become sensitive to some visual cues. This then affects actual language production.
These data also indicate that bilinguals’ code-switch may be unintentional most of
the time depending on cues they experience in their environment. Thus, the fre-
quency of switching between languages has a lot to do with social context.
The adaptive control hypothesis (Green & Abutalebi, 2013) has attempted to link
the frequency of code-switching in a particular context to executive control. The
proposal gathers its strength from the observation that bilinguals switch in a given
context depending on different variables. One of these is the knowledge of the inter-
locutor. In some cases, the bilinguals rarely switch languages as they use different
languages for different contexts. In that case, the demands on executive control are
less. Some others fuse both the languages in the same sentence, making heavy
demands on control. Others have to switch between the two languages in different
contexts constantly. These dual code-switchers have to bring in lots of control.
According to Green and Abutalebi (2013), these three types of bilinguals develop
three different types of control systems. Now then, the task is to find out which
bilingual belongs to which type. This may require socio-linguistic analysis.
For example, how do we classify the Telugu–English bilingual students at the
University of Hyderabad and Hindi–English bilinguals at other northern universities
in India? In India, many prefer to use the L1 at home and English at the office. Thus,
they may not switch as such, but again it depends on the context and who one is
speaking to. A bilingual encountering a monolingual will inhibit the second lan-
guage and its activation; there will be no need to switch in such a case. If he speaks
to another bilingual, then switching will be mutual. However, depending on the
perceived proficiency of the interlocutor, the speaker may prefer to switch or not
switch. In one recent study, Hartanto and Yang (2016) tested two groups of bilin-
guals in Singapore, divided based on their switching contexts, on the recommenda-
tions of the adaptive control hypothesis. As predicted, bilinguals from a
single-language context (which did not require switching) showed a higher switch
cost (on a non-linguistic switching task) than bilinguals from a dual-language
3.2  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? 55

c­ ontext. The authors argued that it is the habits of switching which are reflected in
how they easily switched in a non-linguistic task. This research deviates from early
approaches as it takes into account the speaker’s linguistic and social habits—what
exactly they do as bilinguals in a given context.
Given this background, one wonders what kind of bilinguals researchers have
been studying when they have been reporting either the presence or absence of
bilingual advantage? Do we know what their history of language switching is? Are
they in the majority or minority in their speech community? What is their frequency
of switching during a day? What kind of executive control can one expect in a bilin-
gual who does not switch at all if he resides in a community where switching is
considered bad pragmatically? Also, we have little data about switching situations
in many parts of the world where there are bilinguals. Unless we have good data on
these factors, it is difficult to understand the cognitive and psycholinguistic implica-
tions of bilingualism.

3.2.4  Monitoring

Monitoring the environment for any conflict is an essential component of executive

control. When there is more conflict that needs attention for resolution, then there is
a higher engagement of executive control (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, &
Cohen, 2001). The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the ACC are involved in such
conflict monitoring and executive control (Kerns et al., 2004). Switching between
languages during bilingual conversation is interlocutor dependent. Bilingual speak-
ers need to monitor their environment to know when to switch constantly. It is, of
course, dependent on the individual language profiles of the bilinguals. The point is
not that bilinguals have to switch but the mechanism through which they switch.
This calls for monitoring, which is part of the executive control system (Miyake
et al., 2000). Monitoring in a task situation includes alertness and also vigilance. It
may also include awareness of recent performance in the task. For the bilingual
speaker, monitoring includes evaluating who is a bilingual and who is monolingual
in a communication context. It also includes monitoring for conflict. However, it is
not clear what monitoring for conflict may mean. Is it to monitor the inconsistent
switching patterns of an interlocutor or the self? If bilinguals always monitor for
conflict in the environment, then it is possible that this itself should enhance their
executive control. Essentially, conflict can mean even the slightest change or even
incongruency between stimuli and response. With higher conflict, bilinguals should
engage in higher executive control. Costa, Hernández, Costa-Faidella, and
Sebastián-Gallés (2009) showed that when monitoring demands are high, bilinguals
bring in greater executive control. They had administered the Attentional Network
Test (ANT) where they manipulated the percentage of incongruent trials in blocks,
thus manipulating monitoring demands. For example, when in a given block of tri-
als only 20% of trials are either congruent or incongruent, then monitoring demands
are much lower. However, if congruent and incongruent trials are mixed in equal
56 3  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? The Core Cognitive Mechanisms

numbers, then uncertainty is very high. The authors observed that bilinguals dif-
fered from monolinguals only for the block where monitoring demands were high.
Later, Mishra and colleagues also replicated this with an eye tracking saccade para-
digm and found similar results (Singh & Mishra, 2013).
Conflict management and monitoring could be applicable to both linguistic and
non-linguistic stimuli for a bilingual. Neuroimaging evidence suggests that when
presented with conflict, bilinguals adapt better and show less activation in the ACC
(Abutalebi et al., 2011). In this study, the authors compared bilinguals and monolin-
guals on the Flanker task when they were scanned in an fMRI (functional magnetic
resonance imaging) experiment. However, how the bilingual brain adapts to linguis-
tic and non-linguistic conflict is not that easy to explain. While the conflict in a
Stroop or Simon task may require one to be attentive to response inhibition, it is not
yet settled whether the same mechanism is used during language production as well.
Moreover, the term ‘monitoring’ has been used differently by researchers who have
performed fMRI studies and those who have carried out behavioural studies. For
example, the studies by Costa et al. (2009) and Singh and Mishra (2013) use moni-
toring in the sense of alertness or being attentive to constantly changing stimulus.
Monitoring in these cases refers to higher uncertainty. But in some of the fMRI
studies conflict monitoring just refers to resolving trials with conflict (Abutalebi
et al., 2011).
A recent study has shown that when working memory demands are high, bilin-
guals tend to do well on tasks that demand response inhibition (Jiao, Liu, Wang, &
Chen, 2017). For example, Jiao et al. (2017) administered Flanker, go-no-go and
modified Flanker tasks to young bilinguals and monolinguals. The apparently modi-
fied task required higher working memory. The bilinguals showed better perfor-
mance when they did this modified task but not in the normal version of it. The
authors suggested that the bilingual advantage in response inhibition can only be
seen when the working memory demands are high. This conclusion is similar to that
which Costa et  al. (2009) had reached with their monitoring conditions. But the
critical question is what is it that these bilinguals do so that their executive control
system is only optimally active when the situation is demanding. Without such
information about the participants, it is not easy to interpret why higher difficulty
leads to higher recruitment of executive control.
Do all bilinguals monitor? I think very few experimental investigations have
directly examined this question. The demands of monitoring may vary depending
on the bilingual context. For example, if in a social situation one does not expect
sudden appearances and reappearances of interlocutors for whom one may need to
change control settings, monitoring may be less. For example, in a city like Beijing
as opposed to New Delhi, the need to monitor for other bilinguals speaking English
as their L2 may vastly differ. The situation is entirely different for Chinese–English
or Hindi–English bilinguals in New York City. While in one case sighting a fluent
speaker of L2 may be rare (Beijing) it may be commonplace in some other contexts
(New Delhi). In other situations the onus of control may differ altogether (New York
City). In a recent study on older patients, Clare et al. (2016) found no evidence that
Welsh–English bilinguals had any advantage over monolinguals. The authors
3.2  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? 57

s­ uggested that these bilinguals often do not need to inhibit English as most people
in that community speak English. This means there is less need to monitor the con-
text and choose which language to pick and which one to inhibit. Similarly,
Padmanabhuni et al. (personal communication) did not find any evidence that their
older Telugu–English bilinguals had any advantage on executive control tasks. It is
possible that such bilinguals mostly speak Telugu at their homes and have little
opportunity to practice bilingualism. Therefore, monitoring is dependent on the
context present in society. While it is easy to induce monitoring in a laboratory set-
up with varying contextual demands, future large-scale studies should take into
account how the environmental context of the bilinguals influences the monitoring
mechanism. No study has compared bilinguals from different cultures where pre-
dominant language modes could be different. Thus, our understanding of monitor-
ing in experiments is limited since we have little information about the participants’
background in terms of the practice of bilingualism except for some data from
self-reports.
In summary, what bilinguals monitor in different socio-linguistic scenarios may
differ widely. Bilinguals may monitor for either other bilinguals or monolinguals in
a particular context. In a social setting where most people are either bilinguals or
multilingual, the nature of monitoring may depend on other variables. In such cases,
speakers perhaps need to monitor the nature of switching and also language profi-
ciency. This is valid in India since bilinguals have different levels of proficiency in
English as a second language (Singh & Mishra, 2012, 2014). Therefore, both high
and low proficient bilinguals may need to monitor differently for interlocutors. Such
a problem does not arise where there are some bilinguals and most others are mono-
linguals or predominately speak one language. Thus, studying how context modu-
lates monitoring requirements in different bilingual socio-linguistic scenarios may
throw light on the language use–executive control nexus.
A recent trend in this research field is to include bilinguals who speak a range of
first languages (e.g. Paap & Greenberg, 2013). These are mostly students in western
universities and are readily taken as a bilingual sample, while the monolinguals
come from the local population. However, in such a case, one cannot be certain how,
for example, a Chinese–English bilingual undergraduate student switches and shifts
or inhibits compared with a Korean–English bilingual. If language experience had
to show any effect on executive control, then these two bilinguals should have dif-
ferent experiences. After all, these bilinguals in western countries such as the USA
or UK do speak their mother tongues among fellow citizens who are also immi-
grants, and their cultural context of speech use and switching may vastly vary. It is
naive to assume that all those coming from very different cultures who are in student
dorms and live on campus are practicing bilingualism to the same extent. Criticisms
apart, such studies have at least forced us to think about whether the effect of bilin-
gualism on cognition is more subtle than previously thought. It is also possible that
while some bilinguals in some cultures are more adept at detecting a target, others
in another culture are better at initiating a response. Some others may be good at
both of these. Therefore, it is probably necessary to erect the hypothesis knowing
fully well what kind of bilingualism is in practice in the participant’s culture and
58 3  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? The Core Cognitive Mechanisms

which exact mechanism may be in use for language control. Glossing over such
issues may lead to null results that may confuse the field further rather than adding
clarity.

3.2.5  Attentional Disengagement

More recently, attention has emerged as a critical component that could explain
some of the differences between bilinguals and monolinguals (Bialystok, 2017).
Bilinguals can focus attention more actively on the language they are currently con-
sidering as well as being able to disengage from it faster when the goal changes.
Bialystok and colleagues (Friesen, Latman, Calvo, & Bialystok, 2015) found that
bilinguals perform better at parallel search in a visual search task than monolin-
guals. In this type of search, one has to keep in mind two different types of features
that define a target and where many distractors can resemble the target making the
search difficult. Similarly, Chung-Fat-Yim, Sorge, and Bialystok (2017) presented
ambiguous figures to bilinguals and monolinguals and examined whether bilinguals
were better at finding the alternative picture with fewer cues. Ambiguous figures
that have two representations pose a perceptual problem. The authors found that
bilinguals were better at such a task and suggested that bilinguals have higher selec-
tive attention.
The Posner cueing paradigm can reveal attentional engagement and disengage-
ment (Posner, 1980). In this paradigm, a brief peripheral cue first appears that ori-
ents attention towards it. After either a brief or a long delay, a target appears at either
the cued location or at another location. The task is to just press a key when one sees
the target. Many studies have shown that when the target appears at the valid loca-
tion immediately after the cue, then response times are facilitated, whereas if the
delay is longer, it turns into inhibition. This phenomenon, dubbed ‘inhibition of
return’ (IOR) suggests that attention does not return to the recently attended loca-
tion. Klein (2000) has suggested that this indicates the foraging nature of attention
that wants to move around and find new objects in the vicinity. Mishra et al. (2012)
performed an interesting experiment using this paradigm with Hindi–English bilin-
guals who were students at an Indian university with Hindi as the native language
but were proficient in English as their second language to different degrees. The
idea was to examine whether L2 proficiency would correlate with any attentional
difference between the groups. The results indicated that the high proficient bilin-
guals showed early onset of IOR, indicating rapid disengagement of attention from
the cue compared with the low proficient bilinguals. Moreover, they were also over-
all faster (on all kinds of trials) than the low proficient bilinguals. These results
show that bilingualism aids in better attentional movement.
Do bilinguals select better and therefore orient their attention better towards the
relevant stimuli or are they just good at disengaging attention from the irrelevant
stimuli? Attentional disengagement from a stimulus or an event can be visualised in
many different ways. Mishra and colleagues looked at disengagement from a
3.2  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? 59

peripheral cue towards which attention had been oriented using the Posner task
(Mishra et  al., 2012). In conflict tasks such as the Flanker tasks, congruent and
incongruent trials are presented at random in a mixed block. The incongruent trials
require conflict resolution, whereas the congruent trials do not require this. While
most researchers calculate the mean reaction times to these trials and arrive at the
conflict effect, it is possible that the trial that immediately precedes the current trial
can influence its processing. This was examined by Grundy, Chung-Fat-Yim,
Friesen, Mak, and Bialystok (2017) in a study with younger bilinguals. They wanted
to investigate group difference on the sequential congruency effects (SCEs) rather
than mean reaction times. If one has encountered an incongruent trial recently, then
this can lead to higher sensitivity to conflict. If the following trial also happens to be
an incongruent trial, then this may help overcome conflict. However, for congruent
trials, this may not work. The study showed that bilinguals show a higher SCE than
monolinguals, suggesting that they could disengage attention from the previous
stimuli better than the monolinguals.
It should be noted that in the context of a conflict task where all types of stimuli
are presented randomly, disengagement has to happen for both congruent (relevant)
as well as irrelevant trials. It is not clear from studies whether these mechanisms
should be linked to bilinguals differently. In a social communicative framework,
disengagement of attention from one interlocutor and engagement to another makes
sense. Alternatively, one may assume that bilinguals are good at focusing on the
context-relevant language and do not allow interference from the irrelevant lan-
guage. It will perhaps not be sufficient just to say that bilinguals need to pay higher
attention to the relevant language and therefore this enhances their selective atten-
tion. This does not automatically explain why they should also be good at disen-
gagement. Semantics apart, it does seem appropriate to suggest that bilinguals seem
to have some higher control with attention. However, it is too early to decide which
component of attention is particularly modulated by the bilingual experience based
on current studies.
An important point to note here is that disengagement gives the flavour of top-­
down attentional control. Chung-Fat-Yim et al. (2017) make a dichotomy of internal
and external attention. Both of these forms of attention are in some sense related to
bottom-up and top-down control. In classical language, one can use words such as
endogenous and exogenous attention as well. Are both forms of attention control
available to the bilingual? From the studies by Bialystok and colleagues, it appears
that bilingualism aids in the development of the endogenous type of control. It is
possible that bilinguals are also better at orienting attention to peripheral cues. This
orienting of attention should help them to look at appropriate social signals in the
environment so that they can link up the correct language. The adaptive control
hypothesis (Green & Abutalebi, 2013) refers to the bilingual’s ability to be alert to
such signals that can inform about language. Thus, orienting to cues should be
understood differently compared with disengaging. Interestingly, an early study by
Hernandez et al. (2010) found no orienting advantage for the bilinguals. They did
not observe any difference between the groups with regard to facilitation or IOR,
which was seen in Mishra et al. (2012). Hernandez et al. (2010) examined whether
60 3  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? The Core Cognitive Mechanisms

bilinguals have better top-down visual attention control using a visual search para-
digm. Bilinguals and monolinguals were given a shape to remember and then search
for it. On the search panel, a cue either appeared within a valid (target) or an invalid
(distractor) shape. The idea was to see whether bilinguals can avoid the distractor.
The data showed that cueing made no difference to the bilinguals, who probably
were not that affected by the distractor. This may mean that bilinguals could control
their attention better and search for the object faster amidst distractors that share
attributes. It is important to note that here attention has been conceptualised as a
distractor avoidance mechanism.
Compared with manual reaction time measures, eye movements can reveal more
details about attentional mechanisms. Eye movements have been causally linked to
attention (Hoffman & Subramaniam, 1995) and a host of studies in primates show
how superior colliculus and the frontal eye field neurons control attention and sac-
cades (e.g. Wurtz & Goldberg, 1972). While many have used manual reaction time
measures to study visual search, few have used eye tracking. In a study with manual
measures, it is not possible to say when someone starts looking at a target and when
he makes the discrimination. Eye movements towards potential targets can be fast
and people can then press a key conveying their decision. In a comprehensive study
with Hindi–English bilinguals, Singh and Mishra (2012) used eye tracking to study
how bilinguals avoid distractors in a Stroop task they adopted which was used previ-
ously by Hodgson et al. (2009). The task required participants to make a saccade
towards a colour patch which was similar to the colour of a word presented in the
centre. It is well-known that in the Stroop paradigm the word meanings are activated
automatically. In such a situation, it was expected that people would activate the
meaning of the word and start looking at the colour patch whose name matched with
that. However, if they had to follow the Stroop instructions, then they had to inhibit
eye movements towards this distractor. If this had been a manual task, there would
be no way to see if people made a quick decision of going towards the target or they
first looked at the distractor and then corrected their saccade. These contingencies
of decision-making are not part of the reaction time data.
Singh and Mishra (2012) divided their participants into high and low proficient
bilinguals. Their results showed that high proficient bilinguals were faster in initiat-
ing a saccade towards the correct colour patch, avoiding the interference caused by
the distractor. But low proficient participants had a greater number of errors and
probably suffered more interference. The study revealed for the first time how eye
tracking measures could be used to understand attentional mechanisms that are
modulated by bilingualism. This is important since those who have obtained null
results so far have mostly done manual studies. It is very much possible that differ-
ent methods that reveal different aspects of cognitive processes will lead to different
results about the same phenomena. Mishra and colleagues later also used eye track-
ing to study response inhibition in a double-step task with such bilinguals and found
group difference (Singh & Mishra, 2015). Interestingly, in such studies, high profi-
cient bilinguals always had faster saccade latencies overall. In another study, Singh
and Mishra (2016) examined anticipatory eye movement control in low and high
proficient bilinguals. The design was novel enough to extract how people manage to
3.3 Summary 61

programme saccade when there is some conflict about the initiation time. Participants
were asked to programme a saccade only when the colour of the target circle turned
green from orange. This task requires fine coordination between selective attention
and saccade programming. The design required participants to be alert about the
onset of the green signal and not launch the saccade when it was still orange, the
timing of which was uncertain. However, to perform better on the task ideally they
should have prepared but not executed the saccade when the target circle was
orange. Essentially, the task examined action preparation and execution under
uncertainty. The high proficient bilinguals were faster and had fewer errors then the
low proficient bilinguals. Such fine-grained evidence about cognitive control cannot
be obtained with manual data.
It has been shown that manual response times may be very different from sac-
cade latencies for the same task. This was recently highlighted by Ratiu, Hout,
Walenchok, Azuma, and Goldinger (2017) who compared bilinguals and monolin-
guals on a visual search task using eye tracking. The authors wanted to know
whether bilinguals are better at target detection or response initiation. The authors
suggested that if they are better at just detecting the target among distractors, then
the saccade latency of the first fixation should be faster. If they are better at initiating
a response, then they should be faster at pressing the key after visual detection of the
target. If their advantage lies in a mixture of the two, then they should just be overall
faster on all these measures than monolinguals. This kind of graded hypothesis
about the exact mechanism influenced by bilingualism is much better than just pre-
dicting gross effects. The participants were first presented with a target object and
were asked to find it among similar and dissimilar distractors. The search type was
complex, in which the distractor that looked almost like a target had to be avoided.
The authors performed three experiments with different degrees of search questions
and difficulties. The results revealed no group difference for first saccade or overall
speed. In one case, bilinguals were slightly faster in decision-making than monolin-
guals. However, the null results have their limitations too. The sample size was too
low, and bilinguals came from different cultures and spoke a variety of first lan-
guages. Thus, we don’t know to what extent they were practicing bilingualism and
to what extent the group was homogenous with regard to language experience.

3.3  Summary

In this chapter, my main aim was to first raise a set of questions around bilingualism
and its necessary links with cognition. There may be other mechanisms but the ones
discussed here are critical. As we can see, most researchers have studied these
mechanisms, linking them one way or another to bilingualism. My premise is that
unless we understand what mental and cognitive mechanisms define a bilingual, it
is not possible to link bilingualism to cognitive and executive control. In the absence
of such clarity, people end up describing the same thing differently from their
unique vantage points. The mechanisms discussed in this chapter may all have
62 3  What Goes on in a Bilingual Mind? The Core Cognitive Mechanisms

common underlying connections. For example, recent theorisation on executive

functioning assumes that individual performance on diverse cognitive components
may be correlated (Miyake & Friedman, 2012). At this point, we are not in a posi-
tion to demonstrate how the various psycholinguistic performances by bilinguals
use common cognitive mechanisms. I have attempted to explain the mechanisms
that are a part and parcel of being bilingual. They, of course, may occur to different
degrees in different people because of many other factors. Monolinguals, on the
other hand, may not display such skills. When it comes to studying bilingualism and
cognitive control, it is important to know which basic mechanism is at work. Does
switching or monitoring or social awareness lead to significant neuroplasticity?
Does this depend on the particular cultural and linguistic climate prevailing in the
country? We have not yet answered such questions. What we have before us are dif-
ferent sets of results that do not replicate. It is one thing to say that the practice of
bilingualism does not affect the enhancement of cognitive processes; it is another to
say that depending on the type of mechanism bilinguals use often, a certain specific
cognitive process is going to be modulated. Right now most researchers are taking
an either/or position. When they are replicating one another’s studies with very dif-
ferent bilinguals they are assuming that these various bilinguals have similar mech-
anisms to the same extent. That is clearly problematic. From the next chapter
onwards, I build the narrative around these core mechanisms.

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Chapter 4
Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism and Its
Criticisms

4.1  Is There Any Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism?

Whether the practice of bilingualism leads to some noticeable advantage in the cog-
nitive domain or not is an empirical question. Intuitively, it makes sense to assume
that constant practice of any cognitively challenging skill should lead to neuroplas-
ticity. This strengthening of critical brain networks then should confer a domain-­
general cognitive advantage. However, the results have posed more questions than
given answers. Do highly fluent bilinguals who have been using both languages
over years find this challenging? Or do only low proficient and struggling bilinguals
find it challenging and therefore such practice should lead to neuroplasticity? Non-­
replicable results have led to suspicion about the whole issue. But, can we say null
results are sacrosanct? Can’t those who have obtained null results be accused of
methodological errors? The very question of executive control in the bilingual has
many components and studies have only replicated some of them. The following list
gives an idea of the range of things that researchers have considered during
replication:
(a) There is no clarity regarding which component of executive functions is influ-
enced by bilingualism.
(b) There is no clarity about what exact neural control mechanisms bilinguals use
during language control.
(c) It is not clear if indeed a domain-general control mechanism influences both
linguistic and non-linguistic control.
(d) Task impurity affects how we interpret the task findings with relation to

bilingualism.
(e) Replication failures are mostly with behavioural data.
(f) There are very few replication failures with neural data.
(g) There have been mostly conceptual replications and very few direct replications.
(h) Cultural issues have not been included.

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 67

R. K. Mishra, Bilingualism and Cognitive Control, The Bilingual Mind
and Brain Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92513-4_4
68 4  Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism and Its Criticisms

Miyake and colleagues present executive functions as a collection of functions

such as selective attention, working memory, inhibition and also monitoring
(Miyake et  al., 2000). Now the question is which aspects of these functions is
improved in a bilingual as a function of bilingualism? According to most theorists,
everyday practice of a skill leads to neural changes in the brain and this may show
up in an advantage when we perform other tasks. Practice-induced neuroplasticity
leads to stronger functional and also at times structural connections in neuronal
networks. In the case of bilingualism, selecting one language while inhibiting the
other leads to strengthening of the inhibitory control system. This system is just one
component of the executive control system. However, most foundational works in
this area have supported this view that bilinguals actively inhibit the language that
they do not intend to use at a certain moment. However, we are talking about lan-
guage use and why our performance on some unrelated non-linguistic tasks such as
the Stroop or Simon task or Attentional Network Task (ANT) should improve. The
assumption is that these tasks mimic what may actually be happening in the bilin-
gual’s mind. How do we know that all kinds of bilinguals in different sociolinguistic
contexts are using similar strategies for language control?
Cognitive control includes alertness, selective attention and efficient adaption to
challenging situations. Continual alpha rhythms of the brain indicate the existence of
top-down cognitive control (Sadaghiani & Kleinschmidt, 2016). Braver (2012) pro-
posed a dichotomy between reactive and proactive types of control. Reactive control
is applied to inhibit a response in a reactionary manner. Proactive control is to remain
alert and set task goals in a top-down manner so as not to allow conflict to happen.
Some authors have suggested that bilinguals use proactive control mechanisms more
than reactive and this helps them plan actions ahead of time. Valian (2015) suggested
that we do not have the right task to measure executive control. Actually, while it is
not clear if a particular task is measuring a particular construct (like Stroop measures
inhibition), we also do not know which task mimics the mechanism that bilinguals
use to control language. At this point in time, the debate on bilingual cognitive
advantage is being pursued from several angles. The foremost issue is which mecha-
nism explains any advantage for the bilinguals and which tasks manifest them.
Variables such as language proficiency, switch rate, dominance, the age of acquisi-
tion or level of dominance influence executive control differently. Further, these cor-
relations are different for children and adults as well as old people.
Some have argued that socio-economic status (SES) can explain any difference
one might see between monolinguals and bilinguals. Socioeconomic factors remain
very powerful indicators of mental functioning including intelligence and literacy
achievements (Mani, Mullainathan, Shafir, & Zhao, 2013). Many developing and
underdeveloped countries still remain behind in terms of material progress. These
countries have many people who are illiterate as well as those who can’t afford any
formal literacy. Interestingly, the percentage of bilinguals in such countries is also
higher. The socio-economic argument has been tested and the proponents of the
advantage theory show that such factors have no influence. Even poor children who
are bilinguals outperform monolinguals on an executive control task. It has to do
with the practise of two languages. Studies that have been performed in India, for
4.2 Replication 69

example, show cognitive and executive control advantage (Khare, Verma, Kar,
Srinivasan, & Brysbaert, 2013; Singh & Mishra, 2012, 2013). Even those who have
studied patients with regard to the onset age of diseases (e.g. Alladi et al., 2013)
subscribe to the advantage theory. However, India still remains poor and many of its
population are illiterate. We do not have any concrete data from countries such as
China and Brazil or other African countries on such issues. In one study, Engel de
Abreu et al. (2012) examined immigrant children in Luxembourg and found that
even such children who are bilinguals executive control tasks than the resident
monolingual children. Bilingualism, then, strengthens the brain networks irrespec-
tive of one’s material status. It makes sense since we are primarily talking about
speaking (and not reading or writing) two languages.

4.2  Replication

Replications can be conceptual or exact. Both types of replications have their own
advantages and disadvantages and inform theory accordingly. In the area of bilin-
gualism and cognitive advantage, most replications have been conceptual (Paap &
Greenberg, 2013). Since bilinguals differ so widely from one culture to another,
replications often fail because of uncontrolled factors. More recently, there have
been quantitative studies showing a number of positive and negative results for
bilingualism. Francis (2012) examined how often so-called successful replications
may actually be failures if one does not take into account the effect sizes of particu-
lar experiments and the sample size used: “Although experimental psychologists
have long believed that successful replication is a way to demonstrate the validity of
an empirical finding, this belief is not always true. When experiments have low or
moderate power, there should frequently be experimental findings that fail to repli-
cate a result, even if the effect is true. In such a situation, it is possible to have too
much successful replication, which suggests some form of publication bias”.
(p. 2012).
Paap et al. (2017) wrote that “we still adhere to the recommendation of Paap and
Greenberg (2013) that a compelling demonstration of bilingual advantages in EF
[executive function] require statistically significant advantages in different mea-
sures derived from at least two different tasks and that those measures must also
show convergent validity.” Convergent validity demands that two different tasks that
apparently employ the same component of the executive function should show high
correlation. If that is not the case then only one of the tasks is relevant and research-
ers have no businesses administering many tasks together. Theoretically, if we knew
which task best represents how bilingualism modulates the executive function, then
one task will be enough. While at times Paap et al. (2017) make some sound com-
ments against others those who have found advantages and how their methods or
their analysis was weak or wrong, they themselves have not been careful about the
methods. In most of their studies, the bilingual participants all had different first
­languages. Paap et  al. (2015) also have contempt for those who have not used a
70 4  Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism and Its Criticisms

monolingual group. Of course, the original aim was to compare bilinguals and
monolinguals and show that bilinguals are faster. But there are countries where one
rarely comes across a monolingual, for example in India. How then should these
hypotheses be investigated in India? Mishra and colleagues (Singh & Mishra, 2012,
2013, 2015, 2016) have consistently used language proficiency second language
(L2) as a grouping variable and have found positive results. Furthermore, Mishra
(2015) has argued that one should not even compare bilinguals and monolinguals
since neuroimaging has shown that they may have a different neural organisation.
Prior and Gollan (2011) obtained a bilingual advantage in San Diego, California,
USA (Paap took their samples from San Francisco). Paap’s rejection of Prior and
Gollan’s study is based on the fact that they transformed their data and so on. While
everyone is convinced that self-reports can be very deceiving and one must collect
objective measures, Paap thinks self-reports are a valid measure. What I am trying
to bring out here is the puritanical and high moral ground which replicators have
assumed as if their methods are beyond questioning. That is problematic in the
investigation of truth if that is ultimately the aim of replication. Also, for every
researcher who finds himself in a certain socio-linguistic and bilingual context, the
very questions and issues he may address could be different. For example, as men-
tioned earlier, it is difficult to find monolinguals in India, although in one study
Alladi et  al. (2013) performed their analysis comparing bilinguals and monolin-
guals. However, finding only Chinese-speaking monolinguals in any major Chinese
city won’t be a problem. Therefore, one cannot claim that in order to establish bilin-
gual advantage or disadvantage one has to take bilinguals and monolinguals. In my
studies, I have reasoned that higher second-language proficiency could modulate
executive control if we accept the fact that with higher L2 proficiency, bilinguals are
more likely to practice bilingualism. If that is the case I do not see any problem
comparing bilinguals who have high and low proficiency and not bother about
monolinguals. This line of argument is also in consonance with Kroll and Bialystok
(2013).

4.3  P
 ublication Bias in Bilingualism Cognitive Advantage
Research

Publication bias refers to the phenomenon where primary research dissemination

outlets such as journals tend to publish positive results more often than null results.
This leads to a situation where the field has many positive results but few replication
failures published. Several reports suggest that psychologists are more vulnerable to
publishing positive results than null results (Francis, 2012). Though null results can
provide a check on the state of affairs of the field and its major theories showing
problems, they themselves often do not pass quality checks. Publication bias could
have its origins within the demands of the paradigm (Kuhn, 2012). Most scientists
add on to the positive results and this gives the illusion of the theory being popular.
Null results challenge the data and therefore are a problem for the existing theories.
4.3  Publication Bias in Bilingualism Cognitive Advantage Research 71

Why are null results often not published? Many journals openly write that they will
be very reluctant to accept null results or replications. They seek to publish articles
that provide outstanding novel results. These results are often based on a small
sample size and might have other methodological issues. Many commentators have
remarked on the existing issues with the desire of psychology journals to only give
value to novelty over methodological rigour (Francis, 2012).
Francis (2012) undertook an examination of publication bias in two different
fields and the publications therein, looking at controversial papers in the area of
extrasensory perception. The conjecture was that if the number of rejections of null
hypotheses exceeds the number of expected null results, then the field may have
publication bias. This means critical data are not yet available to readers to evaluate
both sides of the story since such data have been suppressed. In a retrospective study
of clinical research, Easterbrook, Gopalan, Berlin, and Matthews (1991) found that
studies with significant results were likely to be published in journals with a higher
impact factor. Ferguson and Heene (2012) remark that psychology’s aversion
regarding publishing null results actually means it is less able to falsify its own theo-
ries. Such theories remain popular but they may be based on biased results. More
recently, many researchers have been using statistical methods and meta-­analysis to
‘see’ if there is publication bias in a particular field (Lane, Luminet, Nave, &
Mikolajczak, 2016).
De Bruin, Treccani, and Della Sala (2015) looked into publication bias in the
bilingualism executive control literature. They selected conference abstracts pub-
lished between 1999 and 2012. They wanted to find out whether the studies in these
abstracts that reported a positive result confirming the bilingual advantage got pub-
lished in a journal more often, and this was indeed what the results suggested. Those
abstracts which later got published had positive results supporting the advantage
hypothesis. Is this methodology of linking conference abstracts and their accep-
tance into journals to demonstrate publication bias foolproof? Bialystok, Kroll,
Green, MacWhinney, and Craik (2015) wrote a comment on this paper and chal-
lenged its methodology. Their argument was that conference abstracts often present
preliminary data and are a poor choice for gaining knowledge about publication
bias. If this is the case and conference abstracts are a poor choice, then we should
wait for such an analysis comparing the journal acceptance rate for papers describ-
ing positive findings and negative findings. However, these data are yet not avail-
able. De Bruin, Treccani, and Della Sala (2015) did not consider the rejection rate
of journal manuscripts reporting null or negative findings. Comparing this number
with the acceptance rate for positive results would justifiably indicate publication
bias. It was also not clear from the analysis by De Bruin, Treccani, and Della Sala
(2015) whether they made a distinction between null results and negative findings.
Bialystok et al. (2015) argue that it is only the negative results and their quantity and
publication rate that will inform us whether a field has any publication bias.
The other approach to establishing publication bias and trends within a field is to
use a bibliometric approach. This approach quantifies all published studies based on
their support or challenge to a theory within a period and also includes citations.
This way one can know within a period whether citations to positive or negative
72 4  Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism and Its Criticisms

findings dominate one another. Sanchez-Azanza, López-Penadés, Buil-Legaz,

Aguilar-Mediavilla, and Adrover-Roig (2017) examined published studies in the
area of bilingualism and executive control between 2005–2013 and 2014–2016.
They classified studies into four categories: studies with clear positive results, nega-
tive results, ambivalent studies and studies that did not mention advantage. They
also counted citations for these studies between these timepoints. The data showed
that the number of studies that challenged the bilingual advantage theory grew sig-
nificantly post-2014. Further, citations to such studies also overtook citations to
studies describing positive findings post-2014. Although the number of articles pub-
lishing negative or null results during this period is fewer than those affirming the
advantage, their popularity has certainly grown. For example, a meta-analysis by
Hilchey and Klein (2011) that challenged the advantage theory has so far attracted
385 citations.
Kenneth Paap, one of the main protagonists of the ‘no advantage’ position, has
consistently challenged the advantage view. According to him, those who have
obtained the advantages have fewer subjects in their studies and also show a ten-
dency to report positive findings. Bialystok and colleagues believe that Paap’s com-
mentary appears to give rise to a false controversy and that there is nothing wrong
with the positive results. Bialystok (2016) suggested that the use of certain types of
analysis and also categorical hypothesising could lead to null results. In their 2011
review, Hilchey and Klein (2011) had also suggested that positive findings occur
with small sample sizes, whereas one may get both positive and null results with
large sample sizes. If the distribution is bigger, then, of course, bilinguals with dif-
ferent attributes will be represented in the sample. Figure 4.1 from Paap et al. (2014)
shows the distribution of effects in studies with different sample sizes.
Figure 4.1 shows that as studies have fewer participants, they are more likely to
get positive results. Further, when a researcher takes a small sample size he is likely
to get a false positive. Then there is also the issue of convergence validity which
Paap raises. When different tasks that measure executive function do not correlate
there is a problem of interpretation. These issues make it highly problematic to trust
the positive results as such. Interestingly, in other subfields of psychology people
often use very small sample sizes and there seems not to be a big issue. Many stud-
ies in the area of psychophysics or vision research take only a sample of 15 or so
people (e.g. Montagnini & Castet, 2007; Van Zoest & Donk, 2010). Is there a bias
within subfields with regard to the question of number of participants (N)? Or is it a
statistical question set apart from such considerations. If one looks at alternative
hypothesis testing, such as the Bayesian models, many follow a method where sam-
pling stops at a certain number. Power calculations as well project the N. Of course
no statistical approach comes without its own troubles. The issue is whether people
who have got positive results have got them because of statistical flaws and omis-
sion. Would their results change if these studies were conducted in a large sample of
people?
Is publication bias to be found only in behavioural results? Paap et al. (2014)
wrote a long theoretical paper questioning the existence of the bilingualism advan-
tage. They examined whether neuroscience studies show bilingual advantage as
4.3  Publication Bias in Bilingualism Cognitive Advantage Research 73

NHST
p > .05
20 p < .05

15
Frequency

10

0
0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275
Number of Participants

Fig. 4.1  Plot showing frequency of positive effects (bilingual advantage) as a function of sample
size. (From Paap, Sawi, Dalibar, Darrow, & Johnson, 2014)

well. Neuroscience (EEG [electroencephalogram] and fMRI [functional magnetic

resonance imaging]) studies depend on the correlation between neural activity and
behavioural results. Paap et al. (2014) indicated several problems with some of the
neuroscience studies that have shown a bilingual advantage. For example, Abutalebi
et  al. (2011) found evidence that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) shows less
activation in the bilinguals than in monolinguals when they do a Stroop task. To
them, this was evidence of higher conflict monitoring in the case of the bilinguals.
However, Paap et al. (2014) believe that Abutalebi et al. (2011) have actually stud-
ied inhibitory control and not conflict monitoring since they simply calculated blood
oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal strength in congruent and incongruent tri-
als. Similarly, in an EEG study on conflict resolution in sentence processing,
Moreno, Bialystok, Wodniecka, and Alain (2010) compared bilinguals and mono-
linguals and found that the N400 effect was higher for the bilinguals than the mono-
linguals. The authors suggested that this larger N400 effect shows the conflict
resolution advantage of bilinguals over monolinguals. However, Paap et al. (2014)
suggest that this shows bilingual disadvantage not advantage since more generally
in event-related brain potential (ERP) studies N400 rises when there is difficulty in
integration of meaning within context. If this is true it means that researchers have
often interpreted effects and tasks convenient to their narrative. However, is there
74 4  Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism and Its Criticisms

something like a single and all agreeable definition of such ERP effects as N400 and
P600? Many studies of language in psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience
show that even until now researchers grapple with the actual interpretation of these
effects. While N400 was known to show up more when there is trouble integrating
semantics, many have also found this effect when people fail to integrate constitu-
ents syntactically (Hagoort, 2003).
So what is the way to actually study any bilingual advantage if it exists? Paap et
al. (2015) wrote that “One possible roadmap for pursuing the specific circumstances
for producing bilingual advantages was provided by Paap and Greenberg (2013) and
could stand to be updated. Studies should start with a theory of how two or more
languages are co-ordinated and specify which (if any) of the control mechanisms
employ domain-general EF [executive function]. This should lead to the identifica-
tion of the particular type (or combination of types) of bilingual experience that is
most important to enhancing that component of EF. That critical experience should
play the lead role in predicting which bilingual groups should have better EF and, in
turn, be better than monolinguals. The groups should be matched on SES, immi-
grant status, culture and so forth using operationally defined measures. Tasks and
measures should be selected that have demonstrated the convergent validity and,
even then, it is best to have two measures, derived from two different tasks, included
in the study so that one can rule out the concern that any obtained bilingual advan-
tage in performance is task specific. The number of participants in each group
should be determined in advance and based on a reasonable level of desired power.
In estimating power a small effect size should be assumed given the meta-analysis
reported by de Bruin et al. and the effect sizes reported in Hilchey and Klein (2011)
and Hilchey et al. (in press).” This seems reasonable. However, most studies that
have observed advantage have also considered three variables. No study can control
all variables ideally—not even those which replicated and found null results consid-
ered all the variables in controlling their experiments.
In summary, is very difficult to establish publication bias in a narrow discipline
only on the basis of a few null results. We don’t know why those null results could
not be published. One needs to establish that studies with null results and negative
findings were submitted and they were unfairly rejected by journals—this kind of
data are yet not available. Therefore, from these articles that have concluded that the
bilingual advantage is an outcome of populist positive results and suppression of
negative findings, we do not know exactly what the theoretical concerns are. The
reasons could be many, including both methodological problems and also individual
differences.

4.4  Core Challenges Against the Advantage Theory

While replications will continue, it is important to examine the theoretical, concep-

tual and methodological challenges thrown up by those studies that aim for the
death of a theory. What exactly have these studies attempted to say and where is the
4.4  Core Challenges Against the Advantage Theory 75

locus of their attack? When someone attempts a replication (few have done direct
replications) the authors are either dissatisfied with the analysis, the participant
selection or the interpretation of the original study. It is never the case that a study
has all of these flaws together. Those who do perform a meta-analysis also take an a
priori position. Their selection of articles, if biased, may add further noise to the
debate. How do we make sure that a meta-analysis that attempts to nullify a theory’s
claims is itself not methodologically problematic? Let us examine one meta-­analysis
that actually led to a sustained attack on the advantage theory in recent times and
which has been cited many times. The meta-analysis by Hilchey and Klein (2011)
attacked a very core premise of the bilingual advantage theory. Hilchey and Klein
began to look at studies that had used conflict tasks such as Stroop or Simon. Those
studies were mostly on younger bilingual children who were compared with mono-
linguals. Hilchey and Klein argued that if inhibition is the core mechanism whose
continual practice leads to a bilingual advantage, then one should not see bilinguals
also performing better on congruent trials. Congruent trials do not have any conflict
in such tasks; therefore, group difference on this task should not be seen. They
found that studies that had claimed a bilingual advantage had observed this reaction
time (RT) advantage for bilinguals on the congruent trials. They further found that
in most of these studies bilinguals were overall faster than monolinguals. The stud-
ies that were considered had used different types of tasks: Stroop, Simon and
Flankers. Based on their observations, Hilchey and Klein made two important
points. They suggested that bilinguals may have an overall executive control advan-
tage that makes them faster on all kinds of trials. They further claimed that bilin-
guals and monolinguals may not differ just on the inhibitory control aspect. This
was a theoretical attack based on the tasks and their conceptualisation. If one
believed in a specific inhibitory control advantage and one chooses a particular task
to demonstrate this, then one must see a particular kind of effect. This was not found
to be the case. Often some studies did show a bilingual advantage on the conflict
effect (incongruent–congruent) but they also showed a general RT advantage (e.g.
Bialystok et al., 2004). Hilchey and Klein proposed a model calling it the bilingual
executive processing advantage. Although not many studies after their proposal
have found this overall RT advantage, it still remains conjecture. The importance of
this meta-analysis was that it offered a conceptual alternative. It is actually not clear
if indeed bilingualism advantage is because of inhibition or monitoring or both.
Hilchey and Klein’s meta-analysis thus appeared to suggest an alternative theoreti-
cal possibility. More recently, however, Klein observed that the overall RT benefit
for bilinguals is not seen often and they have modified their initial suggestions
(Klein, 2016).
Another important review of the literature was by Valian (2015). Valian did not
outright support the analysis of Hilchey and Klein (2011), or for that matter the null
results of Paap and Greenberg (2013). Valian made two assertions. She suggested
that maybe there is a bilingual advantage, but that these advantages are invisible
when compared with monolinguals since at times monolinguals may have higher
executive control. Executive control in monolinguals might be enhanced because of
video game playing and such demanding tasks. Therefore, even if bilingualism
76 4  Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism and Its Criticisms

could have some positive effect on executive control per se, they remain invisible
during group comparison. This proposal does not outright deny the existence of any
cognitive advantage because of bilingualism but opens a new theoretical possibility.
Valian also addressed the question of task impurity. Importantly, she looked at all
the results that were published then in terms of the age of participants. It was obvi-
ous that the effect of bilingualism on young children, younger adults and older
adults was different. Therefore, replication failures were specific to one age group
since executive control as such varies a great deal as a function of age. Valian’s
analysis did not suggest that there is no possibility of finding any advantage given
the current state of the art. She also indicated that maybe we do not yet know the
right kind of task to capture advantage in bilinguals. She suggested that studies do
not often show a difference between bilinguals and monolinguals since many mono-
linguals may do cognitively more demanding tasks than bilingualism and this may
make them similar to bilinguals when it comes to performance on executive control
tasks. This is an important insight since this alerts us to look at variables other than
bilingualism that can enrich the executive control system. It is very easy to see the
difference in the suggestions of Valian and that of Hilchey and Klein. Whereas
Hilchey and Klein criticised the inhibitory control approach taking into account the
global RT advantage, Valian looked at the issues more holistically.
Antón et al. (2014) examined whether bilingual and monolingual children differ
on the ANT, which is often used to measure different attention networks. The
authors implicitly tested the assumption that bilingualism may influence the atten-
tional networks. Their large-scale comparison did not reveal any difference between
bilingual and monolingual children. Previously, Costa, Hernández, Costa-Faidella,
and Sebastián-Gallés (2009) had shown that bilinguals have some advantages on the
ANT compared with monolinguals but these are very restricted to certain situations,
for example, when the task becomes very demanding. Antón et al. (2014) gener-
alised, saying that maybe one does not find the bilingual children to be any better on
the ANT than monolinguals. They wrote “Certainly, we want to avoid generalizing
the observed lack of bilingual advantage to other age groups, and as already dis-
cussed in Duñabeitia et al. (2014), our claims are exclusively endorsing the conclu-
sion that the so-called bilingual advantage in tasks focusing on participants’
attention skills is inexistent, or at best, extremely inconsistent and elusive”. This
study and its conclusions do not rule out the possibility of the bilingual advantage
on other attention tasks. Von Bastian, Souza, and Gade (2016) examined a large
sample of young adult bilinguals. They tested four different hypotheses linked to the
bilingual advantage. Various tasks were administered that measured inhibition,
monitoring, shifting and general executive functions. Their results did not show any
particular role of bilingualism on these tasks. Further, variables such as the age of
acquisition, proficiency and usage were controlled for. This study was large enough
to conclude that bilingualism may have a very limited effect on specific aspects of
executive control. These studies, therefore, differ in their approaches, the questions
they asked and how they interpreted their results. However, none of these studies
was a direct replication of any previous study.
4.4  Core Challenges Against the Advantage Theory 77

An approach some researchers have adopted to examine the veracity of the bilin-
gual advantage claim is to exhaust the issue by administering all kinds of tasks on
all kinds of people. In one such study, Paap and Greenberg (2013) examined all
possible domains of bilingual executive control with different tasks. Their range of
tasks includes 15 different types of task linked to one or the other type of executive
control. They found no effect of bilingualism on any one of these tasks. Further,
bilinguals were slower than monolinguals on one task. They interpreted their find-
ings saying there is obviously no bilingual effect on executive functions. The par-
ticipants in Paap and Greenberg study were university students and all had different
first languages. Interestingly, the authors suggested that maybe the university stu-
dents being young adults had already reached an asymptote with regard to their
executive control and therefore bilingualism may not additionally add much to it.
However, this can’t be true since many studies that have been performed in older
adults do show an advantage for the older bilinguals. In any case, Paap and Greenberg
did not attempt to test a particular hypothesis but all the hypotheses together. Their
approach was, therefore, to exhaust the possibilities of any reinterpretation.
However, they recommended that one can keep searching for the bilingual advan-
tage. They suggested the following points be considered by any author who wants
to demonstrate the advantage: “(1) identify the specific component(s) of executive
processing that should be enhanced by managing two languages, (2) show a bilin-
gual advantage in an indicator of that component across two different tasks, (3)
show that the indicators correlate with one another and have some degree of conver-
gent validity, (4) show no differences between the two groups on a pure block of
easy choice-RT trials, (5) match the groups on socio-economic status (SES) and (6)
minimize cultural differences between the groups.”
Coderre and van Heuven (2014) proposed that if the two scripts of the bilinguals
are similar then they need to tackle language control more since script similarity can
lead to higher parallel language activation. Therefore, such bilinguals should dem-
onstrate higher executive control than bilinguals with different scripts. They com-
pared German–English bilinguals (same script), Polish–English bilinguals (low
similarity) and Arabic–English (no similarity) and found that the same script bilin-
guals had better executive control, as demonstrated in a Stroop task. The Arabic–
English bilinguals had the lowest Stroop interference scores. Although these results
are not that straightforward, the idea of whether scripts and their similarity could
influence executive control, in general, is interesting. Paap, Darrow, Dalibar, and
Johnson (2015) criticised this paper on multiple grounds. Firstly, it is not easy to
establish empirically if scripts are similar and, secondly, it is not easy to say which
component of executive control was influenced by script similarity. I think these
observations are valid to some extent. Further, this effect has not been replicated in
other bilinguals.
In summary, there have been many studies that have failed to gain the positive
results obtained by others. Some researchers have concluded that there is no such
thing as a bilingual advantage while others think we have not yet approached the
issue correctly. Some have found null results with children and think their results
can be extrapolated to young adults. Yet some others have studied older bilinguals
78 4  Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism and Its Criticisms

and have found them to display cognitive advantage (Bialystok et al., 2004, 2008).
There are also studies that have not found positive evidence of superior executive
control in older adults (Anton et al., 2016; Kousaie & Phillips, 2012. Whether it is
the choice of the right task or the right age, there have now been many replication
failures in the field. In the following section I discuss studies that have attempted to
replicate the findings with older adults, including studies of patients with neurode-
generative diseases from hospital records. These studies further inform us about
whether the bilingual cognitive advantage is sustainable throughout life or is
restricted to a certain age group.

4.5  Cognitive Reserve, Bilingualism and Replication Failures

Many studies have shown that the constant practice of bilingualism over a lifespan
builds cognitive reserve which then fights against the onset of neurological diseases
(Alladi et al., 2016, 2017; Bialystok et al., 2007). The idea is that the practice of
bilingualism enhances the cognitive immune system of the brain which delays the
onset of diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Of course, there has been both positive and
negative evidence for this. But why and how should bilingualism change the key
structures of the brain over time? It is well-known that the structure of the brain and
connectivity (structural and functional) changes over the lifespan. However, how
exactly the change happens in individuals who go through different experiences is
debatable. How do the core components of executive control change over time?
Figure 4.2 shows the three types of changes that one can hypothesise with regard to
the brain’s cognitive control over the lifespan.
Figure 4.2 shows the normal continuum of cognitive performance over a lifetime
and its eventual deterioration. Craik and Bialystok (2006) propose that if certain
parts of the brain that play a critical role in cognitive control receive much more
practice, then the deterioration of their functionality is slower. Sustained practice
keeps the structural and functional robustness even when there is age-related
decline. Does the practice of bilingualism maintain neural tissue that supports flex-
ibility, monitoring and selective attention into old age? It appears that age-related
decline of core cognitive functions such as task switching varies greatly for young
and older adults (Cepeda, Kramer, & Gonzalez de Sather, 2001). Inhibitory control
declines faster than working memory as we age. Different components of cognition
or executive control change differently over time as we age normally (Glisky, 2007).
How do we map the lifespan trajectory of key cognitive functions that bilingual-
ism modulates? This would require also knowing to what extent people practice
bilingualism differently as they age. The quantum of practice that a bilingual gets is
dependent on the opportunity to actively function as a bilingual in any social con-
text. If the quantum of the practice of a skill (bilingualism) is the key to such neural
changes over time, then we must know how differently aged people practice bilin-
gualism. The influence of culture is also not to be overlooked in this calculation
since the quantum of use of both the languages in old age is not the same in all cul-
4.5  Cognitive Reserve, Bilingualism and Replication Failures 79

(a)
Performance

Childhood Maturity Old age

(b)

Crystallized pragmatics
Performance

Fluid mechanics

Childhood Maturity Old age

(c)

Representations
Practice
Access
Performance

Control processes

Childhood Maturity Old age

Fig. 4.2  Three possible models to explain how cognitive performance changes from childhood to
old age. (Craik & Bialystok, 2006)

tures. If the quality and type of bilingualism that younger children practice during
their developmental years are very different than university-going adults then it is
likely that their neural structures are boosted differently. If older bilinguals in certain
cultures do not engage in much bilingualism then bilingualism is not going to bestow
many benefits to their neural systems. We do not have this kind of comparative data
80 4  Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism and Its Criticisms

Regions well covered with several studies of good methodological quality

Some studies but insufficient to derive regional estimates with confidence
Single epidemiological studies
NO epidemiological studies

Fig. 4.3  Global prevalence of dementia: a Delphi consensus study. (Ferri et al., 2005)

as of now. What is available are studies that have been on patients with neurodegen-
erative diseases and correlations with their bilingualism.
The clinical and health implications for the conjecture that multilingualism and
bilingualism can reduce the onset of serious disorders is enormous. Different societ-
ies and cultures are ageing at different rates. A country with a majority of ageing
monolinguals has to bear more costs for their health management if multilingualism
could have saved it. Current estimates suggest that by 2050 the population of
Europeans aged 60 years or more will be more than 30% of the total population
(Leca, 2017). The map given in Fig. 4.3 on the current status of epidemiological
data on dementia throughout the world shows that we still do not have data from
many continents.
How can we know if bilingualism can delay the onset of neurodegenerative dis-
eases? One method researchers have adopted is to look at the diagnosis time of
patients admitted to hospitals. When such patients receive a diagnosis clinicians
often collect demographic information, including language data. At times this infor-
mation can inform whether a patient was bilingual or monolingual, although one
cannot be sure to what extent they were an active bilingual. It also is very difficult
to get such data from caregivers who may not have interacted with such patients
when they were disease free. Importantly, the diagnosis methods of diseases such as
Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s are different in many countries. In countries such as
India or China as compared with advanced western countries, many are not diag-
nosed at once. Therefore, from hospital records, it is not easy to find out the exact
4.5  Cognitive Reserve, Bilingualism and Replication Failures 81

onset of the disease. There have been many studies that have shown that bilingual-
ism correlates with the age of onset of such diseases. However, this age of onset has
been different from study to study given the many other practical issues involved
and cultural differences in medical diagnosis in many countries. Of course, it could
be said that there is no other way you can know the age of onset than from hospital
records. But the key issue is how to make sure that when these patients were diag-
nosed there was a good objective evaluation of their bilingualism.
One factor that can be very decisive in explaining the bilingual cognitive advan-
tage is immigration status. The review by Bak and Alladi (2016) indicates that most
studies in the west (Canada) and elsewhere have compared immigrant bilinguals
with resident monolinguals. These immigrants often struggle to make a life in a new
land and to adjust. This may make them more adaptive to adversity and this could
be the reason why they often outperform the monolingual residents on cognitive
tasks. Bak (2016) also cite the healthy migrant effect hypothesis (Fuller-Thomson
& Kuh, 2014), which suggests that any advantage seen in migrants is not necessarily
because of their bilingualism but rather because most often the healthy and most
competitive individuals decide to migrate. Therefore, they may already be cogni-
tively superior to the host population who may not have faced many challenges at
home. This theory should then predict that when one compares bilinguals who are
non-immigrants with monolinguals there should be no group difference. However,
as the results show, this is not true (Bak et al., 2014).
How does the migrant status influence our understanding of data related to bilin-
gualism, cognitive reserve and later onset of dementia? Here I discuss a few studies
that have been carried out by Alladi and colleagues in India (Alladi et al., 2013,
2016), primarily in Hyderabad, a large multicultural metropolitan city in southern
India in which most people speak Telugu as well as Hindi and English. Therefore,
most people can be classified as multilingual rather than just bilinguals. Alladi et al.
(2013) looked at patient records of people diagnosed with different types of demen-
tias and gathered the case histories of a large number of participants. They also
gathered further language data about the patients from caregivers. Their published
results show that patients who were bilinguals had a later onset of dementia than
monolinguals. This positive correlation may, at first glance, look very rich given the
inclusion of records for so many patients. However, a close examination of the data
suggests that multilingualism and literacy were confounding variables. It is well-­
known that in the Indian context, where government clinics are understaffed and
provide little cutting-edge diagnosis and treatment, many illiterate people come in
for treatment since it is cheap. Further, the data from Alladi et al. does not say what
the exact extent of language use by these patients was before they were diagnosed.
It is also not clear what kinds of language diagnosis clinicians perform when a
patient who has had a stroke and cannot speak much first reports at the hospital.
Bak and Alladi (2016) cite these data to support the idea that these bilinguals
were not migrants. Migration has to be understood in a large country like India also
in terms of migration from one province to another. Most Indians migrate from their
native province to another province (often a large city) for jobs or education and
adapt to a new culture. It is very much possible that many of these patients had
82 4  Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism and Its Criticisms

migrated into Hyderabad much earlier in life in some sense. In the same review
article, the authors criticise the study by Duñabeitia et al. (2014) regarding the valid-
ity of the control group. Duñabeitia et al. (2014) did not find any bilingual advan-
tage when they compared Basque–Spanish bilinguals with monolinguals. However,
Bak does not find a flaw with the many studies of Alladi et al. that are from India
where even defining bilingualism objectively may be a problem given the diverse
set of variables that can affect such a decision (literacy, poverty, schooling, multilin-
gualism, cultural factors, etc.). To me, this can be taken as good evidence of selec-
tive interpretation of results to foster a point of view. Bak writes “The Hyderabad
study provides the strongest evidence to date that bilingualism can delay the onset
of dementia, independently of immigration and education”. The problem with this
blanket assertion is that Hyderabad is multilingual and has a large population of
immigrants from across the country.
It makes sense when a study is replicated with similar kinds of variables. The
data in the studies of Alladi et al. were from hospital records of patients in Hyderabad.
Is this pattern of results replicable in other southern Indian cities? Ellajosyula et al.
(2015) examined case histories of patients from a Bangalore, a southern Indian city.
They separated the patients into those who had dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and
frontoparietal dementia. They also looked at whether the patients were monolin-
guals, bilinguals or multilinguals. To their surprise, they did not find any effect of
bilingualism on the age of onset of the disease. Interestingly, many who have cited
Alladi et al. in the context of cognitive reserve in the Indian context have not cited
this study. I think this is a very close replication of the approach Alladi et al. (2013)
have taken in most of their studies. Reflecting on their null results, the authors write
that there are a host of factors other than bilingualism that can influence cognitive
reserve. It is very difficult, at least in the Indian context, to link bilingualism with
any cognitive reserve.
The whole point in such studies rests on the critical fact of when the patients
were diagnosed (after what point in time after the onset of symptoms) and what
went into the initial hospital records. This is important since it becomes the primary
instrument for all later comparisons in such studies. It is clear that countries and
cultures differ with regard to when patients are formally diagnosed. Many patients
who may have dementia may not go for a diagnosis at all for a very long time. The
other critical question is what can be known about the level of bilingualism from
such data. If one says that the level of bilingualism is not a significant factor in
establishing the conclusions then it may be problematic. Many studies show that
language use has an important influence on executive control (Verreyt et al., 2016).
Dementia diagnosis has been very diverse in India (Wadia, 1992). One cannot be
very sure that government hospitals in India provide a first-rate diagnosis facility,
and therefore the data that one mines years later to seek correlations can be prob-
lematic. This could be the case for most underdeveloped or developing countries.
Prince (1997) remarks that extent of industrialisation, quality of life, economic sta-
tus and other environmental factors are important in the prevalence and diagnosis of
dementia in different cultures. It has been established that different diagnosis crite-
ria could lead to different evaluation of age of onset (Erkinjuntti, Østbye, Steenhuis,
4.5  Cognitive Reserve, Bilingualism and Replication Failures 83

& Hachinski, 1997). At this point in time, such data for India are not available. It is
also not clear at what age the Indian ageing population in general shows signs of
dementia. The prevalence of dementia among the tribal population, urban dwellers
and people in rural regions is vastly different (Raina et al., 2014). Therefore, it is not
easy to separate out only bilingualism from the many factors that are very specific
to India.
Many studies have not replicated the cognitive reserve effect seen with western
populations. Lawton, Gasquoine, and Weimer (2015) examined whether bilingual-
ism was the factor that differentiated the age of onset of dementia in patients. They
did not find any difference between bilinguals or monolinguals as far as the age of
onset was concerned. In turn, they also pointed out that most researchers who have
found correlations between bilingual status and age of onset of dementia have con-
fused the age of clinical diagnosis and the first report of symptoms. Clare et  al.
(2016) compared older adults with Alzheimer disease with healthy adults to check
for the effect of bilingualism on the age of onset of the disease. They did not find
any such effect. They suggested that the nature of bilingualism and context of the
participants may have played a role in null effects. What about the use of reading
and writing knowledge apart from spoken language use on age-related cognitive
advantage? Crane et al. (2010) took second-generation Japanese–American older
bilinguals and collected data on their reading–writing skills. Importantly, these
bilinguals were not immigrants in the conventional sense. They found that the rate
of cognitive decline was not correlated with bilingualism.
I wish to make a contrast between the research that has used patients’ hospital
records for post hoc theorising on cognitive reserve and bilingualism and the
research that directly compares older bilinguals (mostly normal participants) on
conflict or attention tasks using behavioural and neuroimaging methods (Fig. 4.4).
These studies (Abutalebi et al., 2015) show that older bilinguals at times outperform
older monolinguals on conflict tasks. However, as is the case, researchers have not
always been able to replicate the findings across languages and cultures. For exam-
ple, considering the claims of (Alladi et al., 2013) on the links between bilingualism
and onset of dementia in Hyderabad, Padmanabhuni et al. (personal communica-
tion) examined how older bilinguals from Hyderabad perform on a host of demand-
ing conflict and attention tasks. They took language proficiency as the variable to
further correlate with performance on attention tasks. Language proficiency has
been shown to predict performance on executive control tasks in younger Indian
bilinguals (Singh & Mishra, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016). Unlike de Bruin, Bak, and
Della Sala (2015), who think that the quantum of use of L2 need not influence the
outcome on conflict or executive control tasks, Mishra and colleagues argued that it
is language use that should, if at all, correlate with executive control tasks. Further,
highly proficient bilinguals (L1 Telugu, L2 English) should indulge in bilingualism
more. Therefore, proficiency in both the languages (in this case primarily in L2)
should allow the bilingual to switch and shift more often than the less proficient
ones. They administered the Flanker task, Wisconsin card sorting and verbal and
non-verbal Stroop tasks as well as a host of objective and subjective language profi-
ciency evaluation tasks. Their participants had studied in schools with English as the
84 4  Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism and Its Criticisms

Fig. 4.4  Plot showing studies on older bilinguals based on patient records (red circles) and healthy
participants (blue circles)

medium of instruction and there was homogeneity with regard to their usage history
of L2. Schooling can be an important variable in the Indian context since many
bilinguals acquire knowledge of English much later in college or university if they
have not studied in an English medium school. The study was designed to find out
whether L2 proficiency should predict performance on these tasks. This kind of data
will also fill the gap in informing about bilingual advantage in healthy older
bilinguals.
Gasquoine (2016) reviewed the literature and found that a host of variables that
can influence results in the cognitive reserve domain have not been taken into
account. The author was referring to collecting objective data from people with the
same ethnic and cultural backgrounds. He also comments that unless we try to sort
out the differences in behavioural results, we should not jump into the brain.
Neuroimaging data and differences may not be informative unless we know if the
behavioural data have any consistency. However, authors such as Abutalebi and oth-
ers who have consistently examined neuroimaging data either to support the cogni-
tive research or the advantage theory think that behavioural data could be secondary.
Behavioural and neural data could speak about very different processes altogether.
It is worth looking at the few exchanges between Gasquoine and Alladi et al. on the
issue of replication (Gasquoine, Weimer, & Lawton, 2016). Bak and Alladi (2016))
think that replication failures can be understood if we take into account our attitude
towards bilingualism. The national attitude towards bilingualism could influence
how we collect our data. The author is of the opinion that we should take community-­
4.6 Summary 85

based data as opposed to collecting decontextualised case reports from clinics. They
think that the sensitivity of people in different cultures and nations could influence
whether bilingual advantage is seen or not in that particular culture.
If bilingualism is delaying the onset of dementia then it should have some influ-
ence on the current estimates of its incidence (Albanese, Guerchet, Prina, & Prince,
2016). Albanese et al. (2016) point out that it is not clear if the statistical estimates
of incidence are changing. I wonder how this information may affect our current
link between bilingualism and the diagnosis of different types of dementia. Further,
the incidence rate varies greatly between industrialised nations and low-income
countries. For example, in a survey of dementia in the city of Calcutta (Banerjee
et al., 2017) it was seen that the prevalence of dementia is different for low educated
people.
I think it is very problematic to make a case for bilingualism and cognitive
reserve in the Indian context. The main reason is the lack of monolingual control
groups without compromising variables such as socio-economic status and literacy.
There is much epidemiological research from the medical community that shows
how diverse dementia prevalence is in urban and rural areas (Das, Pal, & Ghosal,
2012). Secondly, since much debate in this field will depend on what the primary
assessment was when the patient checked in, it is not clear if all diagnosis instru-
ments contain questions on bilingualism. For example, a dementia diagnosis instru-
ment developed for patients in southern India (Stanley et al., 2009) does not include
many questions on language assessment. It is also unclear from the studies of Alladi
et al. (2013) what the extent of language assessment was when these patients were
first diagnosed. Further, assuming that bilingualism does indeed influence neural
tissue loss and create a cognitive reserve, we should see a longitudinal delay in age
of diagnosis. However, there is no such data that would allow us to look at this issue
with a broad perspective. The study of cognitive reserve in older people will prob-
ably be more legitimate where you have clearly defined bilingual and monolingual
populations. However, the other alternative I propose is to take language proficiency
into consideration and see if those who used language more got the disease much
later then who spoke less. This will not require a monolingual control group, which
anyway does not exist in urban India from whose clinics much of these case records
come.

4.6  Summary

In a very uncharacteristic manner, I devoted this whole chapter to studies that have
not replicated the bilingual cognitive advantage effect. These studies have led to
much discussion in the field and many questions. Of course, the link between speak-
ing two languages and neuroplasticity, though spectacular, is not easy to establish.
Methodologically sound research with appropriate controls could unravel the actual
relationship. In the absence of direct replication, it is not easy to know why a study
could not replicate the original results. In this chapter, I showed that these null or
86 4  Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism and Its Criticisms

negative results are of many types themselves. For example, one type of study
denies any advantage altogether. Other types of study point out specific conceptual
or methodological flaws that future researchers can incorporate. The key question is
in whom is the advantage expected? At this point in time both advantage and no
advantage positions have their own followers. The issue of publication bias is more
general to many scientific fields and not specifically to bilingualism research. While
it is legitimate to replicate scientific findings, the replications themselves should be
methodologically sound.

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Chapter 5
Neuroscience of Bilingualism

5.1  Cortical Representation of L1 and L2

What is the hypothesis behind the suggestion that acquisition of a second or third
language should influence the neural structures and modify them? Neurolinguists
like Michel Paradis (2004) and neuropsychologists like Henry Hecaen (1972) had
assumed that linguistic theories and neural processing informed by brain imaging
should be compatible. Language structure should be able to modify the neural strata.
Of course, the functional significance of language to the brain was first made explicit
by Lenneberg (1967). Paradis (2004), in his book A Neurolinguistic Theory of
Bilingualism, emphasised taking linguistic processing seriously to account for neu-
ral data. This was to seek a one-to-one correlation between linguistic complexity and
neural activation. Data from bilingual aphasics was important in constructing such
neurolinguistically informed theories of bilingualism. In that tradition, bilingualism
was not to be merely thought of as cognitive modelling of two languages, but how
the acquisition of one additional language could influence the existing neural net-
works that are currently serving the first language, and how the structural similarities
or differences between the two languages could impair or facilitate the acquisition
and in turn neural activation. Many neurolinguistic studies have examined whether
the first and the second languages are represented in separate networks or a single
network controls them. The separate network idea seems intuitive. However, it is
also equally likely that the same network accommodates the second language as one
learns it. The accommodation theory assumes that the network used for the first
language gradually adapts to the second language depending on the necessity. Perani
and Abutalebi (2005) found that it is the same network that shows activations of both
first and second language processing. If the speaker is a learner and has less fluency
in the second language then the activations will be higher. As proficiency develops,
the network adjusts itself. Therefore, the age of second-­language acquisition, flu-
ency and proficiency influence the activations. It is important to note that these vari-
ables also influence executive control during language management.

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 91

R. K. Mishra, Bilingualism and Cognitive Control, The Bilingual Mind
and Brain Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92513-4_5
92 5  Neuroscience of Bilingualism

How strong is the neuroimaging evidence supporting a bilingual–monolingual

structural difference? Garcia-Penton, Fernández García, Costello, Duñabetia, and
Carreiras (2015) raise issues with the methodology many have adopted in these brain
imaging studies. One major problem is the heterogeneity of the bilingual population
with regard to different variables. Secondly, the authors argue that different research-
ers have used diverse methods for analysing the brain imaging data. Further, very
few brain imaging studies have been on non-western bilingual populations. More
recently, Das, Padakannaya, Pugh, and Singh (2011) studied structural differences
between Indian bilinguals and monolinguals. In India, these bilinguals are also
biscriptal, which can make matters complicated. Nevertheless, these authors have
reported differences at the level of microstructures as a function of bilingualism.
Cortical representation of second language (L2) is an outcome of both age of
acquisition and the mastery attained in that language. However, neurolinguists also
suggest that if the languages are closer to one another in terms of structure or family
resemblance, then L2 cortical representation should be different. Using brain imag-
ing, Perani et al. (1998) examined Italian–English and Spanish–English bilinguals
who were both high proficient in L2 but had acquired these at different timepoints.
The authors explored whether the age of acquisition and proficiency in L2 influence
cortical activations pertaining to L2. The study showed that there are both similari-
ties and differences between native language (L1) and L2 representation in both
these bilinguals. Thus, there were no special networks devoted to L2 processing for
such bilinguals. L1 and L2 may not have dedicated networks that are structurally
separate, but different groups of neurons may process L1 and L2 depending on the
age of acquisition and proficiency. In a recent fMRI (functional magnetic resonance
imaging) study, Xu, Baldauf, Chang, Desimone, and Tan (2017) studied Chinese–
English bilinguals on an implicit reading task. The main aim was to see which brain
areas are active for Chinese and English separately. Figure 5.1 shows the main high-
lights from their study where different cortical areas show specific activations for
L1 and L2.
The authors performed multi-voxel pixel analysis and found that within the same
cortical structures different populations of neurons are involved in the processing of
L1 and L2. Therefore, functional independence is not related to the distinct struc-
tural sites or networks of areas but the population of neurons. Their task used single
words that were either real words or were false fonts. The problem with using single
words is that they do not bring in the complexity of using connected speech.
However, based on their findings the authors make some interesting remarks about
language control. They suggested that functional separation is necessary if bilin-
guals have to control and shift between the two languages. If one holds the assump-
tion that languages are represented in a single network, the question of control may
not arise. Abutalebi and colleagues have shown in many fMRI studies (e.g.
Abutalebi, Cappa, & Perani, 2001; Abutalebi, 2008) structural independence
between L1 and L2 in the brain.
At least for sequential bilinguals, the order of acquisition of the two languages
plays an important role in their later proficiency. It is well-known within the neuro-
linguistic literature that the left frontal and temporal areas are recruited for process-
5.1  Cortical Representation of L1 and L2 93

Fig. 5.1  Cortical activation maps show areas that code L1 (red) and L2 (blue) and overlap areas
(yellow). (From Xu et al., 2017).

ing the first language (Perani et al., 1996). What happens when someone learns a
second language? In an early brain imaging study with French–English bilinguals,
Dehaene et al. (1997) found that while the left hemisphere was active for processing
the L1 as the participants listened to stories, the right hemisphere was active for L2.
This led the authors to suggest that the well-known traditional language areas of the
left hemisphere are for the L1 and when L2 is acquired newer areas within the right
hemisphere are recruited. More direct evidence of language representation in the
brain has come from studies where cortical recording has been done with patients
undergoing surgery. In such a study, Lucas, McKhann, and Ojemann (2004)
recorded from cortical sites in patients undergoing surgery. The authors reported
that although L1 and L2 processing could be functionally separate, there were also
many shared sites in both left and right hemisphere areas. Language areas in the left
hemisphere were exclusive to the processing of L1 while posterior and anterior
areas were recruited for L2. This suggestion is very different from that of Xu et al.
(2017) discussed earlier.
However, other results do not support this structural and functional separation
view between the two languages. Abutalebi et al. (2001) reviewed the bilingualism
94 5  Neuroscience of Bilingualism

and neuroimaging literature and suggested that language proficiency and language
exposure are important variables that influence the cortical representation of lan-
guage in bilinguals more than the age of acquisition. These variables are more
related to the attainment and practice of skills in the bilingual. According to
Abutalebi et al. (2001), as proficiency increases, a common brain network is used
for both the languages. Proficiency has also been shown to modulate executive con-
trol in bilinguals (Singh & Misha, 2012). It makes sense to assume that as a bilin-
gual grows into a fluent speaker of the second language, the brain networks that
were exclusively used for L1 start adapting. Adaption here refers to the recruitment
of cognitive systems to process the language in question. This theory will imply that
bilinguals who may have an earlier age of acquisition but do not have current profi-
ciency in L2 will not have the necessary neural structures for easy adaptation.
Grosjean’s provocatively titled article “Neurolinguists, beware! The bilingual is
not two monolinguals in one person” captured the then-current opinions of the field
(Grosjean, 1989). Grosjean’s main thesis concerned the idea of language mode: a
bilingual person could set themselves into different language modes. Language
mode is also induced by the environmental context which can shift between mono-
lingual to bilingual. Grosjean defines language mode as “the state of activation of
the bilingual’s languages and language processing mechanisms at a given point in
time” (Grosjean, 2001). I am bringing the issue of mode here to link such selective
preference of context and the issue of structural separateness. Ultimately, one has to
account for how bilinguals who have to dynamically deal with different interlocu-
tors and shift between linguistic domains manage this if the neural separation is
strict. One cannot say that the structural separation of language in the bilingual’s
brain has no impact on how bilinguals manage the two languages. Bilinguals often
voluntarily shift between modes. How does the neurolinguistic theory of bilingual-
ism connect to this issue? Depending on the nature of processing one may expect
either a shared or a separate neural mechanism for the two languages in a bilingual.
Marian, Spivey & Hirsch (2003) suggest that a shared neural network is active for
parallel language activation and two distinct networks may be in use for processing
lexical structures. They studied parallel language activation using eye tracking. The
mode is relevant here as a concept since bilinguals can be said to shift between the
modes (when they shift between languages). Therefore, corresponding neural acti-
vations could be dependent on the modes of processing. Thus, the neurolinguistic
concern about L1 and L2 representations are legitimate. However, as is evident, for
every result that finds separate neural structures devoted to different languages,
there is a paper that does not report this.

5.2  The Switching Bilingual Brain

One of the most defining attributes of bilingualism is language switching. Many

neuroimaging studies have focused on language switching and how this may sculpt
the brain networks (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Hernandez, 2009; Luk, Green,
5.2  The Switching Bilingual Brain 95

Abutalebi, & Grady, 2012). If bilinguals switch between languages all the time, then
this must make them good switchers in general. They should be able to switch well
with a minimal cost between two non-linguistic tasks also since switching as a
mechanism is not restricted to just languages. Non-linguistic task switching studies
show that such switching has a cognitive cost (e.g. Arrington & Logan, 2004;
Rogers & Monsell, 1995). Switching between two tasks creates constraints with
regard to maintenance of task rules; for example, doing a Stroop or a Simon task
interchangeably. These tasks demand different rules to be kept in mind for success-
ful switching. Alternatively, one can perform task switching with the same stimuli
while shifting attention. For example, someone is shown the picture of a cat and
asked to name it ‘cat’ on one trial and then say ‘animal’ in another. This shifting
between two responses will amount to task switching. To do this well one would be
required to also switch selective attention from trial to trial, which will require cog-
nitive control. Does bilingualism lead to better neural efficiency in non-linguistic
task switching? Or even, alternatively, does training in non-linguistic task switching
effect stitching between languages?
The switching hypothesis links both linguistic and non-linguistic control to the
same neural system. Therefore, before accepting the proposal that bilinguals use
cognitive control to reduce switch cost, one has to accept that both linguistic and
non-linguistic switching is governed by the executive control networks. Since bilin-
guals switch a lot, the neural networks supporting switching should be very effi-
cient. Neural networks being efficient may manifest in hypo-activation or less
engagement of relevant brain areas. Most commonly, researchers give either a lin-
guistic or a non-linguistic switching task and see if brain activations for monolin-
guals and bilinguals differ. In many instances conflict tasks such as the Stroop are
also used to see if the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is active during conflict man-
agement. The Stroop task can be verbal or non-verbal and one can compare the two
for knowing the processing similarities and differences. Therefore, researchers
either study task switching or conflict resolution. Interestingly, for both of these the
ACC has often been implicated (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Johnston, Levin, Koval,
& Everling, 2007; Liston, Matalon, Hare, Davidson, & Casey, 2006). However,
switching and conflict as causes of language management have their own distinct
theories—they don’t offer the same theoretical account. Abutalebi and Green
(2007), in their neurocognitive model for bilingual language control, proposed that
the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) controls executive functioning, the ante-
rior cingulate cortex is involved in inhibition and the caudate nucleus is involved in
the lexical selection and goal planning. Since switching involves both control and
lexical selection, all these areas are involved in switching.
We often assume that all kinds of bilinguals more or less switch. However, that
is simply not true since the quantum, and nature of switching (into L1 and into L2),
differs widely from culture to culture. Switching is contingent on the habits of the
bilingual speech community. Often researchers do not provide such data regarding
the quantum of switching. In Grosjean’s conceptualisation of language mode
(Grosjean, 2001), the frequency and nature of switching depends on the bilingual
status of the speaker and hearer and also mode. For example, two bilinguals who are
96 5  Neuroscience of Bilingualism

primarily talking in one language may prefer to switch to the other language at
times. Thus, for such bilinguals, the quantum of switching may be much less. Many
bilingual societies may be of this sort in which switching into the non-dominant
language may be less. Language mode could be a major variable that can influence
switching. These facts should be kept in mind when interpreting brain imaging data
related to switching in bilinguals.
An overwhelming range of data have shown that switching deliberately or when
instructed leads to cost. The cost is understood to reflect contingencies related to
adjustments with task mapping rules as, for each task, a certain response mapping
rule is to be activated fresh. If for successive trials the rules don’t change then there
is no such cost. Does preparation help one to avoid the switch cost? Does context
facilitate switching? Suppose the agent is informed ahead that there may be a pos-
sible switch in a certain trial in a block of trials. One may assume that this prepara-
tion may make the agent more flexible and there won’t be a switch cost. However,
it appears that even when attention has been shifted to the other dimension of the
stimuli for an imminent switch, there is still switch cost. This was recently shown
by Elchlepp, Best, Lavric, and Monsell (2017) in a task switching study. The sub-
jects were asked to switch between identifying the colour of a letter or whether its
type was “consonant or vowel”. On some trials, they were alerted about an upcom-
ing switch. Along with this, the frequency of types of trials was varied. When cer-
tain trials are too frequent this can induce prediction and higher surprise in the other
less frequent trials. Even in this case, the authors observed switch cost. There are
many other dimensions to switch cost and the factors that can modulate this in
experiments. For example, Kleinman and Gollan (2016) recently showed that when
object naming is conducted within a context, speakers do not show any switch cost.
This was in contrast to most studies where participants are asked to name isolated
objects based on an instruction.
The most important aspect of switching in bilinguals is that it is essentially a
voluntary mechanism. When bilinguals feel the need to change language, they
switch. Often interlocutors influence these language switches. Unfortunately, the
overwhelming number of studies on bilingual language switching have used the
cued naming paradigm (Meuter & Allport, 1999). One can, of course, argue that
bottom-up stimuli such as even interlocutors’ faces can be considered to induce
cued naming. However, bilinguals use top-down cognitive control to switch
between languages. Unless one is clear about this mechanism, it is not possible to
understand how bilingualism is linked to cognitive control. The number of studies
that have used voluntary naming as a paradigm is limited. I review them elsewhere
for other reasons but here it suffices to say that when asked to choose languages
voluntarily, bilinguals face the dilemma of choice. Choosing between any two
tasks voluntarily poses a specific change for cognition. Nevertheless, few studies
have shown that bilinguals often end up choosing the language they are dominant
in when asked to choose voluntarily. I am concerned that our current knowledge
about the neural basis of bilingual language switching does not include voluntary
language switching. We do not know what neural structures support such voluntary
switching in bilinguals.
5.3  Executive Control and the Bilingual Brain 97

5.3  Executive Control and the Bilingual Brain

Switching and shifting between task sets fluently calls for executive control. What
sort of neural data do we have about the executive control that is exercised in the
bilingual brains? Again, to reiterate, executive functions are made of up components
such as inhibition, monitoring, selective attention and flexibility (Miyake et  al.,
2000). Different brain networks are apparently responsible for these functions. The
key question is whether bilinguals and monolinguals use similar or different brain
networks when they perform executive control tasks? Further, do bilinguals use the
same networks for tackling both linguistic and non-linguistic demands in tasks that
have conflict? Interestingly, the brain imaging data that exists so far on bilinguals and
monolinguals present a conflicting picture. It is not clear if hypo- or hyperactivation
is what we should be looking for in the brain networks of bilinguals when compared
with monolinguals. Pliatsikas and Luk (2016) reviewed the fMRI studies on bilin-
guals where executive control was under investigation. Evidence suggests that both
bilinguals and monolinguals show similar activation of the ACC when they perform
the Stroop task (Mohades et al., 2014). As for the Simon task, the caudate nucleus
was shown to be involved in conflict resolution, without much difference in activation
between bilinguals and monolinguals (Mohades et al., 2014). Therefore, it is not clear
whether the ACC or caudate nucleus or some other area is involved in conflict resolu-
tion. It is possible that these tasks demand different types of control mechanisms.
Luk, Anderson, Craik, Grady, and Bialystok (2010) used fMRI to examine
whether bilinguals and monolinguals use brain networks differently when they did
a conflict task (Fig. 5.2). They used a conventional flanker task to see how partici-
pants inhibit a response. Additionally, they were also interested to see whether they
can suppress a response altogether. To this end, they added a no-go component to
the task. Here, the instruction was to refrain from any response when it was an
incongruent trial. The theoretical distinction was between ‘interference suppres-
sion’ and ‘response inhibition’. Both bilinguals and monolinguals showed activa-
tion of the inferior frontal areas bilaterally and also some subcortical areas.
Bilinguals additionally used a more extensive area. This can only be understood if
we assume that extensive language management in bilinguals has trained them to
use more networks for response inhibition and suppression. Olsen et al. (2015) com-
pared grey and white matter volumes in lifelong bilinguals and monolinguals.
Bilingual brains showed more frontal lobe white matter than monolinguals. Further,
while older monolinguals had decreasing temporal lobe white matter volume this
was not the case with the bilinguals. When the authors administered a Stroop task,
frontal lobe volume correlated with performance on Stroop task. Such data suggest
that lifelong bilingualism fundamentally alters the structure of the cerebral cortex,
albeit at specific sites. These sites are responsible for executive control and other
higher order mechanisms. Therefore, the argument is that it is bilingualism which
brings such profound changes in the brains. This has been called ‘cognitive reserve’,
which is seen in older bilinguals. Although how exactly the practice of bilingualism
modulates cognitive reserve remains debated.
98 5  Neuroscience of Bilingualism

Fig. 5.2 (a) Brain scores, which represent the degree to which brain activity co-varies with each con-
dition, and (b) brain regions. Monolinguals and bilinguals showed contrasting patterns of activation
for the congruent and incongruent trials but had similar activity in the no-go trials. (Luk et al., 2010)

There is enormous interest now in cognitive neuroscience to explore resting state

neural data. The key question is whether bilingual and monolingual brain networks
differ significantly when they are at rest. Resting state fMRI data tries to look at func-
tional connectivity inherent in key brain areas when there is no explicit task (Biswal,
Zerrin Yetkin, Haughton, & Hyde, 1995). A key question is whether experience-­
induced neuroplasticity modulates resting state functional connectivity in bilinguals.
Functional connectivity between one or more brain regions shows temporal depen-
dency among them (Friston et al., 1995). Use of graph theory and other statistical
methods on continuous brain images of different regions reveal whether certain
brain areas are functionally connected during tasks (van den Heuvel & Pol, 2010).
5.3  Executive Control and the Bilingual Brain 99

Analysis of the resting state networks can suggest how the brain consolidates the
experience and prepares for future events (Buckner & Vincent, 2007). The default
mode networks are brain regions that show deactivation during tasks but not when
there is no task. The default mode network may comprise several brain regions such
as the frontal or parietal regions. The network has been proposed to be involved in
episodic memory processing (Buckner et al., 2005). What is important is to link these
networks to their cognitive significance.
Bilingualism may significantly shape and modify long-range functional connec-
tivity among important cortical and subcortical areas responsible for language and
general executive control. With more experience and ageing, these neural changes
become prominent for monolinguals and bilinguals. Figure 5.3, from Grant, Dennis,
and Li (2014), shows that for bilinguals the connections between frontal and pari-
etal areas remain strong as they age. However, for monolinguals, these connections
weaken and only depend on the frontal areas.
The practice of bilingualism over the lifespan thus can maintain the functional
connectivity of the brain into old age. Stocco et al. (2014) have further suggested a
key role of basal ganglia in strengthening this functional connectivity among neural
regions. Since for the bilinguals language switching involves top-down cognitive
control, the prefrontal cortex receives multiple signals from other brain regions.
Continual switching and shifting also enrich the white matter of the brain Luk et al.
(2012). The adult brain changes continuously with regard to experience. For exam-
ple, Erickson et al. (2011) showed that the cortical volume of hippocampus changed
significantly in adults following aerobic training and also when interpreters were
trained for 3 months in handling multiple languages. The authors, however, make
the important observation that any such structural changes at the microstructural
level of the neural tissue do not necessarily translate into behavioural achievements.
Structural changes in the brain may also occur because of many other environmen-
tal factors (Lövdén, Wenger, Mårtensson, Lindenberger, & Bäckman, 2013). The
key question is if the structural and functional changes as a result of bilingualism are

Fig. 5.3  The ageing bilingual vs. monolingual brain. In monolinguals, ageing leads to increased
reliance on frontal areas, whereas in bilinguals reliance on posterior areas increases with age.
(From Grant et al., 2014)
100 5  Neuroscience of Bilingualism

sustained over time so as to enhance cognitive capabilities beyond language control

in a permanent manner. The type of bilingualism one practices (more vs. less switch-
ing) may induce neuroplasticity differently. Context and language proficiency could
be key variables that may explain the differences one sees between bilinguals and
monolinguals in neural data (de Bruin & Sala, 2016).
Cachia et al. (2017) examined the development of ACC sulcation in bilinguals
and monolinguals. Participants also performed the Flanker task as a measure of
executive control. The idea was to see whether the changes in the ACC sulcation
pattern are linked to performance of the executive control task. The sulcation of
critical areas changes over time because of experience and maturation. The ACC
sulcal variability predicted performance on the Flanker task in bilinguals. Such data
demonstrate that bilingual experience and conflict management brings marked
structural changes to key brain regions. With sophisticated brain morphometric
analysis, it is possible to understand how bilingualism modulates the changes in
brain networks as experience accrues. Ranjan, Mishra, and Singh (2017) collected
neural activation data from Indian bilinguals. They measured diffusion tensor imag-
ing data to study the cellular microstructure of the white matter tracts. The data
revealed a correlation between changes in the microstructures of the right superior
longitudinal fasciculus and language proficiency.
Garcia-Pentón et al. (2015) reviewed the brain imaging literature on bilingual–
monolingual difference and found some methodological anomalies. They suggested
that if correct methods are used and samples are taken carefully then brain imaging
data have the potential to reveal many insights. They also indicated that brain imag-
ing data could reveal the true nature of the advantages that bilingualism bestows.
Commenting on this article, Paap (2016) wrote the following in his abstract:
This commentary on Garcia-Pentón, Fernández García, Costello, Duñabetia, and Carreiras
[2015. The neuroanatomy of bilingualism: How to turn a hazy view into the full picture.
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience] suggests that their review may have understated
the inconsistencies among studies comparing the neuroanatomy of bilinguals to monolin-
guals. If their recommendations for better and more consistent methods, larger sample
sizes, systematic investigation of various types of bilingualism, and more longitudinal stud-
ies were followed the structural picture should become clearer. The main thrust of the com-
mentary is that this clearer picture of the structural changes caused by bilingualism is
unlikely to inform the debate over bilingual advantages in executive functioning because:
(1) there is no direct mapping between brain function and cognitive function, (2) interpreta-
tion of structural differences must rely upon unambiguous alignment with behavioural per-
formance advantages, and (3) the current body of evidence supports the conclusion that
either bilingual advantages do not exist or that they are restricted to very specific and unde-
termined circumstances.

I quote this abstract in full as it is important. Paap denies the existence of any
links between bilingualism and cognitive advantage. Whether the method of enquiry
is brain imaging or behavioural is irrelevant to him. Further, he says that brain data
and behavioural data are too different to be correlated. “There is no direct mapping
between brain function and cognitive function” is too radical a statement to make.
Contemporary cognitive neuroscience exists on this presumption that neural activa-
tions correlate with cognitive processing. If this is not true, all brain imaging data
would be meaningless.
5.4  Cultural Neuroscience and Bilingualism 101

5.4  Cultural Neuroscience and Bilingualism

Although we study the brain and cognitive functions as if they are culture-neutral,
the fact is cultural forces shape them a great deal. Are all bilinguals similar across
different cultures? How do cultural forces unique to different cultures modulate
bilingualism and its effect on cognitive control? Of course, any theory aims to be
culture-invariant while taking into account any parameters related to cultural diver-
sity. Experimental work in cross-cultural psychology and social cognitive neurosci-
ences have been looking at culture-specific effects (Park & Huang, 2010). The key
question is whether we are able to replicate the findings related to management of
conflict, response inhibition, response suppression or monitoring with bilinguals that
come from diverse cultures. The assumption is that cultures influence how different
bilinguals use control mechanisms for their language management in their unique
ways. Thus, we need more cross-cultural data on both neural and behavioural effects.
Presumably, different bilinguals develop different types of control mechanisms
depending on the language context they have encountered across their lifespan. In an
extensive review of the evolutionary origins of executive functions and neuropsy-
chological dysfunctions, Ardila (2008) observes that cultural influences on the
development of executive functions can’t be overlooked. Bilingualism is intrigu-
ingly linked to cultural habits of speaking and listening. If this is the case, then one
must find cultural variables that interact with bilingualism to sculpt neural structures
that tackle various control mechanisms. One would wonder how, if in a certain cul-
ture people are not trained to see a conflict in every incongruent scenario, they are
going to perform the Stroop task? For example, different studies have shown that
holistic and analytic cultures influence the attentional mechanisms (Hedden, Ketay,
Aron, Markus, & Gabrieli, 2008; Masuda, Gonzalez, Kwan, & Nisbett, 2008). Here
I examine how culture modulates different systems of executive functioning.
Hedden et al. (2008) examined whether brain activations in people from eastern
and western cultures differ when they perform a visuospatial task that involves abso-
lute or relative judgment. Absolute judgment is when we just focus on the object as
such without the context. Relative judgment includes contextual assessment. The
key idea was to see if those from East Asia consider contextual information more
while they judge central figures than do westerners who only pay attention to the
object in question. When people performed the task that was incongruent with their
cultural habits (East Asians performing the absolute judgment), neural activity in
frontal and parietal areas was higher (Fig. 5.4). This means greater neural resources
were necessary for this task for these individuals. The authors speculated that cul-
tural habits of attention deployment could influence the neural mechanism. Han and
Northoff (2008) reviewed cross-cultural neuroimaging studies on higher-­order and
lower perceptual processes. The blend of social–cognitive neuroscience and cross-
cultural psychology has opened the possibility of finding both culture-­variant and
-invariant neural mechanisms of cognition. Han and Northoff (2008) raise an inter-
esting question with regard to cultural variables being constitutional or modulatory.
If they are constitutional, then certain brain regions that are known otherwise to
support, for example, attentional processing may not show activity if attentional
102 5  Neuroscience of Bilingualism

Fig. 5.4 (a) Sample trials. In the relative-instruction condition, participants judged whether each
box and line combination matched the proportional scaling of the preceding combination; in the
absolute-instruction condition, participants judged whether each line matched the previous line,
regardless of the size of the accompanying box. (b) Difference scores for the relevant brain regions.
Participants exhibited greater activation in culturally non-preferred tasks—Americans in the rela-
tive task and East Asians in the absolute task. (Hedden et al., 2008)

engagement is qualitatively different in such people. If they are m ­ odulatory, then

such brain regions in people from different cultures will show activity to different
degrees. Current data do not allow us to speculate on these fine-grained effects.
The other interesting questions which Han and Northoff (2008) raise include the
impact of variables such as illiteracy and ageing. Illiteracy is still prevalent in many
cultures. Further, cognitive decline due to ageing happens differently across cul-
tures. These variables could influence results independent of factors such as bilin-
gualism. This angle has not been explicitly pursued in many studies on older
bilinguals. Although many have used retrospective data from hospital records, the
tendency has been to select participants after controlling for these variables, whereas
these very variables could have influenced the very practice of bilingualism (vis-à-­
vis attention control) in participants in their premorbid stage. Han et  al. (2013)
introduced the term cultural neuroscience (CN) to refer to the research activity that
is conducted using brain imaging techniques on different cultural groups. CN
approaches try to predict specific neural and behavioural effects in specific people
considering cultural variables inherent in that culture. Han et al. (2013) wrote that
CN actually has a nonreductionist view of the relationships between formative biological
and cultural properties of the human brain. As previously noted, CN studies aim to elucidate
neuroplastic and culturally generated processes. This is fundamentally at odds with cultural
5.4  Cultural Neuroscience and Bilingualism 103

essentialism and hard-wired biological determinism. CN researchers generate specific

hypotheses about neurocognitive processes grounded in both behavioural findings from cul-
tural psychology and brain imaging findings from cognitive neuroscience. These hypothe-
ses limit the brain regions under investigation and predict specific patterns of cultural group
differences and individual differences in brain activity. Thus CN research does not study
culture as a set of biologically determined predispositions/constraints that can be used to
rigidly categorize collections of people. Instead, the CN approach emphasizes the flexibility
of the human brain that enables humans to adapt to sociocultural environments (p. 351).

Thus, what we study as cognitive systems with controlled psychophysical tasks

in the laboratory are already under cultural influence. This may also undergo shift
when people migrate from their native culture and adapt to another very different
culture. This has an important bearing on studying bilinguals who settle in another
culture in which they are studied.
For example, consider Chinese–English bilinguals who study in the USA. The
native culture of these bilinguals has already sculpted their attentional and percep-
tual system differently towards a holistic mode of operation. They are not going to
look at the visual stimuli and act similar to, for example, Americans who are known
to process more objectively. Of course, one can say that since these bilinguals have
stayed in the USA for some years, their cognitive system must have undergone
changes. Han et  al. (2013) ask this very question and suggest that neuroimaging
studies should be done in immigrant adults to know how coming into a new culture
modulates their core brain functions. At this point, there are only cross-sectional
studies and no study has followed people longitudinally as they move across cul-
tures using neuroimaging methods. Given this backdrop, it is possible that such
participants’ performances on attentional tasks are going to be different.
Pornpattananangkul et al. (2016) compared Americans and Japanese–Americans
living in the USA with the Japanese living in Japan on a go-no-go task in an fMRI
paradigm. Brain activity showed that the activity of left inferior frontal gyrus (L-IFG)
correlates with cultural groups. The native Japanese who were in Japan showed the
strongest activity of the L-IFG. The authors also asked participants for their subjec-
tive responses on their daily behavioural consistency. This kind of data can reveal
how individuals view their actions and their overall consistency. How does someone
think he or she applies inhibitor control every day in different real-­life scenarios
otherwise? Participants with a high level of self-endorsement of behavioural consis-
tency also showed higher activity of the ACC. These data show that inhibitory con-
trol could differ across cultures. Furthermore, qualitative data in correlation with
experimental data could reveal an inhibitory control profile of a participant.
Imagine bilinguals from two different cultures who are undergoing brain imag-
ing for a task that involves visual perception. It is possible that bilinguals in the
eastern cultures take background interlocutors into consideration when they are
planning their language for the focal interlocutor. However, bilinguals in the west-
ern countries will solely decide the language for the focal interlocutor who is in
front of them even if there are other interlocutors in the background. Green and
Abutalebi (2013) refer to the ecology of bilingual language control. This ecology is
obviously related to patterns of switching and shifting embedded within a culture
and sociolinguistic norms of speaking and interacting. One of the central claims of
104 5  Neuroscience of Bilingualism

the adaptive control hypothesis is that certain bilinguals switch more than others
depending on their context. Secondly, bilingual speakers choose their language
(thus inhibiting the other) once they know who their interlocutor is. Is this universal
across cultures? Although patterns of switching have been studied in some cultures,
there are few data available on how bilinguals control their languages with regard to
their interlocutors across cultures. I raised the issue of figure-ground perception in
interlocutors, which is an implication of the cross-cultural psychological work on
attention and visual perception. However, language selection in a given context is
far more a critical and top-down mechanism than visual object perception. Studies
have established that faces do trigger linguistic activations (Zhang, Morris, Cheng,
& Yap, 2013). Therefore, such visual cues, whether they are in the foreground or
background, will exert influence on the language selection mechanism. Cultural
forces that act in the attentional system should also influence much of the decision
pertaining to language control.
Some bilingualism researchers have explored whether bilinguals consider cul-
tural associations during language planning and control. Faces, for example, reflect
ethnic and cultural attributes. Recognising a face is also recognising the cultural
ethnicity of the individuals. A key question is do bilinguals use this kind of knowl-
edge for their language control? Li, Yang, Scherf, and Li (2013) presented Chinese
or Caucasian faces and tracked neural activation in Chinese–English bilinguals.
They asked people to name objects either in Chinese or English and simultaneously
faces were presented that were either congruent or incongruent with the language to
be used for naming. The behavioural data showed facilitation when the language for
naming matched with the ethnicity of the face. Interestingly, the brain imaging data
showed that for incongruent conditions, there were no significant frontal, ACC or
parietal activations. These areas have been shown to be highly active for conflict
suppression. Rather, the data showed activation in these areas when there was con-
gruity. This can only mean that these areas that are known for conflict management
also play a role in integrating visual and linguistic information. One may wonder if
these results were because of the type of participants recruited (immigrant Chinese–
English bilinguals in the USA). Would the results have been different if one took
Chinese–English bilinguals in Beijing? Bilinguals in these distinct cultural–linguis-
tic landscapes have grown up seeing different kinds of face–language pairings.
These data reveal a cultural angle to the issue of the neural basis of language control
beyond the fact that faces are linked to languages.
There have been some attempts to explore whether bilinguals, irrespective of
their cultural heritage, have better executive control than monolinguals. For exam-
ple, Yang, Yang, and Lust (2011) studied executive control among Korean–English
bilingual children and compared them with monolinguals from the USA and Korea.
The bilingual children performed better than all monolinguals, irrespective of cul-
ture. Interestingly, the Korean monolinguals were found to have better accuracy but
paid the cost in speed compared with monolinguals in the USA. Could there be a
culture angle to this difference? The authors argued that bilingualism was a greater
predictor of executive control performance, albeit the influence of cultural cannot
be entirely ruled out. Further, one cannot say from such data what the effect of
5.5 Studying the Cultural Brain and Bilingualism 105

acculturation is on the immigrant children as they grow within an analytic culture

and adapt to its style of cognitive processing. Comparative studies of this sort will
reveal the effects of the long-term effect of culture on one’s cognitive processing
independent of bilingualism.
What happens when someone moves from one culture to another whose cogni-
tive processing styles are different? How do Chinese–English participants who
move to western countries (a different culture) learn to adapt to the control mecha-
nisms? An intuitive guess is that the duration of stay in the new culture should cor-
relate with any behavioural or neural evidence and such people should differ from
the natives who are still in their own countries. This point is important since many
bilinguals now move into cultures other than their own and find themselves with
new challenges. Such adaptations are both linguistic as well as cognitive. Pan Liu,
Rigoulot, and Pell (2017) studied Chinese immigrants to Canada and North America
on the emotional Stroop task and oddball paradigm. The idea was to see whether
these immigrants’ behavioural and neural data resembles natives as they spend
more time in that culture. The study revealed that such immigrants who have spent
a long time in Canada showed similar EEG (electroencephalogram) effects to North
Americans. This means that, as a function of social and cultural assimilation, their
neural structures started to adapt. Such data could cast alternative interpretations on
many studies where immigrant bilinguals have been studied. Most often these bilin-
guals are young students who have been students in western English-speaking uni-
versities for some years. The problem is that unless we know what baseline changes
normally may have happened because of adaptation to a different culture we won’t
know the additive impact of bilingualism on neural functioning.
In summary, the cultural angle to neuroscience data is pretty important in at least
the bilinguals who are mobile and who come from diverse cultures. My intention is
not to question the authenticity of the data that we have got so far but to look at it
from other perspectives as well since bilingualism is a social and cultural phenom-
enon. The predictions of the adaptive control hypothesis, for instance, could be
expanded to include culture-specific variations. These effects could be at the level
of cognitive control and also quantum of switching. Of course, for a general
neuroscience-­enriched theory of bilingualism and control to emerge would require
the inclusion of the diversity issues. Since bilingualism is, after all, a window to the
mind (Kroll & Bialystok, 2013), the neurocognitive approach has to consider how
culture influences the mind.

5.5  Studying the Cultural Brain and Bilingualism

In this final section, I address some obvious anomalies that have already appeared
in the reviews of papers and ideas so far. It is clear that bilinguals and monolinguals
may have a fundamentally different neural structure for language control. fMRI
studies show that bilingual brains show greater functional connectivity than mono-
linguals among important brain areas (Grant et al., 2014). A key question then is
106 5  Neuroscience of Bilingualism

whether we can compare bilinguals and monolinguals given the differences in the
neural organisation? Parker et al., (2012) examined bilinguals on different linguistic
tasks when they performed these tasks only in their first language. Therefore, they
had to stop interference from the second language when they used only the first
language. When task demands for the monolinguals were increased these same
areas were active. This may suggest that neural differences between the bilinguals
and the monolinguals are only a matter of control.
In their review of bilingualism, Costa and Sebastian-Galles (2014) discuss the
neuroscience research on bilingualism. They point out that so far there are no clear
data on the longitudinal development of neural structure from childhood onwards.
How does increasing second language proficiency sculpt the brain? Does increasing
proficiency lead to increasing demands for exercising control? This is a difficult
question since it is not easy to say whether a low or high proficient bilingual faces
more difficult challenges or language control. Research has shown that high profi-
cient bilinguals activate both the languages in parallel much more (Mishra & Singh,
2016) and hence it is reasonable to expect that they will need more executive control
to sort out the conflict (Singh & Mishra, 2012, 2013, 2015). On the other hand,
people with low second-language proficiency also struggle to find the right words to
speak in this language. The nature of control in these two cases is clearly different.
This difference is central to our understanding of how bilingualism changes the
neural structures of the brain over time. Increasing second-language proficiency has
been shown to correlate with an increase in grey matter volume (Abutalebi & Green,
2016). The age at which one acquires the second language influences the develop-
ment of the cortical networks. Neural functional and structural organisation differs
for those who have acquired a second language early and who have higher profi-
ciency in it (Liu et al., 2017).
Another important question regarding bilingual language control is whether such
control is comprehension or production based? Of course, intuitively it makes sense
to assume a model of control that is based on production, which certainly involves
difficult language selection. The other issue is whether the activations in the ACC
that many have reported during bilingual language control is specific to language or
is domain-general. Activations in the L-IFG and DLPFC have been found only dur-
ing production and not when bilinguals listen to language (Abutalebi & Green,
2016). The ACC has also been shown to activate during language-switching tasks.
Blanco-Elorrieta and Pylkkänen (2016) studied Arabic–English bilinguals on lan-
guage and non-language-switching tasks to see if the neural control is language
specific or domain-general. Bilinguals were given stimuli to switch both in produc-
tion and comprehension. The data showed that DLPFC was active during switching
in production as well as during category switching. In contrast, switching during
comprehension recruited the ACC. The very high temporal nature of MEG (magne-
toencephalography) data showed that neural activity related to switching starts
within around 400 ms of stimuli onset. Unless it is assumed that inhibitory control
is very crucial in language control, there is no need to assume that the ACC is
involved in language control. Behavioural data from high proficient bilinguals on
linguistic and non-linguistic switching tasks show that these bilinguals do not use
5.5  Studying the Cultural Brain and Bilingualism 107

inhibitory control during language switching whereas the same bilinguals use
inhibitory control during non-linguistic task switching (Calabria, Hernández,
Branzi, & Costa, 2012). If language production and comprehension are treated as
very different processes then there is no need to assume that executive control is
involved in comprehension, which is a passive process. Pickering and Garrod
(2013) have proposed language production and comprehension to be highly depen-
dent. As per their theory, language production and comprehension form a single
action–perception chain. We produce language depending on how we have compre-
hended language. Data supporting this theory have also come from studies of joint
naming (Gambi & Hartsuiker, 2016; Peeters, Runnqvist, Bertrand, & Grainger,
2014). Thus, currently there are divergent views regarding the functional similarity
and differences between production and comprehension.
There is also the question of the laboratory-based switching tasks not being par-
ticularly sensitive in capturing the actual mechanisms. It is, of course, the case that
laboratory-based tasks do not mimic what happens in actual everyday behaviour. It
is not known what kinds of control mechanisms bilinguals use when they naturally
switch during a conversation. Do they recruit inhibitory control to the same extent
they use in a language-switching task in a laboratory? It may well turn out that our
theorisations about the domain-general inhibitory mechanisms and their involve-
ment in language and non-language switching are an artefact of the task. Blanco-
Elorrieta and Pylkkänen (2016) have shown that there is little activation of the
prefrontal control areas and ACC when bilinguals listen to a more natural speech.
However, these same bilinguals show activation of executive control-related areas
when they do switching tasks in the laboratory. Kleinman and Gollan (2016) have
also observed no switch cost during more natural language production. It is unclear
if language proficiency or context influences such outcomes. Nevertheless, this is
central to our hypothesis concerning domain-general linguistic and non-­linguistic
control mechanisms in the brain. If bilinguals do not necessarily use a lot of control
during natural speech and conversation, then we may have to re-look at the experi-
mental paradigms.
In summary, current evidence suggests that neural structures such as the ACC,
DLPFC, and other frontal and parietal areas show some activity when individuals
try to sort out conflict or exercise executive control. This happens in both bilinguals
and monolinguals. To what extent the practice of bilingualism per se above and
beyond other attributes modulates the activity of these structures is an open ques-
tion. Much evidence suggests that bilingualism is one of the variables that influnces
executive control, among many others. Valian (2015) did point out that anyone
engaged in cognitively demanding tasks for which executive control is necessary
may develop these cognitive abilities. If these individuals also happen to be bilin-
gual then this may be additive. Current tasks cannot separate out these individual
contributions to task effects since today no one is just bilingual—they also engage
in other demanding skills that are add up to one’s cognitive reserve. Further, there
are few data on how core cognitive attributes change over one’s lifetime irrespective
of bilingualism. For example, major cognitive functions such as working memory
and attention start to show decline as people age (Morcom, 2016). This decline
108 5  Neuroscience of Bilingualism

could start as early as at 30 years old. If this is the case, then our claims about bilin-
gualism and its advantages in old age should be re-looked at. If, in general, cogni-
tive functions that are central to language learning, production and comprehension
begin to decline when one is middle-aged or before, then it is not clear how bilin-
gualism can alter this very much since the practice of bilingualism itself requires
many of these functions to be in top order. Of course, one can argue that this very
decline is slow in bilinguals. However, we do not have such large-scale longitudinal
data to infer this at the moment.

5.6  Summary

Neuroimaging data are invaluable in understanding how cognitive structures arise in

the brain through a nature–nurture interface. It is very likely that bilinguals indeed
possess certain specific brain structures or achieve certain functional connectivity
over time that is different to that of monolinguals. Managing two languages over
many years may bring neuroplasticity. However, the very word ‘managing’ requires
further clarification than we currently have. As I indicate, the main controversy in
the field is on the issue of control and how exactly it is implemented by the bilin-
guals. If it turns out that our ideas and theories of control in bilinguals is an artefact
of the experimental paradigms we have used (e.g. in an object naming task or Stroop
task) and we really do not know how fluent bilinguals bring any control at all during
everyday use of language in real life, then it is time to re-evaluate. Further, brain
imaging data being temporally slow does not reflect at what timescale decisions
pertaining to cognitive processes are taken in the brain. Nevertheless, newer studies
with resting-state data and functional connectivity analyses have revealed how bilin-
gualism may sculpt the brain. If indeed the practice and maintenance of bilingual-
ism brings such changes to neural functioning, then this has great therapeutic value.

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Chapter 6
Bilingualism, Context and Control

6.1  Context, Environment and Bilingualism

Most experimental approaches in cognitive psychology and even cognitive neuro-

science do not incorporate the context of the phenomena. Bilingual speakers are
embedded in a larger context which includes other speakers with diverse back-
grounds. In this chapter, I explore the idea that maybe our understanding of bilin-
gualism and its role in cognition is limited because of the methods that have been
used. For example, most studies on language production and naming have used a
switching task involving colour cues. But that is not how speakers switch between
languages in real life. They perceive faces and also think of languages that are
linked to the faces and then use the faces to guide language selection. Studies of
executive control have used tasks that often do not mimic actual real-life situations.
How does one know that inhibition seen in a colour word Stroop task is the sort of
mechanism one applies when faced with a socially incongruent situation? For
example, when a bilingual speaker is uncertain about the language identity of the
interlocutor? One can imagine many other such interactive and social situations that
have demands similar to what one may face with non-linguistic tasks such as the
Stroop and the Simon tasks.
Currently, there are only a handful of studies that have brought context into the
debate. ‘Context’ here could be a face, a visual cue, some picture or even a sound
that is linked to the bilingual’s language. How do bilinguals know that they have to
select a certain language at a certain point in time during the discourse in a certain
situation? Unless they are constantly aware, such selectivity may not be fluent. We
do not know how bilinguals maintain such awareness all the time. Of course, in real
life there are no coloured cues around us to guide us to select languages. One has to
use salient perceptual cues and know that a certain language is suitable for someone.
Thus, control then becomes a mechanism related to the perceptual analysis of cues
linked to languages. Bilinguals have to know which language is linked to which
interlocutor. This tagging of a language with something external is the most

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 113

R. K. Mishra, Bilingualism and Cognitive Control, The Bilingual Mind
and Brain Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92513-4_6
114 6  Bilingualism, Context and Control

i­mportant aspect of a bilingual’s cognitive life. The bilingual brain has an excep-
tional ability to link different attributes to stimuli (just as objects have two different
names in two languages) and later use this indexing to refer to them. Grosjean’s
research (2010) on the bilingual mode emphasises context. The bilingual under-
stands environmental cues to set the language mode.
The sections that follow cite and discuss research showing that bilinguals are very
sensitive to others. This sensitivity reflects in the control of their own behaviour.
Bilinguals attach language cues to faces and even cultural objects from infancy (e.g.
Weikum et al., 2007). Bilinguals know that one face is linked to two different lan-
guages and when they see that face those two languages are activated. More recently,
for example, Blanco-Elorrieta and Pylkkänen (2017) have shown that bilinguals
show neural activations as soon they see an interlocutor with regard to language
selection. The emphasis is not just to examine switching, shifting and monitoring
using psycholinguistic paradigms but to ask more fundamental questions related to
bilingual cognition. Why are bilinguals sensitive to visual cues and how do they
influence their language mechanism? Understanding the nature of executive control
in bilinguals now has entered into the domain of social cognition (Bialystok, 2015).
While the replication debates have been around task and statistics, one important
point has been missed—that is, the contextual explanation of bilingual cognition. If
bilinguals and monolinguals perceptually process stimuli differently, then this may
explain the way they differ on other complex cognitive functions.

6.2  Adaptive Bilinguals

Cognitive agents adapt to the changing demands of the environment. Adaptation

may include modifying and controlling behaviour that is appropriate for that occa-
sion. Bilinguals need to interact with both bilinguals and monolinguals in a given
context. Since a speech community may comprise diverse types of speakers, the
bilinguals need to adapt to the interlocutors quickly. When Green proposed his inhib-
itory control model (Green, 1998) he had a single bilingual speaker in mind. The
nature of inhibition in a solitary situation (e.g. while performing an object naming
task) can be explained looking at just the task demands. However, this modulation
was not because of some external agent or an interlocutor. More recently, theorists
have been including the context of interlocutors and other agents in the environment
which influence how the bilingual controls his or her language. A bilingual’s ability
to adapt his linguistic behaviour is a result of the cognizance of the interlocutor.
Green and Abutalebi (2013) have recently looked into the ecology of the bilingual
speakers and how we may consider factors that influence cognitive control.
Green (2011) focuses on the varieties of speech communities and their switching
behaviour. If a community does not encourage language switching often then the
bilinguals within that community may not switch often. This is what Green calls the
ecology of the bilinguals as a function of a switching or non-switching community
(Green, 2011). I do not think we yet have good-quality data on bilingual speech
6.3 Faces, Scenes and Interference 115

communities around the world and their switching behaviour. Nonetheless, theoreti-
cally linking the percentage of switching (or opportunity to switch) to exercise of
control makes logical sense. Green proposes a single-language and dual-language
context. These contexts are defined in terms of language-switching practices in a
community. In some speech communities, bilingual speakers often switch between
two languages, and in others they restrict to one language. Green thinks that bilin-
guals who are of the dual-language type may recruit more executive control for
monitoring than those who are in the single-language type. The frontal and cerebral
regions that meditate control will be highly exercised in the bilinguals who are of
the dual-language type. Green’s classification makes empirical predictions with
regard to what we may see on non-linguistic executive control tasks if such bilin-
guals are compared. Depending on the language context (dual or single), bilinguals
modulate their cognitive control. Green writes that “if functional demand shapes
neural circuits then there may be structural correlates in the regions linked to con-
trol. In communities where speakers must switch on demand between their two
languages, anterior cingulate and/or left inferior frontal regions may show greater
gray matter density compared to monolingual speakers of just one of those lan-
guages. In contrast, in communities where bilinguals code-switch, right cerebellar
structures may show enhanced gray matter density.”
How does one examine this in an experimental context? If the experiment
involves object naming, then single- or dual-language contexts can be induced. In a
single-language context, there is no demand for switching. In the dual-language
context, the speaker knows that he may have to switch. The object name is selected
early in a single-language context. In the dual-language context, the selection is late
as there is both switching and inhibition. The caudate nucleus shows selective activ-
ity in this contextual difference. Grosjean (2001) has also suggested that bilinguals
in dual- or single-language contexts are basically operating in two different modes.
Executive control may not be exercised in those bilinguals who do not switch a lot.
Hartanto and Yang (2016) compared dual- and single-language bilinguals on
typical switching tasks. The bilinguals were a Chinese–English-speaking popula-
tion from Hong Kong. They were divided into these groups based on their demo-
graphic histories and also language use background. The authors found smaller
switch costs for the dual language-context bilinguals compared to the single
language-­context bilinguals. The results showed that, depending on the bilingual
environment and its everyday demands, executive control requirements are modi-
fied. However, there are many factors that can influence how one uses language in
general.

6.3  Faces, Scenes and Interference

Green and Abutalebi (2013) proposed that bilinguals are sensitive to visual cues in
the environment. Visual cues can be faces or cultural objects linked to languages.
Although face perception has been shown to be one of our fundamental and
116 6  Bilingualism, Context and Control

automatic cognitive abilities (including the suggestion that there might be a face-­
processing area in the brain), it is only recently that bilingual language processing
has been shown to be influenced when bilinguals are exposed to faces. If faces can
influence bilingual language processing, then this may provide strong evidence for
adaption. Li, Yang, Scherf, and Li (2013) examined how Chinese–English bilin-
guals are sensitive towards Chinese or non-Chinese faces during language produc-
tion. Chinese–English bilinguals were faster naming an object in Chinese in the
presence of a Chinese face. Similar facilitation was also seen when they named
objects in English alongside a Caucasian face. This suggests that faces primed cor-
responding languages. In other words, we can say that the bilingual speakers acti-
vated the language that they thought was suitable for the particular interlocutor.
However, there was no interference where the face was incongruent with the lan-
guage to be used.
Not just faces but images linked to culture similarly influence bilingual language
activation. Zhang, Morris, Cheng, and Yap (2013) presented scenes that belonged to
Chinese culture to Chinese–English bilinguals and found that this interferes with
their English production. This inhibition arises from activation of Chinese from the
images. Roychoudhuri, Prasad, and Mishra (2016) examined this issue in the Indian
context. They argued that not just faces but images linked to culture similarly influ-
ence bilingual language activation. The bilinguals studied in both Zhang et  al.
(2013) and Li et  al. (2013) were not proficient in English. Further, the linguistic
climate in the USA where the study was carried out was English. In such a situation,
these bilinguals may not often switch between Chinese and English in everyday
communication.
The participants in the Roychoudhuri et al. (2016) study were Bengali–English
university students. Unlike the studies on Chinese–English bilinguals in the USA
who were immigrants away from their home culture, these students lived in the
same country but in a different province. Participants were students at the University
of Hyderabad (a metropolitan multilingual city in India). The lingua franca of the
university is English and all teaching and research are conducted in English. In this
overwhelmingly English-dominant climate, it is natural that these bilinguals will
have less opportunity to use Bengali often. However, Bengali is used in non-work-­
related scenarios by these groups as well as Hindi, which is the official language of
India. A sample trial from the study is shown in Fig. 6.1.
In this study by Roychoudhuri et al. (2016) iconic culture images appeared in the
background. The images were selected after ratings by Bengali–English bilinguals
to ensure that these images represented Bengali culture. Speakers were slow in
English naming when the background image was a Bengali culture image compared
with a neutral image. There was also statistically non-significant facilitation during
Bengali naming when the image was culturally congruent compared with neutral
images. The patterns of results suggest that even though the bilinguals had been liv-
ing and studying in another province, they are sensitive to their native culture image
and this sensitivity penetrates into language planning. However, these results did
not fully replicate the earlier observations with Chinese–English bilinguals. It is
important to note that while Zhang et al. (2013) had observed interference in second
6.3  Faces, Scenes and Interference 117

Fig. 6.1  Experimental procedure from Roychoudhuri et  al. (2016). Each trial started with an
image representing Bengali culture (Goddess Durga or Howrah Bridge). Neutral images (single
coloured textures) were presented in some trials as a baseline. The colour of the central box indi-
cated the language to be used to name the subsequent object. In this example, the image of Howrah
Bridge acts as the culture cue and the red square cued speakers to use Bengali to name ‘banana’

language (L2) naming with culture images, Li et al. did not report any interference.
Rather, their results showed facilitation when the face was congruent with the lan-
guage to be used for naming. The discrepancy between these studies is fascinating
since both studies have used immigrant Chinese–English bilinguals who have been
living in the USA.
Faces are more immediately perceived because of their evolutionary signifi-
cance, while images may take time to have the same effect. Further, while faces and
their cultural ethnicity are perceived immediately, speakers may differ on how they
relate any image to their culture. When one sees a face, a conversational mode may
set in more quickly as opposed to seeing a natural scene. Further, the contrast
between a Chinese face and a Caucasian face is strong and direct for the perceptual
system, thus offering a good comparison for analysis. Whereas the so-called iconic
images of a culture and neutral scenes used in some studies may share bottom-up
similarity. Questions have been raised regarding the participants’ proficiency in
English as this may explain their being slower in naming in English. Chinese–
English bilinguals and Bengali–English bilinguals may differ a lot with regard to
their English competence. As reported in these studies, the Chinese–English bilin-
guals acquired English much later in life whereas Indians are taught English very
early because the educational system emphasises English throughout. Irrespective
of these differences, it is clear that faces and images evoke language and bilingual
brains can track this. This is not merely a perceptual issue but has a cognitive effect
on language production.
118 6  Bilingualism, Context and Control

Visual cues in the environment point at the appropriate language in a given con-
text. These cues are tagged to specific languages such as a face or cultural picture.
Different cultures and the level of bilingualism practised within them may influence
such sensitivity. One key question is whether all bilinguals are equally sensitive to
such cues? Does executive control play any role in this interface between the per-
ceptual system and language activation? The studies discussed so far did not corre-
late their effects with the executive control of participants. Hartsuiker (2015)
suggests that the issue of cultural cues and language activation cannot be sorted out
without understanding how visual cues really influence lexical activation. Culturally
or ethnically, congruent images may prime particular language, but observing inhi-
bition in incongruent situations is difficult to explain. Inhibition probably results
when spontaneous activation of a language from an image is incongruent with the
response. Without many other studies taking into account the bilingual ecology of
speakers, we cannot theorise on this causal relationship.
It is possible that if in, a given cultural context, bilinguals are exposed to a diverse
range of interlocutors who speak different languages, they may be more alert as
opposed to more homogeneous cultures. For example, different types of bilinguals
in India may be part of the same language landscape, whereas in the USA the envi-
ronment is largely English speaking. Further, these bilinguals may have different
levels of proficiency in the two languages. Switching is an outcome of the possibil-
ity of practicing different types of bilingualism with different interlocutors in a
given environment. Looking at a bilingual interlocutor thus means to assess both the
languages and select one that is to be used for speaking during communication.
Another related and important question is how do bilinguals resist the influence
of faces and culture images? Such cues can distract them from their own language-­
selection goals. Imagine a bilingual who is in a monolingual mode (in the sense of
Grosjean) and has selected to use only one language with the interlocutor. This calls
for inhibition of the other language constantly and deliberately. The environment
may have faces or images that are linked to the language, which the bilingual is try-
ing to inhibit. I would like to speculate that the degree of sensitivity and the require-
ment of executive control for such a situation will differ vastly between cultural
settings. Different bilingual settings prevailing in different countries will directly
impact how bilinguals manage this interference. It is not clear how faces and culture
images may induce switching in the bilingual during a natural conversation.
Therefore, going beyond bottom-up priming (which explains why any face or image
provokes a language), we should look into the environment and particular types of
bilingualism and their interaction.

6.4  Presence of Interlocutors

Executive control that bilingual brains exercise is linked to interlocutors. Bilinguals

decide which language to pick based on the interlocutors. Just as faces and natural
scenes prime the languages linked to them, similarly bilinguals select languages
6.4  Presence of Interlocutors 119

appropriate for an interlocutor. While cueing studies have examined language selec-
tion under instruction, few have explored how the mere presence of an interlocutor
can lead to language selection. The communicative and contextual forces that mod-
ulate bilingual language selection is a new paradigm in research (Green & Abutalebi,
2013). Bilinguals may find themselves in a context where there may be multiple
interlocutors around. Thus, language selection will depend on whom they intend to
address. Language switching between different interlocutors requires higher
control.
Grosjean (2001) suggests that the emergence of language mode is dependent on
the language proficiency and dominance of the speakers. Green and Abutalebi’s
(2013) adaptive control hypothesis suggests that various language contexts (single,
dual) bring in different switching patterns. Figure  6.2 demonstrates situations
involving language selection in bilinguals when they are interacting with other
bilinguals/monolinguals where native language (L1) is Hindi and L2 is English. So
far no theory accounts for how the bilingual brain considers and resolves such com-
plex interactive contexts. For example, when a bilingual interacts with a monolin-
gual and some bilinguals with low proficiency in L2, he might maintain a high level
of activation of L1 and hence prefer to use L1 in such a scenario (Situation C). In

Fig. 6.2  Three possible interactive situations for a bilingual. When a bilingual encounters other
bilinguals with balanced proficiency in both the languages, he has to actively maintain both the
languages and shift between them (Situation a). But, when a bilingual encounters monolinguals,
activation of L2 has to be completely inhibited and communicate only in L1 (Situation b). A more
complex situation arises when a bilingual encounters a mixed set of interlocutors. In such a case,
the bilingual has to carefully monitor the context and choose the appropriate language. In the situ-
ation depicted here (Situation c), a bilingual is in communication with monolinguals and other
bilinguals who are low proficient in L2. Here, the bilingual would be expected to maintain a high
level of activation of L1 as it will facilitate communication with all his interlocutors
120 6  Bilingualism, Context and Control

contrast, if a bilingual encounters only monolinguals, he has to completely inhibit

L1 (Situation B). Therefore, the emergence of a mode is entirely dependent on the
situation and the assessment of the mutual language proficiencies. I have remarked
that the interactive context of bilinguals is culture-bound. In any communicative
setting in India, one has to be prepared to interact with a diverse set of bilinguals and
monolinguals. Thus, it is not possible to just maintain a particular language in any
given situation. This is probably not the case for the bilinguals in the USA where L2
communication generally happens in specific contexts. To conclude, language
selection, the quantum of switching and the degree of maintenance of activation
level of a language are entirely dependent on the quick evaluation of interactive
contexts. Further research is required to study cross-linguistic interactional contexts
rather than struggle cross-­sectionally. My own study, which is discussed later
(Kapiley & Mishra, in press), looks at bilingual language control as a function of the
assessment of interlocutor language proficiency, beyond merely tagging a language
to a particular face.
The first important point to note is the sensitivity of bilinguals to interlocutors.
This sensitivity manifests in the form of their awareness of the interlocutors’ lan-
guage and cultural background as well as knowledge about their preferred languages
during communication. Bilingual speakers know whether the interlocutor is bilin-
gual with good proficiency in both the languages or a monolingual. Language man-
agement during live communication is contingent on this mutual knowledge. The
bilingual may deactivate one language when talking to a monolingual interlocutor
and keep both languages active when the interlocutor is a bilingual (Grosjean,
2001). If the interlocutor is less competent in one language, then the bilingual may
select the language which suits the interlocutor in a greater number of instances.
This point probably lies at the heart of the adaptive nature of bilingual language
management since this affects the switching possibility during an interaction. More
traditionally, interlocutors have been understood as those who directly interact with
the speakers. What if the interlocutors are not actively engaged in communicating
but are passive in the scene?
Bhatia, Prasad, Sake and Mishra (2017) addressed this issue using a voluntary
naming paradigm. Voluntary naming for a bilingual speaker induces language
choices in each trial. In this paradigm, speakers choose a language to name an object
freely. Voluntary naming may induce decision-making demands and speakers often
select their dominant language for naming (Gollan & Ferreira, 2009; Gollan,
Kleinman, & Wierenga, 2014). Bhatia et al. (2017) explored whether the presence
of a cartoon (depicted as an interlocutor) influences the voluntary language choice
of Hindi–English bilingual speakers. At the beginning of each trial, a cartoon char-
acter appeared waving at one of the two colour patches on the screen. Each colour
patch was related to the response keys that the speakers needed to select to indicate
their language choice for the voluntary naming task. The authors were inspired by a
study where Dolk Hommel, Prinz, and Liepelt (2013) showed that even a Chinese
cat that sat on a table and randomly waved its hands influenced participants’ perfor-
mance on a Simon task. Similarly, are bilinguals sensitive to the presence of other
speakers in their environment who may influence their language choices? If so, then
6.4  Presence of Interlocutors 121

one can suggest that bilingual language activation can happen by mere exposure to
stimuli present in their environment. Bhatia et al. (2017) found that speakers often
chose the language indicated by the cartoon character through waving at the colour
patches. Importantly, the cartoon character did not speak or select a language explic-
itly—the cartoon was not a partner in any communication with the speakers. This
study demonstrated that bilingual speakers are sensitive to visual cues in the envi-
ronment that are linked to relevant languages; it influences their own decision-­
making regarding language use.
One can say that this is easily explained by a bottom-up processing mechanism
where the colour patches primed language selection. However, this does not demon-
strate that the cartoon character’s waving influenced how speakers decided on the
language to use. In the experiment, the speakers first selected the language and then
saw the objects. It is possible that the colours just primed and biased the speakers’
selection. However, language selection for the speaker was a top-down intentional
action. If such an action was influenced by the cartoon character’s actions, then we
have to accept that even language selection is affected by other agents’ actions, but
these actions are not necessarily related to speaker’s own actions. The data suggest
that if language choice is considered an action and language selection is a decision-­
making act, then this is vulnerable to other agents’ actions.
The Ideomotor theory of action control (see Hommel, 2013 for a review) pro-
poses that any action and its outcome are linked representationally in the mind. We
acquire this relationship during development. Action outcomes provoke sensorimo-
tor preparation ahead of the actions. In this way, others’ actions start influencing our
own action. We embody their sensorimotor action link. Studies on joint tasks show
how agents incorporate one another’s action choices when they do the same task
together. Recent developments in the socio-motor action control framework suggest
that we learn our action outcomes through their effects on other agents (Kunde,
Weller, & Pfister, 2017). Thus, when they perform the same actions, we also mimic
them unintentionally. This is very relevant in understanding bilingual language acti-
vation and language control in a social setting. This is so because we are interested
in a theory that offers a holistic explanation of how exactly language selection and
control works in bilinguals.
Suppose two bilingual speakers are taking turns to try and name an object. They
will activate both names of that object in parallel. The task is a joint task and each
person takes a turn in selecting a language and naming the object. Suppose the bilin-
gual speaker ‘A’ sees speaker ‘B’ select L1 to name the object. Will this, in turn, lead
to higher activation of L1 in speaker ‘A’ when he tries to select the language when
his turn comes? If this happens, then we can say that speakers’ own language selec-
tion is contingent on what they think others are doing in the social context. This
alignment has also been studied in the pragmatics of turn-taking and sentence
­priming (Pickering & Garrod, 2004). In the example I gave, both the speakers are
not communicating with one another and have no speaker–hearer relationship. Yet
they are co-agents in a task and one’s language selection depends on the other. This
simple task has the potential to reveal how bilinguals are sensitive to fellow bilin-
guals’ language selection. Gambi and Hartsuiker (2016) recently showed the same
122 6  Bilingualism, Context and Control

with an elegant experiment. Two bilingual speakers were asked to name objects in
turn. One of the participants voluntarily selected the language, whereas the other
participant always spoke in one language (L1). Surprisingly, the responses of the
non-switching participant in L1 were slowed down if the partner had spoken in L2
on the previous trial. The results showed that one bilingual’s language selection
influenced the language activation in the other. Thus, social influence on language
selection can be both top-down and bottom-up.
The study by Bhatia et al. (2017) also raises other questions related to self-action
versus actions provoked by other agents. Since the participants selected their own
language, we assume that they were exercising their free will. When an external
agent’s actions provoked them to choose one language over the other we can say
that such a mechanism was also under bottom-up control, although participants
presumably do not have an explicit idea that the cartoon is influencing their action.
Importantly, the cartoon influenced voluntary language switching. Language
switching in bilinguals could be both under top-down and bottom-up influence. The
cartoon character’s actions biased the activation of a certain language towards one
of the responses and then speakers selected it with greater probability. External
influences modulate the internal natural switching behaviour and also the preferred
choices of the speaker with regard to the dominant language. However, the study did
not show any effect of the cartoon character’s behaviour on naming latency, which
was unaffected by this influence. It is possible that influences on language schema
selection in a bilingual may not always affect the latency. While bilinguals may
choose a language because of this influence, how this reflects on the naming latency
cannot be predicted.
Bilinguals keep track of interlocutors and their languages across time and pace.
This means that they remember which languages are to be tagged to a particular
interlocutor. This indexing of languages to a face facilitates lexical access when
needed. Woumans et al. (2015) asked people to indulge in simulated Skype inter-
views for some time. During this interaction, presumably, participants learnt to
associate languages that their interlocutors spoke. Later in the main experiment,
they were asked to produce a word associated with the word produced by the inter-
locutor. Speakers were faster responding to faces that used the same language as in
the Skype session. This means that the participants kept the mental representation of
the interlocutors, tagging particular languages with them. When there was a match,
they were faster. However, they became slower when the language did not match
with the identity of the speaker as introduced. Further, when the participants became
aware through the course of the experiment that the interlocutors were indeed bilin-
guals and not monolinguals, this effect disappeared. This data suggests that bilin-
gual speakers create mental models of language preference and use with particular
interlocutors. This mental model guides them in language selection and switching.
Are all kinds of bilinguals capable of exploiting an interlocutor’s identity to
select a language? It may be that only early and high proficient bilinguals are more
sensitive to visual information and language identities. Molnar, Ibáñez-Molina, and
Carreiras (2015) introduced participants to several interlocutors who spoke different
languages. Later, an audio-visual lexical access task was administered. Participants
6.4  Presence of Interlocutors 123

were faster when the language matched with the interlocutor’s language. However,
this effect was found only in early bilinguals. Martin Molnar, and Carreiras (2016)
further tested if early bilinguals are able to use interlocutors as cues to predict lan-
guage. The authors exploited the fact that one can predict the language of a mono-
lingual speaker but not of a bilingual speaker. A bilingual can use any one of the
languages at his disposal whereas a monolingual is associated with only one lan-
guage. The authors recorded EEGs (electroencephalograms) as the interlocutors
were shown on the screen. The interlocutors produced language that the participants
had to respond to. Importantly, EEG effects show that much before the interlocutor
spoke, participants could use their faces as cues to predict the language associated
with them. For the monolingual, they could predict ahead which language he is
going to speak, but for the bilingual this was not possible. The central claim of the
paper was that bilinguals use interlocutor identity to predict languages associated
with them. However, how stable is this interlocutor’s identity?
This effect is predicted when one thinks of the interlocutors as balanced bilin-
guals who can use any one of the languages any time. However, bilinguals differ
in their language proficiency—they are never perfect in both languages. In this
case, then most interlocutors would be associated with one language predomi-
nately. This language could be the one perceived as having greater proficiency or
fluency. This is how most second-language learners behave with regard to their
proficiency. For example, in a country like India, most students acquire English as
a second language at school and develop proficiency in this language differently.
Not all who claim that they are bilinguals with English as a second language are
proficient in English. Many studies of such bilinguals by Mishra and colleagues
have shown this proficiency difference, which in turn has been linked to their exec-
utive control (Singh & Mishra, 2012, 2013, 2016). Thus, it is possible that in a
communicative situation one may encounter bilinguals who are good in one lan-
guage but not in the other language. Suppose one interlocutor is introduced who is
proficient in English but the other is not that perfect and mostly uses, for example,
Hindi (India’s national language). These bilinguals can be classified as low or high
proficient in the second language use. However, their first-language abilities are
similar. Kapiley and Mishra (in press) have explored this situation with Telugu–
English bilinguals in India and found that bilingual speakers are sensitive to the
language proficiency of their interlocutors. Figure  6.3 shows a sample trial and
results from this experiment.
In this study, Telugu–English high proficient bilinguals were introduced to car-
toon interlocutors through a simulation. The participants were presented with
speech samples of cartoons in both Telugu and English. The participants implicitly
learned that the cartoons differed in their L2 proficiency. Later, they were asked to
perform a voluntary naming task. Before the participants selected the language to
name the object in, the cartoons were presented randomly on the screen. The
assumption was that as soon as the cartoons appear the participants will attach a
particular language to them (the language they are fluent in) and this activation may
influence their choice of language. Crucially, unlike the studies by Molnar et  al.
(2015) and Woumans et al. (2015), here the authors sought to know whether the
124 6  Bilingualism, Context and Control

Fig. 6.3 (a) Sequence of events on a sample trial. A cartoon interlocutor was presented first for
3000 ms. Bilingual participants were then asked to choose a language (Telugu or English) to name
a subsequent object by pressing ‘LEFT’ or ‘RIGHT’ keys on the keyboard. The object appearing
next on the screen (in this example ‘banana’) was to be named in the language chosen. (b, c) Plot
showing the percentage of English choices and the rate of switches to English as a function of the
cartoon condition. A high L2-proficient interlocutor provoked the highest percentage of English
choices and the lowest percentage of Telugu choices. Similarly, the switch rate to English was the
highest in trials with high L2-proficient interlocutors

speakers take into consideration the language proficiency of their interlocutors. If

speakers want to adapt to and accommodate their interlocutors then they must eval-
uate their language proficiency and they should activate the language the interlocu-
tor is good at. Of course, one can argue that in this particular case the speakers are
associating both languages with interlocutors portrayed as low and high proficient
since they all are bilinguals. However, it is claimed that speakers will mostly tag a
particular language with an interlocutor (s/he is good in this vs. that) and this knowl-
edge will influence how they select their own language. Although in the experimen-
tal design the speakers did not directly interact with the interlocutors, their influence
was seen in voluntary naming.
The results showed that when speakers were presented with interlocutors who
were perceived as highly fluent in English (L2) they often chose English as their
language of choice for naming. When the interlocutors were perceived as low pro-
ficient in English they chose Telugu instead. These results thus demonstrate that
speakers don’t just tag a certain language with an interlocutor, but they seem to
have critical knowledge of their language proficiency. This is particularly relevant
for bilingual contexts in which there are no monolinguals. In such a scenario the
6.4  Presence of Interlocutors 125

Fig. 6.4 (a) Experimental conditions: the experiment consisted of three experimental conditions:
a laboratory context where colours were used to denote languages, an interlocutor context where
faces of bilingual or monolingual speakers were used and a completely natural context where
audio clips of real, naturally occurring conversations were used. (b) Procedure: participants com-
pleted a production and a comprehension task. In the production task, participants were asked to
name the object in the language that matched the preceding cue. In the comprehension task, par-
ticipants judged whether a spoken word and the subsequently presented picture matched

contrast is not between bilinguals and monolinguals but between types of bilin-
guals. The variable that distinguishes them is their relative proficiency in the sec-
ond language (typical in Indian university students). These results also show that
interlocutors’ influence can penetrate into the planning of one’s own voluntary
actions. This had not been tested before in studies that examined whether bilin-
guals are able to associate a particular language with particular interlocutors. This
association is not just symbolic, it also affects language planning. With regard to
the issue of executive control as per the adaptive control hypothesis, it can be said
that knowledge of interlocutors’ language proficiency can help modulate control.
Although Kapiley and Mishra (in press) did not correlate the speaker’s adaption
with their own executive control, it is possible to speculate something along these
lines.
More recently, using MEG (magnetoencephalography) it has been shown that
the interlocutor’s identity is considered pretty early on during bilingual language
planning. Blanco-Elorrieta and Pylkkänen (2017) examined Arabic–English bilin-
gual speakers to examine how early during language planning the interlocutor iden-
tity starts playing a role. Participants had to perform both a production and a
comprehension task. A sample image of the main experimental conditions is shown
in Fig. 6.4.
Participants saw the interlocutors and then were asked to name a picture as
quickly as possible. Similarly, for the comprehension task they were asked to judge
whether the spoken word was a meaningful word. The idea was to see whether see-
ing a bilingual interlocutor as opposed to a monolingual interlocutor has any effect
on both behavioural and neural aspects of switching. The assumption was that
126 6  Bilingualism, Context and Control

speakers will activate both languages on seeing a bilingual participant and therefore
the switch cost may go down as opposed to seeing a monolingual interlocutor.
Neural activations from MEG recording showed that when speakers saw bilinguals
as interlocutors they prepared to switch earlier and this led to the behavioural costs.
Although these results have been observed in different paradigms, they indicate a
few things in common. First of all, bilinguals take advantage of their interlocutors’
identity when planning speech. This identity may be only with regard to whether
they are monolinguals or bilinguals or if they are high or low proficient bilinguals.
Thus, social cues related to interlocutors affect the recruitment of executive control.
One can see this effect on a non-linguistic task or on switch rate. Bilingual inter-
locutors can provoke the speaker to prepare both languages, and if they are mono-
linguals then speakers can just select one language.
Apart from influencing language planning, how does interlocutor awareness
influence cognitive functioning? Imagine a bilingual speaker confronting either a
bilingual or a monolingual interlocutor. He has to keep both languages active for the
bilingual interlocutor while he also has to inhibit a language constantly for the
monolingual speaker. I elaborate on this issue in Sect. 6.5.

6.5  Interlocutors and Control

Does the amount of executive control required during a conversation depend on the
interlocutor? So far the studies that have been discussed show that bilinguals are
sensitive to the faces and other features of bilingual or monolingual interlocutors.
However, the key question is whether interlocutors and such awareness directly
influence executive control of bilinguals. The adaptive control hypothesis classified
bilinguals into different types who differed with regard to the quantum of switching
(Green & Abutalebi, 2013). If interlocutors are responsible for switching then inter-
locutor awareness should directly affect the magnitude of executive control that
speakers may need. Although no substantial data have shown that executive control
is modulated by interlocutors, there is a trend in research now. The basic idea is to
explore the dynamic adjustments in control as a function of interlocutor
awareness.
Let us consider a bilingual who is communicating with a similar bilingual (with
good proficiency in both the languages). In another scenario, the bilingual is inter-
acting with an interlocutor who does not have good proficiency in one of the lan-
guages. Bilinguals who are similar to one another (in proficiency) can flexibly
switch often as both are confident of shifting into any language at will. If one of the
bilinguals is not good in a certain language then switching may suffer. Therefore,
the requirement of executive control should be much higher when bilinguals with
different levels of proficiency are interacting as opposed to when they are similar.
This has not yet been directly shown in any experiment. Similarly, when a bilingual
encounters a monolingual, the need for control is higher than when he encounters
another bilingual. When a bilingual encounters someone about whom he has no
6.5  Interlocutors and Control 127

idea, control will develop depending on later assessment of proficiency. Therefore,

control is dependent on the dynamic assessment of proficiency of the interlocutor
and at times prior knowledge may help.
Costa, Hernández, and Sebastián-Gallés (2008) had shown that the demands of
monitoring are increased with increased uncertainty of a situation. They tested
bilinguals on a Flanker task and manipulated different monitoring conditions.
Bilinguals showed less Flanker cost when the monitoring demands were higher.
This can be translated to a conversational situation that bilinguals may encounter
from time to time. If the interlocutor is unpredictable or his proficiency does not
align with the speaker then the requirement of executive control will be much
higher. One can say that the executive control demands can be much higher when a
bilingual encounters another bilingual of similar proficiency, assuming both are bal-
anced. In this case, both the speaker and interlocutors are capable of switching
language at any time since they have full control over both the languages. Therefore,
both have to bring in higher monitoring in such a situation in order to carry on the
conversation. When the bilingual encounters a monolingual or a low proficient
bilingual, he has to apply inhibition to one language and keep the other language
activated. If this analysis is correct then it will be reasonable to say that the type of
control that a bilingual needs is qualitatively different from situation to situation. In
one case, he may need higher monitoring and the ability to switch rapidly, whereas
in another situation he may need constant inhibition.
When Valian (2015) reviewed the bilingual advantage literature, her aim was not
just to highlight the null results and all these studies that had found an advantage.
She suggested that we need to better understand exactly what happens when bilin-
guals engage in the real practice of bilingualism with real interlocutors and embed-
ded within real contexts. It is very likely that we have administered many tasks
without knowing if those tasks appropriately capture the kind of control those bilin-
guals exercised most of the time. When participants are taken into a study at any
point in time without the experimenter knowing what type of control the bilinguals
have been exercising until that point, the tasks may not capture the underlying
mechanism. This may also explain why the results vary when bilinguals from differ-
ent cultures are compared on similar tasks. However, this type of comparison also
has not happened a lot in the literature. Nevertheless, going beyond the proposals of
the adaptive control hypothesis, it is time to look carefully into the actual bilingual
context of language use via their interlocutors and then determine tests that have the
potential to capture any difference. Random administration of tests and their fail-
ures may not reveal much about the phenomena under investigation.
Mishra and colleagues (Bhandari, Ramgir, Prasad, & Mishra, personal commu-
nication) have been interested in exploring how interlocutors modulate the execu-
tive control requirements in a direct manner. One possibility is to see whether
bilinguals m­ odulate their executive control differently for different types of inter-
locutors and this then reflects on some non-linguistic executive control tasks.
Bhandari et  al. examined this in a novel paradigm with interlocutors and the
Attentional Network Test (ANT). Bilinguals were introduced to interlocutors who
were high or low proficient in the second language (Fig.  6.5) and the ANT was
128 6  Bilingualism, Context and Control

Fig. 6.5 (a) Different phases in the experiment: participants were first exposed to and familiarised
with the cartoons. The main ANT experiment was administered following the familiarisation
phase. (b) Experimental procedure: an interlocutor was presented first followed by the ANT task.
Interlocutors (bilingual, monolingual or neutral) were presented in a pure (blocked) context or a
mixed context. (c) Results from the executive network: HP bilinguals were faster than LP bilinguals
only in the mixed context but not in the pure context. ANT Attentional Network Test, HP high
proficient, LP low proficient

administered in the presence of these interlocutors. Bhandari et al. proposed that for
a bilingual, the most demanding interactive context could be when he has to face
both low and high proficient interlocutors together. The speaker has to constantly
monitor language use and switching to both types of interlocutors. When interlocu-
tors are of similar types then monitoring demands may be low.
The participants performed the ANT task in the presence of interlocutors that
either appeared randomly (mixed block) or in single blocks (pure block). These
interlocutors could be high proficient in L2, low proficient in L2 or of unknown
language proficiency (neutral). Further, the participants themselves were divided
into low and high L2 proficient. It was predicted that the high proficient participants
would bring in greater executive control when the context became demanding with
mixed interlocutors as opposed to when they performed the ANT task with inter-
locutors of the same type. The results showed that this was indeed the case. There
was a proficiency effect on the ANT task performance mediated by interlocutors.
Such results show that bilinguals do not just select a particular language for a certain
interlocutor but they modulate their executive control depending on what types of
interlocutors there are in the environment. The adaptive control hypothesis of course
does not include these predictions as of yet, but its main suggestions implicate this.
6.6  The Advantage Debate and the Interactive Model 129

We used an ANT task to capture these fluctuations in executive control but one can
also examine this using other tasks. Task demands and their effects on bilingual
control have also been shown by others (Qu, Low, Zhang, Li, & Zelazo, 2016). Of
course, based on these results, it is very difficult to say which particular component
of executive control bilinguals bring in when they face interlocutors of varied lan-
guage proficiency.

6.6  The Advantage Debate and the Interactive Model

The bilingual advantage debate at this point in time remains at a crossroad. While
some have passed judgment that it does not exist (e.g. Antón et al., 2014; Paap &
Greenberg, 2013), others have extended the domains of inquiry (Bialystok, 2017).
There are of course others who have alleged publication bias (Paap, Johnson, &
Sawi, 2016). Although there have been several conceptual replications, there have
been very few direct replications. Importantly this debate has not considered how
executive control, if at all, is modulated by the interactive context between bilingual
speakers and hearers.
The central claims of the adaptive control hypothesis (Green & Abutalebi, 2013),
and also suggestions in the writing of Grosjean on bilingual language mode, link
adaptive behaviour with control. The essence of control lies in our appreciation of
the fact that the bilingual speaker brings this adaptive behaviour to communicate
successfully with various interlocutors. I have suggested (Mishra, 2015 that con-
stant switching in the language domain, which bilinguals do, is not something that
monolinguals do. Monolinguals do not need to adjust to bilinguals during conversa-
tions. They have only one language at their disposal and if the interlocutor does not
know this language then communication stops. It is the bilingual who has to inhibit
the language that the monolingual does not know, and therefore this may lead to
exercising of the executive control system. The same mechanism applies to when a
high proficient bilingual encounters a low proficient bilingual. Mishra and col-
leagues have observed executive control advantage as a result of second-language
proficiency in Indian bilinguals (Singh & Mishra, 2012, 2013, 2016). A recent rep-
lication, however, of the study by Mishra, Hilchey, Singh, and Klein (2012) with
French–English speaking bilinguals in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada has not
found any correlation between executive control and second-language proficiency
(Saint-Aubin et al., in press).
The precise component of executive control that is required in a specific encoun-
ter is open to debate. For example, the type of control that an Indian bilingual needs
with another Indian bilingual (assuming their proficiency in the second language
differs) is different than a Chinese–English bilingual needs in the USA. This point
has serious consequences for our interpretations of the data and has escaped many
authors’ attention. Further, when the context is multilingual with diverse types of
interlocutors present and various language switching habits and proficiencies, the
speaker may need greater monitoring. He may have to switch to a different language
130 6  Bilingualism, Context and Control

randomly with the changes in interlocutors in the communicative context. When the
speaker is sure of meeting and encountering only certain types of interlocutors
(bilingual speakers in a predominately monolingual country), the control settings
are appropriately fixed. This is what has been termed the ecology of the bilinguals
(Green, 2011). The exercise of control is directly proportional to the demands
imposed by the interlocutors. I think the adaptive control hypothesis should include
this and extend the model, going beyond consideration of the switching style.
The naysayers in the advantage debate do not focus on these possibilities. They
do not say that maybe the replications did not take place since these factors were not
considered. Once they find results do not match, they are satisfied with rejecting the
theory altogether. In Chap. 4, I demonstrated why the null results should also be
looked at with suspicion since many do not consider critical variables such as par-
ticipants’ bilingualism style, what kind of executive control they may have acquired
given their unique background, and so on. The relevance of these studies expands
our considerations into variables that have so far escaped attention. Mere cross-­
sectional comparative studies without knowing how those bilinguals have achieved
their control, if any, in the first place won’t lead to much understanding. Recent
studies have shown that bilinguals have better selective attention (Chung-Fat-Yim,
Sorge, & Bialystok, 2017; Grundy, Chung-Fat-Yim, Friesen, Mak, & Bialystok,
2017) or a better ability to disengage attention (Mishra et al., 2012). These abilities
are necessary in interactive contexts. When multiple interlocutors are present, one
has to engage and disengage attention quickly. This mechanism is also linked to
language selection.

6.7  Summary

This chapter demonstrates how linguistic and non-linguistic context influences lan-
guage control and selection in varieties of bilinguals. I would like to note that while
Green and Abutalebi’s (2013) proposal justifiably links language control to switch-
ing habits of different bilinguals, it is time to expand the range of the hypothesis.
Since context is culture dependent, there cannot be one single theory that accom-
modates diversities. I emphasise the role of language proficiency (particularly in
L2) in the Indian context, which might not be the same for western bilinguals.
Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic studies using both behavioural and neuroimag-
ing methods can offer new clues about bilingual language control in different con-
texts. Since language switching and language selection are related in bilinguals,
examining contextual influences should help us understand this relationship better.
The experimental research that has been discussed in this chapter establish clearly
that bilinguals are very sensitive to interlocutors and to other cues which they use
for language control. Future research should explore how bilinguals adapt to chang-
ing demands in the communicative context.
References 131

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Chapter 7
Attention, Vision and Control in Bilinguals

7.1  The Shades of Attention

In my previous book titled Attention in Human Language Processing: A Cognitive

Science Perspective there was a full chapter on attention. That chapter dealt with the
various aspects of attention and the tasks people use to measure it. Attention remains
the most central and critical psychological concept that explains most of the com-
plex cognitive mechanisms. For useful full-length reviews on attention, the reader
may consult other resources (e.g. Carrasco, 2011). Not all shades and types of atten-
tion are necessary to understand how bilingual language control uses them. Thus, I
restrict my discussion to selective attention and also to disengagement of attention.
More recently, executive attention has emerged as a key notion in understanding
bilingual language control (Bialystok, 2017). Attention could also explain the inhib-
itory control as a component of executive functioning (Miyake et al., 2000). Today
the key question is not if bilinguals apply inhibitory control for their language selec-
tion but whether they have a superior attention that allows them an advantage on a
range of tasks.
Attention selects the stimuli that are most important for the current goals and
filters out others. At the same time, spatial attention also allows us to orient in space
to explore newer objects and locations (Posner, 1980). Attentional focus and its
modulation enhance perception and objective knowledge (e.g. Carrasco, Ling, &
Read, 2004). The temporal and spatial properties of attention can be very helpful to
understand a number of complex cognitive functions (Klein, 2000). Michael Posner
first demonstrated the mechanisms of movement of attention and its various compo-
nents using the cueing task (Posner, 1980). Attention orients in space and time and
the effect of this orienting is seen on responses. In the classic cueing task, attention
is exogenously captured by brief stimuli, or it can also be endogenously employed
at selected locations. When a target appears at such locations, its identification and
discrimination are speeded up compared with other locations. However, when a
target appears after a delay (e.g. 300  ms), this processing advantage turns into a

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 133

R. K. Mishra, Bilingualism and Cognitive Control, The Bilingual Mind
and Brain Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92513-4_7
134 7  Attention, Vision and Control in Bilinguals

cost. This has been termed as inhibitory of return (IOR). Klein (2000) suggested
that the nature of attention is to forage around in order to bring in newer objects to
our consciousness. Even William James considered that attention to things enhances
their conscious perception (James, 1890). In the contemporary discussions on con-
sciousness, many theorists use attention as a key mechanism to explain conscious-
ness (e.g. Cohen, Cavanagh, Chun, & Nakayama, 2012). Further, attention operates
like a searchlight whose aperture can be broadened and narrowed depending on
top-down goals (Theeuwes, 2010).
Central to Posner’s analysis is the mechanism of engagement and disengagement
of attention. Attention does not stay longer at any location unless the task demands
are too heavy. Even if some stimuli capture our attention in a bottom-up manner, we
can use control to move attention endogenously to newer objects or locations of
interest. Therefore, attentional selection to objects of interest is under top-down
control. Chun, Golomb, and Turk-Browne (2011) used “internal” and “external”
attention as labels to suggest these endogenous and exogenous forms of attention.
Humans are capable of deploying attention to any stimuli in a top-down manner
when they wish to focus on those very stimuli and not others. Therefore, selective
deployment of attention in a goal-driven manner is under executive control. A cen-
tral question which I address later is whether bilinguals have more top-down or
bottom-up forms of attention? We will see that theorists have offered contradictory
viewpoints on this issue.
One of the foundational functions of attention is its role as the gatekeeper to our
conscious experience. Attention filters stuff out that otherwise will baffle us and
distract us from a relevant course of actions. Whether attention filters these distract-
ers early on or much later in the processing stream has been debated for years
(Broadbent, 1982). Attention filters anything that is not as per the current goals. If
attention can be engaged fully to one object or a location at a time and no other this
shows that it is being limited in capacity. For example, when two stimuli are pre-
sented in quick succession, the second stimuli is often processed poorly. This has
been termed as attention blink (Shapiro, Raymond, & Arnell, 1994). The usual
explanation has been that attention has to be free from the first stimuli in order to
process the second stimuli, although some researchers have proposed that attention
may not be that limited in capacity (Olivers & Nieuwenhuis, 2005). Similarly, stud-
ies with multiple object tracking show that participants can keep track of the move-
ment of many objects in their visual space (Pylyshyn & Storm, 1988). However,
these may be social circumstances and the more commonly accepted view is that
selective attention is pretty limited in its capacity. One can, of course, say that the
dispersed state of attention (a global state with broad aperture) can be deployed to
process many objects simultaneously. However, for more vivid and objective pro-
cessing of any one object, selective attention has to be deployed to that very object
and no other. It is this view that I will adopt while explaining mechanisms and data
in this chapter.
7.2  Visuospatial Attention, Eye Movements and Action 135

7.2  Visuospatial Attention, Eye Movements and Action

Eye movements during cognitive processing offer clues about a range of issues.
Bilingualism researchers have used eye movement tracking as a method to study
both language activation (Blumenfeld & Marian, 2011, 2013; Mishra & Singh,
2014, 2016) and cognitive control (Singh & Mishra, 2012, 2013, 2015a, 2015b,
2016). Eye movements reveal attentional mechanisms as well as perceptual pro-
cesses (see Just & Carpenter, 1976; van Zoest, Van der Stigchel, & Donk, 2017 for
reviews). Selection of an object in space, its attentional deployment and its process-
ing reflect in the spatial and temporal aspects of eye movements. It has been sug-
gested that attention and oculomotor programming are intricately related (Rizzolatti,
Riggio, Dascola, & Umiltá, 1987). For example, the premotor theory of attention
(Rizzolatti et al., 1987) considers attentional engagement to be synonymous to the
activation of an oculomotor programme to that location. However, others have pro-
posed a dissociation between attention and oculomotor programming (Smith &
Schenk, 2012). For example, the costs and benefits in the Posner’s cueing paradigm
were independent of eye movements. Participants could orient spatial attention
covertly without making an overt eye movement. Eye movements themselves are
under both top-down and bottom-up control. They can be goal directed or stimuli
driven. Visuospatial attention is a key mechanism that allows movement of attention
in space. Therefore, compared with manual data, eye movement data can provide
more direct information about the nature of attention and its relationship to cogni-
tion. Singh and Mishra (2012) provided the first robust evidence of language profi-
ciency on oculomotor control in bilinguals.
Visuospatial attention is the key ability that allows us to shift attention at will to
objects in space, detect them, act on them and then move on to newer objects. A
well-defined fronto-parietal network subserves the movement of spatial attention
(Corbetta, Miezin, Shulman, & Petersen, 1993). The popular assumption in the field
is that visuospatial attention moves like a spotlight across the visual field. Goal-­
relevant objects are selected for further processing and execution of actions. Imagine
a room full of people and you want to speak to a particular person—your visuospa-
tial attention should be deployed to that person. One standing controversial issue
has been is whether this spotlight is location or object based. Duncan (1984) has
argued that visuospatial attention is object based. However, others think that visuo-
spatial attention operates in the spatial domain, albeit objects can occupy distinct
locations (Lavie & Driver, 1996). Cave and Bichot (1999) suggested that it is not
clear if the spotlight of attention is the spotlight for selection, action, filtering or all
of these. It appears that there are different subsystems of visuospatial attention that
perform various functions depending on the task. However, the concept of visuospa-
tial attention connects strongly to our conceptualisation of action for selection. It is
very relevant in the context of bilingualism and control.
One critical function of visuospatial attention is also action selection. One can
say that selecting an object in space would amount to some computation on actions
that can be performed on it. In his many significant works on the nature of attention
136 7  Attention, Vision and Control in Bilinguals

and control, Allport linked the action control system with attention movement. The
neural mechanism of action selection and attention are linked (Allport, 1993).
Patients suffering from visual neglect fail to exert action in one visual field as they
have no consciousness. Allport’s review took the discourse away from the tradi-
tional concerns such as early versus late and limited processing views to more
action-oriented views. As Mesulam (cited in Allport, 1993) suggested, if the brain
had an infinite capacity for processing all kinds of stimuli then there would be no
need to have selective attention. Theories of dorsal and ventral streams of visual
processing link action control differently (Goodale & Milner, 1992). Therefore,
whether attention is of limited capacity or not, whether it is for selection or not, it
certainly has a special role in our execution of the goal-directed action. This is rel-
evant to our discussion of how bilinguals may need attention for language selection.
Imagine a bilingual who stays in a largely monolingual social world as opposed to
a bilingual who finds himself amid a mixture of bilinguals and monolinguals. Need
for specific attentional selection is different for the two contexts. This may also have
an influence on the internal selection of the interlocutor and language.
Which view of attention have bilingualism researchers adopted most commonly?
One finds both the ‘selective attention as a limited resource view’ and the ‘selection
for action view’ very prevalent among researchers. Those who have used a task such
as the Stroop used selective attention as a mechanism that mediates performance.
Although Stroop is a task that measures conflict, one has to also select the right
aspect to focus (colour). The selection for action view has not found many applica-
tions, at least among those who have studied the question of bilingualism and
advantage. Do bilinguals select better than monolinguals? If this is the question then
we should bother more about the mediating role of attention in action selection. If
language selection for an interlocutor is conceptualised as an action, then the role of
attention becomes that of a causal agent. Of course, this view does not conflict with
the ‘limited resource’ view as such. Norman and Shallice (1986) noted, “Much
effort has been made to understand the role of attention in perception; much less
effort has been placed on the role attention plays in the control of action” (p. 1). This
also has implications for our understanding of those actions that require deliberate
attentional involvement and those that are automatic. In the context of bilingualism,
we still do not know how the practice of bilingualism modulates controlled and
automatic actions differently. Do highly proficient and fluent bilinguals develop
more automatic action selection and control systems that they use for language
selection or distractor avoidance? At times it may appear that most actions become
effortless for the expert and do not consume much attention (Bruya, 2010).
Hommel (2010) noted that “attention not only subserves action-control processes
but may actually have emerged to solve action-control processes in a cognitive sys-
tem that relies on distributed representations and multiple, loosely connected cogni-
tive streams” (p.  121). According to him, attention is necessary for performing
actions—attention helps in intentional selection of actions that the agent has to per-
form. This sensorimotor view of attention binds the agent and his actions with atten-
tion. These views bring attention closer to our consciousness and planning of
actions. The problem in the bilingualism cognitive control literature so far, at least
7.3  Attention, Bilingualism and Advantage 137

that which has used attentional paradigms to examine group difference, is that a
very limited view of attention has been taken. Attention is a name given to a collec-
tion of mental processes that subserve different functions. These functions may
include selection, filtering, action planning, consciousness, and so on. As for under-
standing the bilingual question, I think if conscious decisions of language selection
and switching are seen as actions that bilingual speakers perform all the time, this
sensorimotor action-oriented view of attention will offer better insights.
The data that are discussed in Chap. 6 showed that language selection for bilin-
gual speakers in a social communitive context is not an isolated action. Such action
selections are performed with full knowledge of their action’s outcome. Experiential
knowledge of our actions and their outcomes when executed provide crucial support
to cognitive control. Theorists such as Hommel and others, therefore, are looking
for a causal link between intentional states, action selections and agents’ own under-
standing of their outcomes (Hommel, 2017). The model by Green (1998) referred to
inhibition that is controlled by a general purpose executive control. However, we
also need to know how actual agents decide to apply inhibition and in which cir-
cumstances. In summary, tremendous potential lies in using the various contempo-
rary models of attention and executive control, including theories of action to study
bilingual cognition. So far, the few studies that have examined attentional differ-
ences between monolinguals and bilinguals have either studied selective attention
or visuospatial attention (Friesen, Latman, Calvo, & Bialystok, 2015; Mishra,
Hilchey, Singh, & Klein, 2012). Since the adaptive control hypothesis shows prom-
ise in explaining the origin of control in social interactional contents, the action-­
based theories of attention will provide a perfect ground for such theories to flourish.
In the following sections, I discuss those studies that have examined whether bilin-
guals and monolinguals differ in their attentional abilities. I also discuss studies that
have used eye movements separately.

7.3  Attention, Bilingualism and Advantage

The model that Green (1998) proposed referred to the reactive form of inhibition—
it did not have any component of selective attention. If bilinguals constantly inhibit
the goal-inappropriate response, why should they have superior selective attention?
The Stroop task measures selective attention (Logan, 1980). If the interpretation is
that people need to pay selective attention to the relevant aspect of the stimuli then
they need not assume an inhibition account by default. Thus, proactive maintenance
of selective attention on the task-relevant response should lead to good performance
on the Stroop task. There will be no need to inhibit the undesired responses. One can
use this logic for any other task that involves conflict. Inhibition seems to be a
mechanism central to the suppression of the response that is not goal oriented. The
key question is whether proactive selection can take care of costly inhibition?
As early as 1992, Bialystok had suggested that selective attention is enhanced in
bilingual children compared with monolingual children (Bialystok, 1992). Bialystok
138 7  Attention, Vision and Control in Bilinguals

and Martin (2004) used the dimensional card-sorting task and found the bilingual
children to perform better. Bilingual children could focus their selective attention on
the task-relevant aspect of the stimuli more flexibly than monolingual children.
Different components of attention can be more directly measured by visual search
tasks. For example, serial or parallel deployment of attention can be explored in
simple visual search tasks (Wolfe, 1994). Chung-Fat-Yim, Sorge, and Bialystok
(2017) examined whether bilinguals and monolinguals differ on an ambiguous
figure-­drawing task. The authors suggest that the exact concept of executive control
and which tasks measure it is not yet clear, though many researchers have used the
framework proposed by Miyake et al. (2000). Further umbrella terms such as ‘cog-
nitive flexibility’, ‘conflict monitoring’ or ‘cognitive adaption’ leave us vague with
regard to the exact mechanism or the task that can tap into it. Selective attention is
defined as the ability that allows the agent to stay focused on only one goal-oriented
task and not others. Bilinguals should have higher selective attention since they
need to focus attention on one linguistic form or one interlocutor; they can maintain
attention on two different stimuli and flexibly shift between them as per the demand.
This makes sense if we look at everyday bilingual communication where they have
to keep both languages active in certain situations.
Chung-Fat-Yim et al. (2017) selected a large population of bilingual adults who
had a range of first languages. The main task was a series of cards that presented a
picture that gradually changed into a different picture. The idea was to see whether
there is a bilingual advantage in the recognition of the alternate image as it evolves.
The key question was whether selective attention is involved in task flexibility.
Bilinguals were better at recognising the alternate image than monolinguals. The
authors interpreted this as showing that bilinguals can maintain both interpretations
in their mind and thus were able to track efficiently when the original image changed
into something else. One can also say that bilinguals can disengage their attention
faster to the original image compared to monolinguals. The authors wrote that
Previous studies of language group differences in processing have used executive function
tasks that assess such components as inhibition or working memory. Those studies have
produced mixed results, possibly because those components do not define crucial differ-
ences between monolingual and bilingual cognition. The present study used the ability to
selectively attend to visual stimuli and disengage from the focus of attention to find a new
interpretation. This ability certainly involves executive functioning but is not equivalent to
it and is not defined by its components, such as inhibition. This ability is similar to the
ongoing linguistic challenge faced by bilinguals—namely, to selectively attend to the target
language, focus on the correct lexical structure, and disengage as necessary to instantiate or
interpret meaning through new structures. The present results are consistent with the inter-
pretation that it is these attentional abilities, notably selective attention, that are shaped by
ongoing bilingual experience.

Attention plays a key role in figure-ground processing in case of ambiguous

figures (Brugger, 1999). For such figures perception varies between two different
alternatives. The duality of perception in these ambiguous figures emerges when
one selectively attends to another aspect of the image. Does bilingualism influence
this maintenance of the dual perceptual content in such figures? Bialystok and
Shapero (2005) administered several figures that had two interpretations. For
7.4  Attentional Disengagement 139

e­ xample, a picture that at times looks like a rat and an old man or one that changes
between faces and a vase. The idea was to see whether bilingual children were better
at keeping this separate perception in their mind while they viewed the pictures. The
results confirmed that bilingual children could keep the alternative interpretation in
mind. Or they could know when such a representation started to emerge and could
disengage attention from the original interpretation. Attention disengagement is
important for bilinguals in order to facilitate language planning.

7.4  Attentional Disengagement

Given multiple interlocutors in the communicative context, bilingual speakers

should know how to disengage attention faster and also deploy faster to relevant
ones. Mishra et  al. (2012) examined the attentional disengagement using the
Posner’s cueing task. They took Hindi–English adult bilingual speakers who dif-
fered in their second-language proficiency. Previous studies by Mishra and col-
leagues had shown that second-language proficiency in unbalanced bilinguals could
predict performance on executive control tasks (Singh & Mishra, 2012, 2013,
2015b, 2016). The Posner cueing task tests attentional orienting and also disengage-
ment. First, a very brief peripheral cue appears and then a target follows. Sometimes
the cue predicts the location of the target and at other times it does not. Participants
are explicitly instructed to discriminate the targets and not to expect its appearance
based on the cue. The general finding in such a task is that if the target appears soon
enough (within 100 ms) after the cue at its place, then performance is facilitated.
However, if the target appears after a delay (after 250 ms or later) responses start to
slow. This slowness has been termed inhibition of return (IOR) (Klein, 2000), which
refers to the attention’s reluctance to return to a recently attended location. However,
this task also reveals the fact that attention is quickly disengaged from a location
after a brief period of engagement. This orienting–engagement–disengagement
cycle continues. Klein (2000) refers to this as our evolutionary foraging need to
bring novel information into our consciousness; therefore, attention is always
mobile. However, this mobility of attention can be top-down. We can wilfully move
attention from one location to another. Mishra et al. (2012) reasoned that bilinguals
with higher second-language proficiency should be able to disengage attention
faster from an object than low proficient bilinguals. The results showed that such
bilinguals were, in general, faster, but they were also faster in attentional disengage-
ment. This manifested as an earlier appearance of IOR (Fig. 7.1).
Colzato et al. (2008) administered a stop signal task (which measures inhibition),
a cueing task (IOR) and the attentional blink (AB) task. Their main argument was
that bilinguals and monolinguals might not differ from one another only on inhibi-
tion—it is their ability to keep goals in active consideration and execute them while
avoiding distractions that give them the cognitive edge. The authors found no group
difference in the stop signal task. This indicated that bilinguals and monolinguals
may not differ on inhibition. The task to measure IOR was the regular Posner cueing
140 7  Attention, Vision and Control in Bilinguals

Fig. 7.1  Plot of RT (upper panel) and cueing effects (lower panel, invalid RT – valid RT) as a
function of language proficiency and cue-target SOA.  Inhibition of return was observed more
rapidly for high proficient bilinguals (at 200 ms SOA) than for low proficient bilinguals (at 400 ms
SOA) (Mishra et al., 2012). RT reaction time, SOA stimulus onset asynchrony

task. The argument was that bilinguals should show more pronounced IOR than
monolinguals since bilinguals must have trained their systems to inhibit languages
that they have just attended to. Colzato et  al. (2008) did not find any difference
between the groups on the magnitude of IOR. The authors also administered the AB
task, which measures attentional capacity to process two stimuli in quick succes-
sion. If the first target in an AB task occupies the attentional system, then partici-
pants make more errors in identifying the second target. The group comparison
showed that the bilinguals had a more pronounced AB effect than the monolinguals.
Khare, Verma, Kar, Srinivasan, and Brysbaert (2013) had previously found that high
proficient bilinguals differed from low proficient bilinguals on the AB task.
The studies by Mishra et al. (2012) and Colzato et al. (2008) differ in their find-
ings on IOR.  Both conceptual and methodological issues may have led to these
discrepancies. Colzato et  al. (2008) took participants who spoke many different
types of first languages. Thus, their group was very diverse in their experience of
bilingualism. Mishra et al. (2012) compared two types of bilinguals with second-­
language proficiency as the variables, whereas Colzato et al. compared bilinguals
and monolinguals. The targets in Mishra et al. appeared horizontally but in Colzato
et al. they appeared vertically. However, a more recent cross-cultural r­ eplication of
this phenomenon by Saint-Aubin et al. (in press) comparing French–English bilin-
7.5  Eye Movements, Attention and Control 141

guals in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada did not find any relationship between
bilingualism (proficiency) and IOR. The non-replicability is not that big an issue in
this context. These studies at least helped move the focus from inhibition as the only
account.
In this section, I have shown that bilingualism may influence one or another
aspect of attention. Attention itself is not a unitary system but is made up of many
subsystems. Focusing on attention has more theoretical scope since attention is
involved in many conflict tasks anyway. Few studies have shown a replication fail-
ure on such tasks.

7.5  Eye Movements, Attention and Control

Much recent research into bilingualism has used eye tracking as a technique. Has
the choice of response system biased our understanding of control and bilingual-
ism? This cannot be ruled out since most studies to date have used manual reaction
times (RTs) as their preferred response system. There have been some studies where
researchers have used eye movement measures but few have compared manual ver-
sus ocular responses (Bialystok, Craik, & Ryan, 2006). If it turns out that ocular
responses are better indicators of cognitive control (even when conceptually the
tasks remain the same) then the tenor of the debate may shift. I am stressing this
since individual manual and ocular RTs differ a lot. Why would a difference between
manual and ocular RTs not matter when we are dealing with claims about bilingual-
ism and its effect on attention? The premotor theory of attention assumes mechanis-
tic similarity between attention and eye movements (Rizzolatti et  al., 1987).
Hoffman and Subramaniam (1995) demonstrated that eye movements implicate
prior attentional shifts towards a location. It has been suggested that attentional
shifts and ensuing eye movements to that place are served by the same neural net-
work. Eye movements, in addition, may provide richer data on the nature of atten-
tion and control.
Eye movements are basic physiological responses that can give rich insights into
cognition—they are intimately connected to attention (Rizzolatti et  al., 1987). A
saccadic response is very fast, whereas manual responses are slow. Saccadic
responses may show the unconscious nature of cognitive actions, whereas manual
responses include last-minute decision-making considerations. Eye movements,
therefore, can provide more fine-grained data than manual responses on subtle
attention mechanisms. In this section, I discuss two different strands of eye move-
ment studies to show that the attempts made so far have been fruitful. Eye move-
ments reveal both transient and continuous states of cognition (Spivey, 2008).
Buswell (1935) had shown that eye movements reveal the internal states and top-­
down mental states of the onlooker. Rayner (1998) showed how movements during
reading can reveal a complicated interaction between attentional, perceptual and
linguistic processes. Then eye–mind hypothesis by Just and Carpenter (1976)
142 7  Attention, Vision and Control in Bilinguals

s­ uggested an intricate link between cognition and eye movements. After 1995, eye
movements were used to study the online interaction of language and visual pro-
cessing in a novel paradigm called as the visual world paradigm (Tanenhaus,
Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard, & Sedivy, 1995). This paradigm has revealed the
online activation of words in the bilingual lexicon during comprehension.
In a first of its kind study with Indian bilinguals, Singh and Mishra (2012) exam-
ined how high and low proficient Hindi–English bilinguals differ in inhibitory con-
trol in an oculomotor Stroop task adapted from Hodgson, Parris, Gregory, and Jarvis
(2009). These bilinguals were university students who had acquired English as a
second language early in life. They were rather unbalanced since most of the time
they used English in their everyday life. The original authors had shown that words
such as ‘up’ and ‘down’ move visual attention in space. These direction words acti-
vate an oculomotor programme that then drives eye movements. This reflexive eye
movement (attentional shifts) could then be exploited in a Stroop-like situation. The
display had four coloured boxes; a direction word written in one of the colours
appeared at the centre. The participants were asked to make an eye movement
towards the box similar in colour to the written word. Classically, the Stroop effect
arises when readers automatically activate the semantics of the word irrespective of
the colour and this activation then leads to interference. This conflicts with the goal-­
directed response that the task imposes. The authors expected that participants
would face conflict when they activated the word’s meaning automatically and that
this would cause interference with the programming of the saccade. The results
showed that high proficient bilinguals were faster in programming a saccade, irre-
spective of this conflict. It was the first evidence of a bilingual advantage in an
oculomotor task.
This study showed that one can use oculomotor responses to examine whether
bilingualism modulates executive control. The authors had also noticed an overall
speed advantage for the high proficient bilinguals. This was then interpreted as
superior executive control, as proposed later by Hilchey and Klein (2011). The nov-
elty beyond its interpretation was the use of ocular responses. These responses were
not contaminated like manual responses and truly represented attentional involve-
ment. At that point in time, there were few studies that directly referred to atten-
tional control in bilinguals in an eye movement study. Later in a follow-up study,
Singh and Mishra (2013) examined whether monitoring demands modulated such
conflict resolution in this eye movement task. Costa, Hernández, Costa-Faidella,
and Sebastián-Gallés (2009) had shown that bilinguals brought in superior execu-
tive control only when the context was demanding. They manipulated this by mix-
ing congruent and incongruent trials in different percentages. The argument was
that when the incongruent and congruent trials are equally mixed as opposed to
when one type of trial was greater in number, uncertainty is higher; participants can-
not adapt to any strategy and more demands are placed on the executive control
system. Singh and Mishra (2013) used the same logic and manipulated the trials.
The stimuli were similar to in the Singh and Mishra (2012) study, except in place of
written words they used symbolic arrows. These arrows are known to drive attention
reflexively since they are over-learned symbols indicating direction (Ristic, Wright,
7.5  Eye Movements, Attention and Control 143

Fig. 7.2  Participants were asked to make a saccade towards the target (on the right) only when the
circle on the left turned green (Singh & Mishra, 2016)

& Kingstone, 2007). The expectation was that high proficient bilinguals would use
higher executive control when the congruent and incongruent trials were equal in
number and that this would reflect in their performance on the Stroop task. They
were asked to programme a saccade towards a colour patch that matched the colour
of the central arrow. It was assumed that the direction of the arrow would lead to a
reflexive saccade towards a different colour patch. In order to do well in the task,
participants needed to inhibit this response. The results showed that when the con-
text was more demanding the high proficient bilinguals were better at managing the
conflict and were also faster in their saccade latency. Both studies found an overall
speed advantage for the high proficient bilinguals, which indicates superior execu-
tive control apart from inhibition.
Extending their approach of using eye movements as dependent measures, Singh
and Mishra (2016) examined whether high proficient Hindi–English bilinguals
were better at the anticipation of a response. Saccades can manifest anticipatory
processing much before stimuli have appeared. Singh and Mishra (2016) used a
novel task which required participants to control their saccade preparedness. The
stimuli figure (Fig. 7.2) shows the stages of processing that were required. It is well-­
known that saccade preparation takes around 200 ms in normal situations. Once a
saccade has been programmed and sufficient time has passed then it has to be exe-
cuted (Logan, Cowan, & Davis, 1984). Participants were asked to only make a sac-
cade towards the target when they saw the orange circle. Interestingly, the orange
144 7  Attention, Vision and Control in Bilinguals

circle stayed for a variable time. This uncertainty affected saccade preparation. The
authors hypothesised that preparing a saccade and executing it under uncertainty
may require executive control. The high proficient participants may be better at this
than the low proficient bilinguals. The results showed that the high proficient bilin-
gual had higher anticipatory saccades and also committed fewer errors. The antici-
patory saccades were saccades with very fast latency (<200 ms). Very fast saccades
after the onset of the orange light onset may emerge only if the participants have
already prepared the saccade but waited for the orange signal. The saccades could
be initiated faster (<200 ms) since their saccade preparation was complete when the
orange light came on.
A long-running idea in the bilingualism executive control literature is that bilin-
gual advantage is observed under extreme task demands and that this advantage can
be tracked with methods that are subtle enough, such as through eye movements.
More recently, Ratiu, Hout, Walenchok, Azuma, and Goldinger (2017) examined
performance in bilinguals and monolinguals on a visual search task with various
difficulty levels. Crucially, they measured eye movements as they capture fine-­
grained information revealing aspects of attentional control. The authors argue that
global measures such as RTs and accuracy in traditionally administered visual
search tasks do not reveal fine-grained processing differences that may exist between
bilinguals and monolinguals. The task was a conjunction search where the target to
be searched resembled many other distracters in one or more features. This type of
search has been shown to be very demanding for selective attention. Of course, it is
not known if one has to selectively focus on the target or inhibit the distractors to be
successful in this search task. The authors’ use of eye movements as variables with
regard to different states of search and their links to bilingual control is worth not-
ing. In their hypothesis they wrote that “If a bilingual search advantage arises from
more efficient attentional guidance, bilinguals should show faster first fixation times
to targets, relative to monolinguals. If a bilingual advantage arises from more effi-
cient response initiation, bilinguals should have faster decision times (latency from
the first fixation to the keypress) than monolinguals. If the advantage arises from a
combination of these processes, then bilinguals should show faster overall search
RTs (latency from trial onset to the keypress).” The results showed that bilinguals
are not that different from monolinguals in gross measures such as total search time.
They had a slight advantage in decision-making, reflected in fixations preceding a
manual key press. These experiments show that when task difficulty rises, bilin-
guals may bring in executive control to deal with it.
Which attention task best captures bilingual advantage? From the description of
the myriad studies, it is not clear. I have shown that eye movements as a measure are
more subtle and can help us learn more about decisional processes. Very few have
used such methods to examine the subtle differences that may be at the heart of this
whole debate. After all, bilinguals and monolinguals may not be that different in
their attention and executive control performances. The tendency among research-
ers has been to use novel tasks and propose linking hypotheses that support some
predictions. However, how far the hypotheses themselves are grounded in the psy-
cholinguistic underpinnings of the issues requires more clarity. For example, which
7.6  Language, Vision, Attention and Control 145

psycholinguistic behaviour of a bilingual enables us to say that they are faster only
at the decision-making stage of attention allocation in a visual search task? Given
the state of affairs, it is important to consider these data as they cast new light on the
mechanism involved. In Sect. 7.6 I discuss some studies that have used the visual
world studies that link executive control with parallel language activation.

7.6  Language, Vision, Attention and Control

Bilinguals activate both of their languages in parallel. Does executive control medi-
ate parallel language activation in the bilinguals? It should since the enhancement
of executive control depends on managing language non-selective activation.
Although many have shown that bilinguals always activate words in both their lan-
guages even if they need to just speak in one, it is not known how they manage to
bring down the activation. I am not going to review the many studies that prolifer-
ated after the first studies by Spivey & Marian (1999) that used eye tracking to show
language non-selective activation in bilinguals (Blumenfeld & Marian, 2007; Ju &
Luce, 2004; Marian & Spivey, 2003; Weber & Cutler, 2004). Since the visual world
paradigm studies how spoken words move attention to visual objects, it can be used
as a model to study executive control-related issues in bilinguals. It also extends the
debate to cross-modal data. The visual world paradigm requires swift integration of
linguistic and visual representations (Mishra, 2009).
Marian and Spivey performed many experiments with Russian–English and
other bilinguals using visual world experiments (Marian & Spivey, 2003; Spivey &
Marian, 1999). The earliest studies showed that when Russian–English bilinguals
listen to a word like marka, they also look at an object displayed on the computer
screen that is called ‘marker’. This effect was linked to the cross-linguistic activa-
tion of between-language competitors. The visual world paradigm captured this
subtle activation indirectly as participants only listened to spoken words and saw
pictures. Later, others showed such effects in bilingual groups found in countries
such as the Netherlands (Weber & Cutler, 2004) and India (Mishra & Singh, 2014).
All these studies showed that, irrespective of the level of bilingualism and lan-
guages, all bilinguals activate words in parallel. This was taken to be one of the most
important hallmarks of bilinguals’ semantic memory system. In an unusual design,
Singh and Mishra (2015a) demonstrated that such non-selective activation could
interfere with saccade programming; Fig. 7.3 shows a sample trial from this experi-
ment. Participants saw four objects on the computer screen and heard a spoken
word. One of the objects’ names was a phonological relative of the translation of the
spoken word. For example, participants listened to the English word ‘ring’ (angoothi
in Hindi). The display contained the picture of ‘grapes’ (angoor). The critical
manipulation involved a sudden change in the border colour of one of the objects.
The viewer had to make a quick saccade towards this picture, which changed colour.
The cross-linguistic competitor interfered with goal-directed saccades. Participants
were slow as their attention was captured by this object.
146 7  Attention, Vision and Control in Bilinguals

Fig. 7.3  Participants were asked to make a saccade to the target object that changed colour. Here,
spoken word ‘ring’ (angootha) was presented and the display consisted of a phonological cohort
of angootha: angoor (grapes). Participants were slower in making the saccade to the target in the
presence of such a phonologically related object

Bilinguals activate translation equivalents (Marian et al., 2003). The well-known

translation recognition task shows that bilinguals delay rejecting a non-word when
it is related to the translation of a primary word (e.g. Sunderman & Kroll, 2006).
Sunderman and Priya (2012) have shown this in many experiments. Mishra and
Singh (2014, 2016) used the visual world paradigm to examine whether Hindi–
English bilinguals activate translation equivalents of spoken words when they listen
to just one language. These experiments presented displays that had a picture which
was a phonological cohort of the translation equivalent of the spoken word. The
data show that bilinguals quickly oriented their visual attention towards this picture
with the onset of the spoken word. Such evidence suggests that bilinguals activate
words in the other language that are related in phonology as well as meaning.
Attention in the visual world paradigm is oriented automatically towards such
objects. Does executive control play any role in constraining such eye movements?
Why should attention be moved spontaneously towards objects that are not targets
of processing?
7.6  Language, Vision, Attention and Control 147

There have been few attempts to link inhibitory control to eye movements in the
visual world paradigm. However, researchers who have studied monolinguals using
the visual world paradigms have claimed such eye movements to be automatic in
the classical sense that these eye movements are beyond volitional control and
attentional control (Salverda & Altmann, 2011). More recently, however, it has been
shown that such eye movements are linked to working memory capacity (Huettig &
Janse, 2016). Working memory is synonymous with selective attention in the cur-
rent theorisation (Gazzaley & Nobre, 2012). Since bilinguals are supposed to have
greater executive control, it is intuitive to propose that such eye movements will be
constrained better in them. Or, alternatively, performance on the executive control
tasks should correlate with the proportion of fixations in the visual world task.
Blumenfeld and Marian (2011) presented phonological competitors of spoken
words on a display and measured eye movements. They further measured perfor-
mance on the Stroop task. They wanted to see whether bilinguals were able to sup-
press the activation of competitors during language comprehension. Only bilinguals
were able to inhibit the cross-linguistic activation as seen in the negative priming.
The authors suggested that bilinguals use inhibitory control to suppress task-­
irrelevant word activation. A similar attempt was made by Mercier, Pivneva, and
Titone (2014) where they collected oculomotor measures on executive control.
Participants performed a visual world task and their eye movements were measured
to quantify cross-linguistic and within-language activation. Bilinguals with superior
executive control on the oculomotor tasks were also better at resolving the cross-­
linguistic activation faster. Performance on the oculomotor inhibitory control task
(anti-saccade task) correlated with lexical activation. This study points to a few
interesting things. Domain-general executive control mechanisms influence lexical
activation and eye movements in the visual world task. Since the visual world task
exploits linguistic activation but measures eye movements to visually presented
objects, an ocular measure can predict performance in this task. Even if parallel
language activation is the norm for the bilingual brains, disengaging attention from
the competitor pictures is achieved through executive control. These studies also
bring to focus the role of selective attention in the integration of visual and linguistic
activation.
It is also important to note that most replication failures have reported manual
data. I am of the opinion that if the same tasks are performed with ocular data then
the results will be different. For example, not a single study (to my knowledge) has
produced null results with a visual world paradigm tracking bilingual lexical activa-
tion. Of course, bilinguals in different cultures (compare Mishra & Singh, 2016
with Weber & Cutler, 2004) show activations in different language directions. In
contrast to studies that have replicated manual studies and have failed to get any
effect, these studies have measured both manual and oculomotor data. Therefore, it
will be interesting to see replications of such eye tracking studies. The reason why
bilinguals should be more sensitive to visual cues is linked to their developmental
histories. As infants, they learn to link different faces with different languages.
These faces help them select the correct languages.
148 7  Attention, Vision and Control in Bilinguals

7.7  Attention, Culture and Bilingualism

Textbooks on bilingualism generally do not have a chapter linking bilingualism to

culture. Cognitive psychologists have consistently avoided cultural variables that
affect critical systems such as attention, working memory and inhibitory control
from their modelling and discussion. However, when it comes to the practice of
bilingualism and its effect on cognition, I think it is important to see if known cul-
tural attributes of a population influence our experimental outcomes. Cultural attri-
butes of the people and their ethnicity (i.e. Chinese vs. American) influence their
attentional systems. Many studies that have compared different ethnic populations
on cognitive tasks have shown profound differences on performances (e.g. Masuda
& Nisbett, 2001, 2006). Bilingualism itself may vary from one country to another.
Are bilinguals in France similar to bilinguals in India? If they differ on many known
variables, many of which are cultural and also linguistic, then how can one expect
any replication of experimental results? Bilinguals in different cultures may differ
in habits of switching, use of dialects, use of multiple scripts, known preferences of
a language to particular interlocutors and many other social–contextual factors. A
critical survey of research papers that have studied, for example, how bilingualism
influences selective attention or executive functioning will show that not many have
considered these aspects. Rather, recently many researchers have clubbed together
bilinguals who have many different first languages in a single group. If all of them
do not have a similar personal history of switching, shifting and monitoring, then
how can they be clubbed into a single group? In this section, I address only the issue
of cultural influences on attentional allocation, on which many studies have been
carried out.
If cultural forces influence core cognitive systems such as attention, independent
of language then how culture-neutral is our analysis of executive control tasks? It
appears that people from different cultures deploy attention differently to visual
stimuli. Eye movement studies show this difference to be present in many tasks of
visual exploration and search. For example, Alotaibi, Underwood, and Smith (2017)
compared British and Saudi Arab nationals on a comparative visual search task and
recorded eye movements (Fig. 7.4). The British are known to come from an analytic
type of culture that values individualism. This leads to higher selective attention to
individual objects. The Arabs are a collectivist culture and deploy a more dispersed
attentional processing style. Alotaibi et al. (2017) recorded eye movements as par-
ticipants searched objects either presented focally or in the background. The authors
manipulated these objects to see how long it takes the participants to figure out the
change. The expectations were that the participants with a more focal individual
attentional allocation should be good at finding change when the object was pre-
sented focally. Those who came from the collectivist culture should perform well
when the objects are in the background. The results showed that Arabic nationals
were slower in their search times and the British were faster in finding objects when
it was presented focally. The authors did not find any group difference in search
style. It has been shown previously that easterners show more contextual processing
7.7  Attention, Culture and Bilingualism 149

Fig. 7.4  Sample stimuli images from Alotaibi et al. (2017). Participants made a judgment on the
focal objects in the upper panel. The lower panel is an example of a trial where the background
object was the target

than westerners in visual search tasks (Masuda & Nisbett, 2006). In another early
eye tracking study, Chua, Boland, and Nisbett (2005) had shown that Americans
deploy more attention to the foreground than background. This difference in atten-
tional strategy was linked to their individual cultural background.
Why does this matter in the context of bilingualism? Whether one is bilingual or
monolingual, everybody belongs to a certain cultural group. The cognitive process-
ing style associated with that group will affect how this individual looks at and
attends to information. Thus, both bilinguals and monolinguals in a culture will have
a certain style of processing compared with other bilinguals and monolinguals who
come from a different culture. Over and above this, bilingualism per se may influ-
ence attentional allocation in such individuals differently. Therefore, when we are
comparing, for example, Chinese–English and English–Spanish bilinguals cross-
culturally, our result will have traces of cultural contribution. The studies that I have
cited here and many others have compared bilinguals with monolinguals. Two groups
of monolinguals who come from two different cultures already differ on attentional
tasks and visual scanning. It is important to note that in this discussion, I am not
interested in the differences between bilinguals and monolinguals but between two
groups of bilinguals who represent two distinct cultures. Their individual cognitive
150 7  Attention, Vision and Control in Bilinguals

styles of processing will directly influence any attentional tasks administered.

Therefore, cultural factors extraneous to bilingualism should be looked at carefully
before we make statements on replication failure or null effects.
Let us take an example and see how individual cultural styles of processing may
affect bilinguals’ language selection in a communicative context. It is now recog-
nised that bilinguals keep track of their interlocutors and select languages appropri-
ately (Green & Abutalebi, 2013). Is this selection contingent on the bilingual
speaker’s specific culture-induced attentional processing style? How do two bilin-
guals that come from analytic versus collectivist (holistic) cultures differ in terms of
their attention to, for example, interlocutors? Suppose there is a picture that shows
an interlocutor in the foreground and the background has some other interlocutors.
Further, suppose that the languages that this focal interlocutor speaks and those in
the background are different. Assuming that cultural forces affect how one pro-
cesses the foreground and the background images, it is possible that some bilinguals
are going to face higher conflict in language selection because of the background
pictures, particularly when the language that the speaker tags with the interlocutors
in the background is incongruent with the language he tags with the interlocutor in
the foreground. If we compare Chinese–English bilinguals from Beijing and
English–Spanish bilinguals from the USA, the former bilinguals are probably going
to be more sensitive to the background interlocutors. This sensitivity may influence
their perception of conflict during language selection.
Culture also modulates the development of executive control. It is important to
recognise that most initial studies that showed a bilingual executive control advan-
tage were on children (Bialystok, 2001). There has even been the suggestion that
children are the best candidates for manifesting the bilingual advantage. Since
adults already operate at a peak, one cannot know if the advantage in them is because
of bilingualism or more general resources. Roos, Beauchamp, Flannery, and Fisher
(2017) wrote that “From a sociocultural perspective, investigating how EF [execu-
tive function] is influenced by culturally variable environmental factors could estab-
lish the key “ingredients” through which individuals’ behaviour comes to reflect
their culture. From a cognitive science perspective, identifying mechanisms through
which environments shape developing brains would help explain individual differ-
ences in EF and inform assumptions about the universality and diversity of “norma-
tive” development. Current EF research rarely includes assessments of culture, and
cultural research typically does not incorporate measurement of EF.” This means
that unless we look at the cultural underpinnings of the various executive control
process our group differences on bilingualism may not be informative. In their
meta-analysis of the executive control literature, they observe that East Asians show
superior performance on executive control tasks compared with westerners.
However, this difference is not always consistent across tasks. Let’s take one exam-
ple where cultural differences in second-language learning at school are evident. In
India children acquire English pretty early at schools, much earlier than in China; of
course, India’s colonial history is responsible for this as India has many more
schools that teach English early on than in China. In addition, cultural attitudes
towards learning English may be different between Indians and Chinese. When a
References 151

study compares such bilinguals, it is important to consider such factors. Similarly,

in many studies that have taken bilinguals from different European countries with
English as a second language, it is important to consider the L2 learning mecha-
nism. For example, the status and spread of English in the Netherlands is not similar
to what one finds in Spain. Therefore, both educational and pedagogical history and
cultural values towards language acquisition and use are important when accessing
groups and their differences on executive control tasks.

7.8  Summary

In this chapter I have explored how attention could be the key to understanding the
bilingual cognitive advantage question. Data from attention tasks administered
manually and visual world studies indicate several dimensions to the bilingual ques-
tion. Bilinguals show extreme language non-selectivity during language compre-
hension. Presumably, their need to exercise executive control arises as a result of
curbing such continuous interference. It has also been noted that there is currently a
trend towards moving away from a hard inhibitory control account. Researchers are
searching for differences in attention tasks. Studies on attention using eye tracking
have revealed more fine-grained data.

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Chapter 8
Conclusion

8.1  Summarising the Facts

When I started writing the book, almost a year and a half ago, it appeared as if there
would be no further interest in the bilingual cognitive advantage question. A few
replications had failed and their authors had taken very strong stand against the
whole field. There were also allegations of publication bias in major psychological
journals. However, the researchers supporting the advantage debate have also
responded to all these charges. These responses and rebuttals revealed how, at times,
we are very eager to demolish a field just because some authors could not replicate
the findings of others, particularly when the replications are conceptual and not
direct. It is important to note that by today’s standards even replications should be
challenged for their methodological accuracy and motivations. Of course, many
studies that have obtained positive results could be problematic for many reasons.
The tendency to obtain significant statistical differences with small sample sizes
still remains very popular in psychology. Alternative statistical procedures at times
can eliminate some problems. However, even replications that challenged the posi-
tive results may have these problems. Nevertheless, in this chapter I cite some
authors who have reviewed the field in last few years and explore whether they are
positive about the field’s continuation or they think it has no further scope. Of
course, the naysayers will cast doom since they think bilingualism does not affect
executive functioning anywhere, no matter the case. Both positive and negative
results should be closely examined to separate the facts from their interpretations. I
am of the opinion that at times we gloss over our results and make claims that are
problematic since bilingualism has not been studied in its entirety and many funda-
mental loopholes in methods and participant selection remain. Before I get into
these points, I try to summarise the issues presented in the other chapters.
In Chap. 2, which was on the evolution of bilingualism, I pointed out that unless
we know how such an amazing trait has evolved in Homo sapiens, we may not know
how to understand it fully in its current state. Studies in cognitive archaeology and

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 157

R. K. Mishra, Bilingualism and Cognitive Control, The Bilingual Mind
and Brain Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92513-4_8
158 8 Conclusion

related disciplines are currently unearthing empirical facts about the evolution of
human cognitive abilities. It is one thing to talk about how language might have
evolved and another to describe the evolution of bilingualism. Since the very cogni-
tive control mechanism that handles two languages has a short evolutionary history,
it is important to know how humans learned to manipulate two languages in vastly
different social and linguistic situations. Cognitive archaeologists have performed
experiments to understand when important cognitive systems such as working
memory and selective attention might have evolved in humans. How did the brain
became neurologically and cognitively fit to manage two languages? This is, of
course, a chicken and egg problem, but the question cannot be dismissed as unim-
portant. I suggested that although much research focus has gone into understanding
the evolution of language as such, very little work exists on the evolution of cogni-
tive mechanisms. Further, I elaborated that the evolution of bilingualism could be
deeply rooted in our shared social and cultural evolution.
Today, because of geopolitical considerations in many locations around the
world, bilingualism is either promoted or rejected. During times of growing nation-
alism and social groups, multiculturalism is at risk. And with it, the opportunity to
and interest in learning and using two languages is also receding. If evolutionarily
we are geared to mingle with others, cross boundaries and adapt, then bilingualism
is a crowning achievement for the cognitive system. Its economic benefits are sec-
ondary. In this spirit, we should learn more about its evolution in our species. We
could not have become bilinguals unless we evolved to consider one another’s lan-
guage, learn it and use it consistently. Whatever economic or social reasons may lie
behind learning another language is another matter. Brains equipped themselves
with this ability so that any human child who is exposed to more than one language
can learn them. The problem with the current enterprise of the study of language
evolution is that it is either too focused on its computational characteristics or on the
articulatory systems. It is time to look at the evolution of the cognitive systems that
made all of this possible.
Chapter 3 explored the main theoretical undercurrents fuelling current research
into bilingualism. Bilinguals translate the words they encounter to different degrees
and also activate words that are related cross-linguistically. Various models such as
the revised hierarchical model (RHM) (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) and bilingual inter-
active activation (BIA) model (Dijkstra, Van Heuven, & Grainger, 1998) have made
predictions regarding such activations during bilingual language processing. While
one model has focused on the developmental trajectory of second-language acquisi-
tion and the growth of competence in handling that language, others have focused
on the nature of language non-selective activation. Translations of words in the
bilingual’s lexicon represent two different phonological structures of the same con-
ceptual element. In many visual world eye tracking studies, Mishra and colleagues
have shown that Indian unbalanced adult bilinguals activate translation equivalents
during listening to spoken words (Mishra & Singh, 2014, 2016). Such language
non-selective activation is also seen when bilinguals see written words. Highly pro-
ficient bilinguals are known to access translations of words in their other language.
Thierry and colleagues (e.g. Thierry & Wu, 2007) found such activation of
8.1  Summarising the Facts 159

t­ranslations to be non-conscious. A critical question is whether bilinguals suppress

this information when they wish to focus on only one representation? The func-
tional link between bilingualism and cognitive control is related to this continual
suppression and selection. I also examined how inhibition, switching, monitoring
and attentional disengagement affect bilingual language control. Reactive and pro-
active types of inhibitory control suggest a role of individual differences (Braver,
2012). Further, language switching has been extensively studied as it is related to
language control. Switching has been shown to engage the frontal areas of the brain.
Bilinguals monitor both their environment and also their languages. Monitoring
is a key cognitive activity when one engages with multiple attention-demanding
tasks. In the bilingual context, monitoring is linked to selection of the correct lan-
guage for the particular interlocutor. Monitoring demands have been linked to
engagement of executive control (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001).
The adaptive control hypothesis projects monitoring as a key feature of bilingual
neural language control (Green & Abutalebi, 2013). However, current research has
not thrown light on how monitoring is achieved during everyday language commu-
nication. How do contextual factors modulate monitoring and how, depending on
their proficiency and executive control, do different bilinguals achieve monitoring?
The chapter also included attentional disengagement as a core mechanism that helps
bilinguals exercise control. Bilinguals may actually have superior selective attention
more than inhibition (Bialystok, 2017). During real-life communication, bilinguals
need to disengage from one interlocutor and engage with another. This cycle of
engagement and disengagement entails control. Mishra, Hilchey, Singh, and Klein
(2012) showed that bilinguals with superior second-language proficiency actually
disengage faster from a set task. There are certainly many other mechanisms that are
probably fundamental to bilingual language representation and control; however, I
selected those around which most researchers have focused on—from the point of
views of the psycholinguistic theory of language representation and also the domain
of non-linguistic control. The key issue is how dual language management leads to
domain-general executive control in the bilinguals.
Chapter 4 focused on the current criticisms against the bilingual cognitive advan-
tage question. A close review of these replications suggests that they may well suf-
fer from methodological issues similar to the studies they were trying to prove as
being problematic. I also discussed the question of publication bias that has been at
the centre of this debate. The chapter was written to show that not all is well with
the bilingualism cognitive advantage question. Does this mean the question should
be abandoned without further research? Paap and colleagues (Paap & Greenberg,
2013; Paap, Johnson, & Sawi, 2015) have outright denied any cognitive advantage
of acquiring two languages. Similarly, Duñabeitia and colleagues (e.g. Antón et al.,
2014) also consider that there is no bilingual advantage. Hilchey and Klein (2011))
believe that maybe we do not know the right questions yet or the tasks that will tap
into them. The chapter thus indicated that even if there are many methodological
issues with the research so far that has obtained positive results, it is not fair for sci-
ence to drop the research agenda. Later in this chapter, I suggest the domains and
issues that should be taken up in order to search for more holistic answers to the
160 8 Conclusion

question. Many recent proposals suggest selective attention and monitoring (Chung-­
Fat-­Yim, Sorge, & Bialystok, 2017; Grundy, Chung-Fat-Yim, Friesen, Mak, &
Bialystok, 2017) as important mechanisms. Valian (2015) suggested that it is impor-
tant to isolate the tasks which measure the specific benefits that bilingualism bestows
since there are differences in the cognitive psychological interpretations of tasks
such as Stroop, Simon or anti saccade. When authors who report null results and
failed replications do not suggest alternative possibilities or corrections to the meth-
odology, then it leaves little space for further research.
Chapter 5 reviewed published research that shows how the bilingual and mono-
lingual neural networks may differ functionally and structurally. A tremendous
amount of research has been directed at investigating the neurobiological conse-
quences of bilingualism. It is now well-known that the acquisition of a second lan-
guage in childhood alters specific brain networks later. On the question of cognitive
advantage, research shows that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is involved in
conflict management. Research by Abutalebi and colleagues has shown that ACC
activation in bilinguals during conflict tasks is different to that in monolinguals
(Abutalebi et al., 2011). Hyper- and hypo-activation of such selective brain regions
in the bilingual show that, indeed, bilingualism modifies the existing networks,
making them more efficient. However, most of the positive results obtained with
neuroimaging have not shown up in the behavioural tasks. It is possible that these
methods reveal different aspects of the processing of the same stimuli. Neuroimaging
research has also revealed how brain networks of the bilinguals keep track of the
language of the interlocutors. Neuroimaging methods such as fMRI (functional
magnetic resonance imaging), EEG (electroencephalography), MEG (magnetoen-
cephalography) as well as NIRS (near-infrared spectroscopy) track different aspects
of the processing and also provide different types of data. Without getting into their
unique methodological issues, it is sufficient to say that each method and its data
constrain the theory. Not finding a cognitive advantage with behavioural data does
not mean it won’t be found with neural data. This is a very important consideration
as some researchers have reported a dissociation between neural and behavioural
data in their research (see Abutalebi & Green, 2016 for a review).
Chapter 6 discussed the influence of context on bilingualism and control. A con-
text represents the environment in which bilinguals function daily and the variables
that affect them. Many recent studies have shown that bilinguals control their lan-
guage with regard to their interlocutors (Molnar et al., 2015; Woumans et al., 2015).
They can visually tag languages of their interlocutors and use this knowledge to
select the appropriate language during a conversation. This tagging of language
with a human face or a cartoon seems very natural for the bilingual who deals with
two or more languages associated with the interlocutor. Further, bilinguals and their
listeners are embedded within a large communicative space which may have many
types of interlocutors with varying language proficiencies. How does a bilingual
speaker keep track of such information? Are bilingual babies born with such knowl-
edge or this an acquired behaviour? These questions remain unanswered to date.
However, the data discussed in the chapter suggest that bilinguals consider the lan-
guages fit for their interlocutor when they make their own decision. In my own
8.1  Summarising the Facts 161

studies with Indian bilinguals, I have shown that bilingual speakers also consider
the relative language proficiencies of their interlocutors (Kapiley & Mishra, in
press). If they see a bilingual who has low proficiency in the second language then
they shift to the first language in which both are comfortable. Bilingual speakers
also show sensitivity to passive interlocutors if they trigger one or the other lan-
guage. This influence later affects their own language choice (Bhatia et al., 2017).
Such adjustment goes beyond mere tagging of languages with the interlocutors but
includes dynamic evaluation of which language to be used in particular contexts.
The chapter also presented the adaptive control hypothesis (Green & Abutalebi,
2013) and its general predictions. It is the latest addition to the theories that attempt
to account for bilingual language control through switching and neural control of
language. Different types of bilinguals bring control to different degrees depending
on how much they switch. This context-­dependent switching behaviour affects the
selective activation of the ACC. This proposal has helped shift the debate from a
strict inhibitory control account to the domain of contextual and individual differ-
ences. It should be noted that how fluently and how often bilinguals switch is also
linked to different components of their executive control.
Most cognitive psychological studies on the question of language control in the
face of interlocutors use static faces or cartoons. In the real world, interlocutors can
change dynamically and without prior information. The studies discussed in Chap.
6 are thus limited if we consider real-life challenges of language control that bilin-
gual speakers deal with. How do they keep track of the social space with constantly
shifting interlocutors? This question requires study of language control in real-life
situations, which may include using wearable devices and a virtual reality (VR) set-
­up where speakers immersed within a context choose a language. Unfortunately, as
yet simple laboratory-based studies of language production and switching have not
taken into account these issues. A model linking this top-down control of language
in the face of bottom-up cues and the role of executive control is now necessary.
Further, even if bilingualism bestows some advantages in general cognitive control,
we have no idea how and which bilinguals use such control in their daily speaking.
Do fluent speakers struggle with inhibition during real-life conversations?
Chapter 7 explored how the mutual interaction between attention, vision and lan-
guage have a bearing on bilingual language processing. Attention, particularly selec-
tive attention, has emerged as a key mechanism to explain the cognitive advantage
bilinguals may enjoy. In recent studies using various psychophysical techniques,
researchers have shown that bilinguals may have superior selective attention (Friesen,
Latman, Calvo, & Bialystok, 2015; Mishra et al., 2012). In particular, they also seem
to disengage attention from one stimulus and orient it towards another faster than
monolinguals (Mishra et al., 2012). Studies using the visual world eye tracking para-
digm have produced a range of data that show that bilinguals orient attention towards
objects whose names are either phonologically or semantically related to the spoken
words they are listening (Huettig, Mishra, & Olivers, 2012; Tanenhaus, Spivey-
Knowlton, Eberhard, & Sedivy, 1995). Rapid access to both within- and cross-lin-
guistic information seems to be ubiquitous in bilinguals. This strand of research has
equivocally demonstrated that language non-selective activation within and across
162 8 Conclusion

languages is a norm and automatic in bilinguals. It also demonstrates how swiftly

attention is oriented in space with regard to language input. More recently, it has
been shown that such activations of cross-language phonological forms may be con-
strained by working memory (Huettig & Janse, 2016). Further, Marian and col-
leagues have shown that cross-linguistic activation and its extent is linked to
executive control (Blumenfeld & Marian, 2013). Those bilinguals who have superior
executive control can control these unwanted activations faster. This is a critical link
between bilingual language processing, attention and executive control. It must be
noted that selective attention is a core component of the executive functions frame-
work proposed by Miyake et  al., 2000 (and is also functionally similar to recent
conceptualisations of working memory (Gazzaley & Nobre, 2012)). However, at this
point in time, there is not much of a convergence between the psycholinguistic find-
ings related to the attentional mechanism in bilinguals and cognitive psychological
studies of attention in bilinguals. Nevertheless, visual world eye tracking studies
have the potential to bridge this difference through a linking hypothesis (Tanenhaus,
Magnuson, Dahan, & Chambers, 2000). Functional neuroimaging data using NIRS
has shown that bilingual children (aged 7–13 years) show greater activations in the
left prefrontal areas, whereas monolingual children show greater activations in the
right prefrontal areas when they perform a non-verbal attention task such as the
Flanker task (Arredondo, Hu, Satterfield, & Kovelman, 2017). Therefore, as one
begins to become bilingual, neural synchronisation and specificity increases in the
non-verbal attention control domain. Of course, there are also behavioural studies
that report null results on any attentional advantage for bilingual children on such
tasks (Antón et al., 2014). In such a situation I again reiterate that neuroimaging
data and behavioural data cannot be compared to make claims for non-replicability
of findings.
Studies of selective attention reveal that bilinguals can maintain two different
representations of the same stimuli and swiftly shuttle between them compared with
monolinguals. For example, Chung-Fat-Yim et al. (2017) have shown that bilinguals
can maintain two different representations of one stimulus better than monolinguals.
This is another dimension of selective attention in which bilinguals are better, apart
from performing better on traditional attention tasks such as visual search. In Chap.
7, I also suggest that current theorists view attention in connection with action con-
trol systems (Gozli & Ansorge, 2016). Goal-directedness of impending action
recruits the selective attention system. Language is part of the action control system
embedded within the rich sensorimotor framework (Mishra, 2015). Therefore, lan-
guage use is an intentional act that is achieved through the top-down control net-
works of the brain. When a bilingual chooses to disengage from one interlocutor and
engage with another, he intentionally selects one language and inhibits another.
Therefore, if bilingual communication is viewed as a dynamic exercise of top-down
goal-oriented action, our view of the role of attention in it also has to be commensu-
rate with it. In this view, attention filters out the items or stimuli in the environment
that are not appropriate for the current goal and orients the systems towards the goal-
relevant ones. Do bilinguals do this better than monolinguals in general? What role
do executive functions play in this? It is known that those who have better executive
8.2  Areas for Future Research 163

control are also better in goal-directed actions. Following this, since bilinguals need
to constantly shift between goals, they should exercise selective attention much more
than monolinguals who only deal with one type of representation.
In writing these chapters I did not go for the straightforward model of reviewing
research findings in relevant areas. Rather, I covered the relevant research in each
area as they made sense conceptually. In the following section I explore the future
of the field, providing examples of specific areas that need our attention. Negative
results or non-replications should not destroy the question; rather, they can be sign-
posts for adjustments and calibration of the hypotheses. This is how I have come to
view the field in last few years. While I present my own recommendations for fellow
researchers and aspiring graduate students to consider in their research, I also note
that, more recently, excellent reviews of important articles have appeared that also
profess similar things (Baum & Titone, 2014; Bialystok, 2010, 2017). The concep-
tual and methodological difficulties that the field is facing is well-known and
acknowledged by researchers. In Sect. 8.2 I discuss aspects of the research pro-
gramme that should be explored while we are answering the question of cognitive
neuroplasticity induced by lifelong bilingualism. The long-term sustained practice
of any skill does restructure the neural network; however, the key issue is to explain
the mechanism of this and define the variables that influence the longitudinal
changes that the brain goes through after learning two languages.

8.2  Areas for Future Research

8.2.1  I ndividual Difference, Executive Functions

and Bilingualism

Most cross-sectional studies do not tell us about the developmental trajectories the
participants have undertaken in their cognitive skills. Judgments on cognitive differ-
ences between two groups, therefore, can be at best ad hoc. Individual difference
factors play a key role in shaping how individuals acquire fully functional and com-
petent cognitive faculty later. By the time we test an adult college or university
student on a host of executive control and language tasks, he or she has undergone
years of changes and learning about which we have no idea. The sum total of many
factors—which include cognitive capacity, working memory, motivation, and
soundness of the neural structure and its efficiency—exert influence on the tasks
one does as an adult. Therefore, cross-sectional data may not be sufficient to settle
the debate about advantage. Any practice- or skill-induced neuroplasticity is of a
long-term nature. Many studies show that individual difference-related factors such
as working memory, motivation, and also prior knowledge and context of learning
influence how one acquires and masters a second language (Mitchell, Myles, &
Marsden, 2013). When people are fundamentally different in how they are acquire
skills, then their performance on any executive control task is also an outcome of
that. My point is more relevant for studies that compare bilinguals and
164 8 Conclusion

monolinguals. I have indicated before that I am sceptical of such studies since these
two groups come with many neural and cognitive differences already, apart from
their bilingualism.
Individual difference factors can seriously constrain how someone becomes a
bilingual (during the early days of language learning and its later maintenance
throughout the lifespan). Bilinguals who have been grouped together to form a homo-
geneous group to be compared against another are not necessarily homogeneous.
Many in the group may have different levels of executive functions that are indepen-
dent of their bilingualism. The extent to which they are good or bad bilinguals is an
effect of their executive control. Their further modulation is of course dependent on
continuous practise. This is very easily evident in foreign-language learning courses,
where even after many months not all learn to significant levels of success. How does
one explain this? If the same bilinguals are examined on different linguistic or non-
linguistic tasks, then one will certainly find many differences. To date, very few
researchers have looked at how individual difference factors could constrain bilin-
gualism and as a consequence affect our observations on the executive control tasks.
Bilinguals in different countries are also not the same. The practice of bilingual-
ism in different cultures is constrained by local conditions. These constraints
directly affect variables such as the quantum of switching and exercise of control.
Whether one needs inhibition in a certain bilingual context is dependent on what
type of bilingualism is in practice. This logically means that different bilinguals
exercise their executive functions (or components of them) differently. If a study
with Indian bilinguals finds positive results of advantage and such a study is not
replicated in China, then the reasons are probably related to such differences. It is
very possible that these different bilinguals may have acquired English as a second
language using different components of the executive function system for language
control depending on their own environment. When they move to a different culture
such as the USA, their executive control settings also change. Contemporary
research misses these critical aspects and treats all kinds of bilinguals as if they are
similar. Researchers often pool participants with different first languages and histo-
ries of bilingualism, which might also be problematic.
The accurate conceptualisation of executive functions, both in neural and behav-
ioural terms, is central to our field. Cognitive psychologists often administer spe-
cific tasks to measure apparently unique components of executive functions (a list
of tasks appears in Valian, 2015). Most researchers who have studied either form of
executive function in bilinguals and have administered familiar tasks such as the
Flanker, Stroop, Simon or stop signal tasks use the framework of Miyake et  al.
(2000). According to Miyake et al. (2000), executive functions are frontal lobe func-
tions that exert top-down control over lower-level functions in the service of goal-­
directed actions of the organism. These functions include working memory,
inhibition, goal maintenance and set shifting. More recently, Miyake and colleagues
have suggested that behavioural performance on different tasks that measure these
processes often may not correlate well in small samples (Miyake & Friedman,
2012). Further, performance on these tasks is impure because executive functions
also have non-executive lower-level processes. Thus, it is difficult to know from
8.2  Areas for Future Research 165

published findings how much of the task performance was a result of core executive
function abilities and influenced by bilingualism per se. However, Miyake et  al.,
(2000) suggest that one can arrive at a common mechanism (unity among diversity)
that is involved in all the different components of executive control. They also sug-
gest that the executive functions are heritable. One of their other important sugges-
tions is to consider the thesis that top-down control from frontal areas may not be
the key mechanism, but that the selection of the correct response through lateral
inhibition is more important. Nevertheless, the main point is why don’t bilingualism
researchers search for unity in diversity in executive functions in participants who
take part in a lot of tasks and where each task apparently gives a score representing
a particular executive function? When we administer Stroop and Flanker tasks and
only see the bilingual advantage in some, we tend to argue that bilingualism may
enhance the mechanism that particular task captures and not the other mechanism.
According to Miyake, all of these tasks have in them ‘inhibition’ as a common
mechanism, although they also have other attributes. If we adopt this research strat-
egy, then we can seek correlations among tasks to see how bilingualism may modu-
late the ‘common’ core mechanism that all participants may share.
These days the phrase ‘individual difference’ is heavily used in many fields
within the cognitive sciences. It rests on the simple assumption that every person in
whom we are measuring any neural or behavioural response is different from the
next. This is true given the fact that all of us have different brains and developmental
histories. However, experimental psychology attempts to quantify behaviour in a
sample of the population who presumably have been taken randomly and are repre-
sentative of the whole population. It is also assumed that participants within this
small sample are homogeneous. Statistical methods are used to measure at what
distance the responses of each individual deviates from the mean of the sample. This
dispersion or variance offers important information about the sample. However, in
reality, most participants differ from one another, often both qualitatively and quan-
titatively. For example, on a Stroop task, where we assume that most normal partici-
pants should be slower on the incongruent trials as these trials pose response-level
conflict, we might see that many in a sample do not face any conflict on such trials.
Rather, these participants are slower on neutral trials that offer no conflict. Similarly,
on the congruent trials where we expect the participants to be faster, many do not
manifest this behaviour. What could be the reason for such anomalies? Here lies the
role of individual differences. The Stroop task does not capture conflict in every-
body. The gross mean values are arrived at after outlier correction or smoothing of
the dataset. Importantly, these critical deviations are never discussed in articles, but
statistical significance assumes importance. What is important here is to explain why
some individuals do not show the classic Stroop effect as one would expect. Will
they similarly show no evidence of conflict on incongruent trials on other tasks such
the Simon or the Attentional Network Test (ANT)? It may be the case that such indi-
viduals show slower responses on incongruent trials on these other tasks but not on
the Stroop task. This means that each individual’s neural and cognitive makeup pre-
pares him to encounter a stimulus and act on it in a particular fashion. However, this
may not be generalised for a class of tasks that are often grouped together. Following
166 8 Conclusion

this rationale, we should not expect all bilinguals in a so-called bilingual sample to
be faster or suffer less conflict in a Stroop-like task. On the other hand, in a sample
of randomly picked monolinguals, some might show responses typical of bilinguals.
Individual difference of this sort can pose serious problems for theoretical predic-
tions. On the other hand, the aim of cognitive psychology is to offer general theories
and predictions for most humans. How can one account for individual differences
while at the same time expecting a general theoretical prediction to show up?
Individual difference broadly means how one is different from another in his
cognitive profile. Friedman and Miyake (2017) suggest that individual difference
may account for the variations we see in participants in executive control task per-
formance. This refers to the core cognitive and neural resources anyone brings to a
task without additive modulations caused by bilingualism or video game playing.
This is something we do not know from the published studies since we always look
at the impure data that have different components to it. Basically, I am saying that
even if there is some advantage because of the practice of bilingualism, all bilin-
guals will not show such advantage on tasks. There is a hierarchy among the bilin-
guals as a group, and this hierarchy is independent of bilingualism and is referred to
as individual difference. Unless we have a clear measurement of such factors we
will not know the additive effects of bilingualism. Comparing bilinguals with mono-
linguals is not enough to counter this proposal since many monolinguals may have
practised difficult attention demanding skills over a period of time which might
have also strengthened some of the other crucial components of their executive
functions (Valian, 2015). When such monolinguals are compared with bilinguals,
one can expect no group difference. Therefore, baseline scores on individual differ-
ence factors are necessary for valid comparisons in this area.
It is also important to examine the methodology of individual differences research
and whether it is effective in capturing differences (e.g. between high and low pro-
ficient bilinguals). Recently, Hedge, Powell, and Sumner (2017) pointed out the
problems with using certain paradigms in correlational research that have been oth-
erwise successful in experimental research. They calculated the test–retest reliabil-
ity of several classic executive control tasks such as the Stroop, Simon and Flanker
tests; low test–retest reliability was observed for most of the tasks. The authors
argue that the definition of reliability is different in within-subject experiments and
between-subjects/correlational experiments. For instance, the Stroop task is a reli-
able test to measure executive control because it reproduces the Stroop effect across
different laboratories and different samples. Thus, it is a robust test with low
between-subject variability. But the very fact that the Stroop effect is so robust also
means that it is not a reliable indicator of individual variations in executive control.
This is because, for a measure to be a reliable indicator of group differences it has
to be sensitive to such individual differences, which many of the robust executive
control tasks are not (hence, their popularity). This leaves us with a paradox where
time-tested tasks that are otherwise reliable in capturing a specific cognitive func-
tion may not be useful to capture the individual variations in that cognitive function.
The solution perhaps is to develop alternate tasks or newer performance measures
that are more sensitive to individual variations. For example, Friedman (2016) sug-
8.2  Areas for Future Research 167

gests performing latent variable analysis to capture the executive control-related

differences among individuals.

8.2.2  P
 erforming Bilingualism and Advantage Research
in the real world

Any cognitive or experimental psychologist will acknowledge that laboratory-based

tasks have severe limitations. We try to conceptually replicate how humans behave
in the real world through these tasks. However, when participants perform these
tasks in a laboratory they also entertain constraints that otherwise may not be appli-
cable in real life. How does control operate when bilinguals actually deal with other
bilinguals or monolinguals in everyday situations? Do they bring in the kind of
control moment by moment as is required, for example, trial after trial in a Stroop
task? Unless methodological and technological advancements are made in these
directions, we will have no choice but to theorise based on results obtained in
laboratory-­based tasks. Researchers are now beginning to understand that some
closely held assumptions and theoretical conclusions about bilingual psycholinguis-
tic processing may not hold true when one looks at real, everyday language process-
ing. For example, switch cost as is normally found during bilingual mixed object
naming is not seen when the task is made more natural (Kleinman & Gollan, 2016).
In this section, I discuss the possible areas of advancement that can bring this
research area closer to real life, given the new tools available today.
The use of the word ‘context’ in connection with bilingualism is not new.
Theoretical proposals by Grosjean on the mode and, more recently, the adaptive
control hypothesis have moved the field forward (Green & Abutalebi, 2013;
Grosjean, 2001). One can now directly ask when and how and under what circum-
stances bilinguals bring in control when they are facing an interlocutor. After all, it
is the regular exercise of this control over a period of time that boosts the executive
control system. A few researchers who have studied this association between inter-
locutors’ assessment and language planning in bilinguals have used cartoon pictures
to which the participants respond (e.g. Bhatia et  al., 2017; Molnar et  al., 2015).
Although these designs lead to the expected results, one could extend this to include
more realistic encounters. For example, the use of VR as a research tool to study
how bilinguals exercise control as they freely encounter interlocutors in a virtual
world would be interesting. This technique allows the simulation of the real-life
experiences and can supplement more traditional laboratory-based research. The
main advantage of a VR-based design is that it allows an immersive experience for
the participants. They feel and react to partners as if they are real. We cannot disre-
gard affective considerations during bilingual language selection in real-life interac-
tions. This is something that is absent in traditional button-press experiments where
agents are not embedded into any context. In the VR set-up, agents are more sensi-
tive to sensorimotor and affective cues which can have a strong effect on their cur-
rent states of cognitive control.
168 8 Conclusion

Peeters and Dijkstra (2017) presented pictures to be named in a VR set-up. They

wanted to see how language switching works in such a scenario. The results repli-
cated the conventional findings where bilinguals were found to apply higher inhibi-
tion to their first language. Although they did not use any realistic images or
interlocutors with whom participants could respond to, this study opens the possibil-
ity for VR to be used in bilingualism research. Switching data may not be similar
when we make the experiment more like real life within the VR, allowing participants
to act freely and interact. Eichert, Peeters, and Hagoort (2017) created virtual three-
dimensional (3D) objects and studied language-mediated eye movements and predic-
tion with spoken sentences. Language-mediated eye movements are more traditionally
studied with two-dimensional (2D) pictures on a computer screen and with an eye
tracker. They found that in this set-up participants could predict upcoming words
when they encountered the 3D objects. Interestingly, this research also combined eye
tracking with VR. This way one can study behaviour in an immersive environment
and record online data. I also envisage the use of EEG along with VR to collect neural
responses in such a scenario. VR can be used to make more dynamic stimuli that
closely mimics real life where participants are allowed to move around and interact,
for example to study how context influences the degree of control a bilingual brings
in as she dynamically encounters interlocutors of different types. Imagine a class-
room scenario and an outdoor scene. In India, English is the lingua franca in an aca-
demic set-up. Suppose I want to study whether bilinguals differentially choose
languages for the same interlocutors as a function of the environment, then this can be
created with VR.  Participants will see different interlocutors as they freely move
around the VR space of a classroom or a place that represents some other place. It is
quite possible that, when asked using newer methods, old questions may produce data
that are different than one could predict. Or it is also possible that we see a consis-
tency in the pattern of data in spite of such methods. In any case, we would have made
the study and its design more ecologically valid and closer to reality.
Lightweight wearable eye trackers with good sampling rates now allow the
tracking of eye movements when participants are engaged in dynamic actions.
Many studies are now being performed to understand visual attention during sport
or consumer behaviour onsite. This has made studying real-life behaviour and cog-
nition very sophisticated and does not involve the artificiality of the laboratory. So
far the data that researchers have generated have used the single-participant model
in which he or she undertakes a task on a computer and the experimenter records
behaviour using an eye tracker. Using wearable eye trackers on both speaker and
hearer and examining how they select language and evaluate any contextual cues
could provide key insights. The adaptive control hypothesis emphasises the situa-
tional alertness that bilinguals bring during language control.
Using these techniques one can study how adaption actually works during real-­
life communication. It is also possible to study how different bilinguals process the
same stimuli in joint-action tasks. We assume that all bilinguals activate cross-­
linguistic information in parallel when they process any stimuli. Imagine a visual
world task performed by two bilinguals each wearing a head-mounted eye tracker.
We can see if their eye movements are similar or different when they process spoken
8.2  Areas for Future Research 169

words and look at visual objects. When we average data, as is the case with tradi-
tional analysis, this aspect of individual difference is lost. Similar to eye tracking,
researchers can also use wearable EEG recording devices. Suppose we want to
understand the neural signatures that change dynamically when two bilinguals are
in communication. If we can simultaneously record EEG from both, that data will
reveal the manner in which control mechanisms are at work for both. Thus, research-
ers should use such advanced techniques to answer more difficult questions. These
types of equipment will allow the research designs to resemble real-life behaviour
more and participants can operate without any constraints. Many excellent articles
are available that show how one can use such techniques to study cognition in bilin-
guals (Tarr & Warren, 2002). Further, these techniques allow us to study special
populations that may have a psychological or linguistic disorder that may prevent
them from participating freely in a traditional laboratory-based experiment. Such
innovation in techniques will allow us to address both old and novel questions,
bringing in higher flexibility in design and execution.

8.2.3  The Challenges of Globalisation, Migration and Conflict

Should basic science researchers be worried about the rapid changes in geopolitical
order that is underway and its influence on their research? It becomes important
when the human being and his cognition is the objective of so many experiments.
Psychologists often theorise human cognition in a decontextualised manner where
they do not consider the many variables that influence the behaviour of their partici-
pants. The study of bilingualism is particularly vulnerable to these forces as data are
often collected from immigrants in advanced western countries. Migration, settle-
ment and socio-linguistic variables influence the degree of bilingualism immigrants
practice in their host countries. In this book, I discuss cultural influences on the
attention system. While cultural neuroscience is now consolidating its theories and
research practices, these have yet to be included by bilingualism researchers. In
many countries where bilingualism is in practice and is part of official policy, seri-
ous language and ethnic conflicts are also seen. How does that shape our research
design and interpretations? How are different countries promoting bilingualism of
immigrants who do not adjust very well within the constraints of the host country?
Cultural and linguistic conflict can influence how such participants react to stimuli
in experiments and therefore our theories about them. Here I briefly indicate the
issues that should be addressed while we still remain focused narrowly on the ques-
tion of bilingualism and its influence on cognition.
It is fair to assume that in most advanced western countries, the hosts are mono-
linguals and the immigrants are either bilinguals or multilingual. This is not to say
that a small percentage of the hosts do not learn the other’s language as a second
language at school. Different countries have allowed the immigrants to assimilate
into their linguistic–cultural context to different levels. A case in point is the migra-
tion of nationals of former Dutch colonies into the Netherlands in the last few
170 8 Conclusion

decades (Extra & Verhoeven, 1999) or migration of Turkish nationals into Germany.
First-generation immigrants need to study the host language and become competent
to join the workforce. However, in reality they often use their native language
among themselves and stay in areas where it is the only language of everyday com-
munication, meaning they do not become bilinguals as one would expect. On the
other hand, the native majority monolinguals do not learn the immigrant’s language
for a number of reasons. This situation exists today in many European countries.
Therefore, when researchers pick bilinguals as their participants and administer lin-
guistic or cognitive tasks, they overlook their migrational histories. If only highly
educated university students are taken as bilinguals, then such results cannot be
generalised to large populations. Many countries have promoted bilingualism both
in the host and immigrant populations as they view it to be economically and cultur-
ally beneficial. Immigrant bilinguals have been shown to be more ambitious in
social integration and also show an advantage in cognitive tasks in some situations
(Medvedeva & Portes, 2017). Recent studies with Polish migrant children in the UK
have shown how exposure to second language (L2) could negatively influence their
language skills in native language (L1) compared to non-migrant monolingual chil-
dren (Haman et al., 2017). In other locations where bilingualism is cherished, one
also sees linguistic conflict in everyday life and politics, such as in Belgium
(Janssens, 2015). Many other examples can be provided from other bilingual places
where bilingualism is in practice along with linguistic conflict.
At a practical level, when we are asking questions about bilingualism-driven
cognitive and executive control, it is important to ask what types of bilinguals we
are talking about. Are we talking about third-generation immigrants who have well-­
integrated into the host’s culture or those who are struggling to adapt and are also
losing their first language as a result of conflict and lack of multilingual education?
The kinds of cognitive adjustments these two types of bilinguals make every day are
very different, and when examined on tasks their results will vary. Most researchers
study university students who speak English well and not other minority and mar-
ginalised populations who are also bilinguals but do not possess good fluency. When
data are compared cross-culturally, these variables are not discussed in the interpre-
tation of the data. I do not think that the bilingual cognitive advantage question can
be holistically answered in a culture-neutral way. No one wants to say the immi-
grants are cognitively superior because they speak two languages in these changing
times, and particularly where immigration is a political issue. I focus more on immi-
gration since that is a huge source of bilingualism compared with host majorities
learning a new language.
The few studies conducted on the nature of bilingualism, immigrant status and
control suggest that these questions have no clear answers as of yet. The concept of
cognitive reserve has been linked to the practice of bilingualism. Bilingualism is
believed to lead to later onset of dementia as it boosts cognitive reserve. Is this true
for immigrant populations? Of course, in other chapters, I have critiqued the hospi-
tal-based studies that tracked patients’ bilingual histories post hoc and found that
the onset age of disease was later than monolinguals. The few studies from India
(Alladi et al., 2013) could also be misleading on this front as they were confounded
8.2  Areas for Future Research 171

by factors such as multilingualism and illiteracy (factors unique to India).

Nevertheless, there have been some longitudinal studies with richer experimental
methods that have tracked healthy older bilinguals until some of them developed
dementia. Zahodne, Schofield, Farrell, Stern, and Manly (2014) studied a large
cohort of Spanish-speaking Hispanic immigrants in Manhattan (New York, USA)
who were tracked for 23 years. Over the period 282 older adults developed demen-
tia. The authors found that at baseline, bilinguals had superior working memory and
executive functions compared with monolinguals. However, bilingualism did not
predict the onset age of dementia. This means that bilingualism did not particularly
delay the onset of dementia.
The immigration question is more important to Europe, the USA and Canada
than in India, China or Japan. It may also be important to Australia. It is certainly
important to language conflict zones such as the Basque country and Belgium. In
practical terms, it comes down to whether these immigrants are used as participants
and compared against local monolinguals and are shown to have a cognitive advan-
tage. Many researchers also have a confounding opinion about the role of the socio-­
economic status of the participants. The socio-economic status of immigrants is
often lower than the majority host in many countries. If data collection is restricted
to university students, then this variable may not be that critical and one can assume
some amount of homogeneity. However, if all kinds of bilinguals are to be randomly
included then their socio-economic status will decide their literacy attainment and
thus cognitive and intellectual achievement. Of course, some studies show that
bilingualism independently modulates executive functioning in low socio-economic
immigrant children (Thomas-Sunesson, Hakuta, & Bialystok, 2018).
This chapter is focused on what we can possibly do to make our research designs
more holistic, keeping in mind real-life problems that influence bilingualism and in
turn executive control. More longitudinal studies should be undertaken on immi-
grants that arrive in advanced European and other western countries to track changes
in executive control. Studies should be undertaken with Indian illiterates who are
also bilinguals. Research conducted by me and my colleagues have shown that illit-
erates show poor cognitive functioning in visual and attentional domains compared
with literates (e.g. Olivers, Huettig, Singh, & Mishra, 2014). Further, we have also
shown that the adult illiterate brain is plastic and rewires itself with a mere few
months of literacy training (Skeide et al., 2017). Illiteracy is still a social problem in
many countries, including China, Latin America countries and also Africa. We can
no longer base all our theories on university students. In India, many illiterate people
learn to speak more than one language. Could they have better executive control than
monolingual literates? We do not know the answer to this question as it has not been
explored. Studies should track how they develop as bilinguals and why a majority do
not master the second language. In addition, studies should also examine how mono-
linguals from the host countries change as a result of this mixing of cultures and
become bilinguals. Cross-sectional studies do not tell us how learning a second lan-
guage during adulthood modulates executive control. There should also be more
cross-cultural comparative studies to see why advantage is found in a certain popula-
tion but is absent in another similar population. While I have mostly observed execu-
172 8 Conclusion

tive control advantage in Indian bilinguals who are highly proficient in the second
language, we could not replicate this effect in a sample of French–English bilinguals
in Canada (Saint-Aubin et al., in press). At best, one could point to cultural differ-
ences and socio-linguistic aspects of bilingualism in both places as the cause for
non-replication. The tremendous influence of context on the bilingual’s control sys-
tem cannot be disregarded. Chinese–English bilinguals do not face the same chal-
lenges and demands in their control settings when they are in Beijing as when they
are tested in New  York City. Adjusting to an L1-dominant culture has different
demands on executive control than living in an L2-dominant culture. It is also impor-
tant to study what happens to the executive control system when bilinguals shift
from one language environment to another. These questions will reveal the dynamic
nature of bilingualism and how it sculpts neural and behavioural mechanisms.

8.2.4  Finding a Coherent Framework

In her review titled “The Bilingual Adaptation: How Minds Accommodate

Experience” Bialystok (2017)) suggested that most diverge findings that either arise
from conceptual or methodological differences can be explained if we focus on one
unifying cognitive variable. She suggested that this variable could be “executive
attention”. There are reasons to believe that ‘attention’ indeed could be the variable
that has the potential to reveal how the human mind focuses on task-oriented goals
and avoids distracters. Conceptual frameworks such as ‘inhibitory control’ or ‘mon-
itoring’ can be explained using attention as a system. It is easy to accept that bilin-
guals focus attention on one language when they are trying to speak in that language
and not on the other language, albeit recent studies have shown that they can keep
both representations active and flexibly manipulate them as desired (Chung-Fat-­
Yim et al., 2017). In addition, they can disengage attention faster from a stimulus
and move it around (Mishra et al., 2012). Beyond explaining performances on tasks
such as Stroop, Simon, ANT or the visual search task, which invariably use atten-
tional resources, studying attention deeply also has other important benefits. It is
overwhelmingly acknowledged now that attention is the key to understanding our
conscious experiences. Attention can help us operationalise consciousness and also
many other higher-order subjective aspects such as emotion and awareness (Hedger,
Adams, & Garner, 2015; Pessoa, 2005). Much recent work links our sense of agent-
hood to attentional processing (Hon, 2017). Attention is also one of the most heavily
researched and developed topics in cognitive psychology. Using one unified con-
ceptual framework could also help us understand the individual differences and
divergent patterns of results better. Attention is involved in both inhibitory control
as well as task switching (e.g. Rubinstein, Meyer, & Evans, 2001). The field cannot
sustain itself if every researcher administers a bunch of tasks and finds significant
differences between bilinguals and monolinguals on some and not on others and
then starts theorising that bilingualism may boost those very cognitive abilities that
those tasks utilise. This approach does not lead to any holistic theorising, only pro-
ducing more unexplainable data in the long run.
8.2  Areas for Future Research 173

8.2.5  New Frontiers: Beyond Executive Control

Let us assume that bilinguals or multilinguals have superior executive control, at least
in some of the components, compared with monolinguals. Let us also assume that
lifelong practice confers a cognitive reserve that significantly delays dreaded dis-
eases. Even if this is so, what is its use in the real world? Are bilinguals better nego-
tiators and resolvers of everyday conflict than monolinguals? Do bilingual children
bully less than monolingual children at schools and have better control over emo-
tional impulses? These real-world problems need to be explicitly studied now beyond
bilingualism. Do bilinguals appreciate others’ cultures more and show more altruistic
tendencies than monolinguals? A few studies have looked at creativity and found that
bilinguals are more creative than monolinguals. Do bilingual older adults show more
productivity than their monolingual peers if they have more executive control?
I am basically asking whether bilinguals (balanced with years of practice of
bilingualism) can transfer their superior executive control to solve real-world indi-
vidual or societal problems? Let us use the example of the many studies in medita-
tors. Meditators with many years of practice show superior attentional states and
emotion control, including focused attention in the face of distraction (Engen,
Bernhardt, Skottnik, Ricard, & Singer, 2017). Experienced meditators can quickly
get into a mode of ‘attentional flow’ that allows them to stay focused for a longer
time. The famous Tibetan Buddhist monk the Dalai Lama preaches that peace is
achievable through meditation, which can bestow important qualities such as com-
passion. I am comparing meditation to bilingualism since both seem to influence,
modulate and restructure frontal lobe functions. Just as fMRI studies in bilinguals
have shown the special functioning of the ACC in the face of conflict, studies in
meditators have also shown similar results (Tang et  al., 2009). This means these
skills influence the brain and the attentional processes similarly. Or is the effect of
language control restricted to only a few domains and not to higher-order scenarios?
Does bilingualism lead to its practitioners experiencing ‘attentional flow’ and effort-
lessness in task execution? More longitudinal studies should be conducted to deter-
mine the neural and behavioural changes associated with bilingualism and its
influence on real-world conflict management. Many studies performed on
­experienced musicians and sportspersons show such changes in the neural struc-
tures supporting executive control and attention (Babiloni et  al., 2010; Gaser &
Schlaug, 2003). Of course, experienced sportspersons display much aggression dur-
ing their play even with such control. It is important to compare studies like these
and see whether bilingualism, and not sport or music learning, particularly influ-
ences certain pathways of emotion regulation. This will lead to the promotion of
bilingualism with a clear notion of its use in real-world scenarios.
What use is executive control in a population of bilinguals if they cannot use it to
sort out social and ethnic conflicts? In India, where most people are bilingual, we
see ethnic conflict in many areas. Bilingualism does not seem to help people negoti-
ate and reconcile things when it comes to violence. However, some studies are
beginning to indicate that bilingualism may influence emotion regulation network
in children. For example, Ren, Wyver, Xu Rattanasone, and Demuth (2016) report
174 8 Conclusion

that bilingualism is related to emotion regulation and social skills in Mandarin–

English children. This sort of research has real-world use considering the many
children who arrive in western countries at a young age and will become bilinguals
after acquiring the host’s language. Will they be better able to manage the emotion
and conflict they face than the monolinguals? Of course, as of yet, no longitudinal
study has been undertaken on this issue, which shows it to be a new area of research.
Some studies have shown that bilinguals are better able to regulate emotions in their
second language (Morawetz, Oganian, Schlickeiser, Jacobs, & Heekeren, 2017);
however, the role of executive control in this mechanism is not yet clear. One can
also compare how bilingual and monolingual children who find themselves in con-
flict zones adjust to traumatic stress (Diab, Peltonen, Qouta, Palosaari, & Punamäki,
2017). Does bilingualism help one to adjust better to societal conflicts?
Linguistic identities have been the source of many continuing social and ethnic
conflicts around the world. The growing nationalistic tendencies in many parts of
the world do not accommodate multilingualism. Sociolinguists have long studied
the relationship between language identity, power and social solidarity. In an inter-
esting analysis of language policy after the collapse of the former Soviet Union and
the many smaller countries that rose out of it, Duncan and Mavisakalyan (2015)
suggest that balanced bilingualism has been shown to be a conflict resolver. When
different language-speaking people are integrated together and develop a healthy
and balanced bilingualism, occurrences of conflict also drops. Could this be because
of overall growth in collective executive control in such people? Let us consider the
case of Arab–Israeli conflicts. There are research reports that show progressive
bilingual Palestinian–Arabic and Jewish bilingual education at school could pro-
mote peace in the long-term (Arar & Massry-Herzalah, 2017). As such, there are
now many inclusive and multilingual schools in Israel that are perceived as an
important element in achieving long-term peace (Bekerman, 2016). It has also been
suggested that when language policies promote bilingualism at school, it also serves
as an important vehicle for other societal negotiations in conflict zones (Amara,
2017). One cannot rule out this possibility, although socio-linguists do not empiri-
cally measure such variables but instead depend on ethnographic and qualitative
data to make assertions. Nevertheless, if growing bilingualism leads to lesser con-
flicts in well-known warring groups that have fought historically, I see a role of
cognitive and executive control. Therefore, such studies have to be conducted with
an interdisciplinary approach including cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics
and sociolinguistics, and culture studies.

8.3  Summary

With everyday advancement in experimental methods and our growing understand-

ing of the human brain, it is now possible to expand the research domains that study
bilingualism. Of course, close scrutiny of positive findings that come out of smaller
sample sizes and do not replicate well is necessary, but this is an issue in most of the
References 175

psychological sciences. The future of the bilingual advantage question lies in more
in-­depth work on its neural and behavioural aspects in diversified populations.
Findings from a few bilinguals from selected spots won’t be sufficient and satisfac-
tory in the development of a holistic theory. Bilingualism and bilinguals differ from
country to country with respect to their styles of acquisition, switching, communi-
cation patterns, and so on. These variables need to be incorporated into experimen-
tal designs in order for us to understand how cultural forces shape the neural
machinery that supports bilingualism. In Chap. 1, I emphasised the fact that the
evolution of bilingualism in our species also indicates the unique evolution of social
cognition. To learn and use two languages is to be accommodative and socially
more communicative. This aspect of bilingualism should be our focus as it can
explain how humans cooperate with one another despite enormous differences in
their cultural outlook and belief systems. Numerous gaps in our understanding exist
with regards to how bilinguals exercise control for linguistic and non-linguistic
stimuli. Although some researchers have attempted to understand this through cor-
relations on various tasks, a clear mechanistic explanation remains to be offered.
The study of control that bilinguals exercise in the different real-life communicative
scenarios is enormously important, as is the question of interlocutors’ influence and
how bilinguals adjust dynamically. The adaptive control hypothesis is a good step
forward that considers these contextual factors in explaining neural control. Finally,
the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater—the advantage question is
still very important as it shows sculpting of the human brain through language use.
Answering this question has deep evolutionary significance for us.

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Index

A disengagement, 133, 134

Adaptive bilinguals, 114–115 figure-ground processing, 138
Adaptive control hypothesis, 13, 104, 119, internal and external, 134
125–129 limited in capacity, 134
Advantage debate, 129, 130 mechanism of engagement, 134
American Sign Language (ASL), 48 mechanism of movement, 133
Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), 10, 49, 55, modulation enhance perception, 133
56, 95, 97, 100, 103, 104, 106, 107 objective knowledge, 133
Anthropology, 39 selective, 137, 138
Attention, 13, 135–137 sensorimotor action-oriented view, 137
bilingual mind Stroop task, 137
attentional disengagement, 58 top-down control, 134
cognitive processes, 60 visual search tasks, 138
component of, 59 visual world paradigm, 146
context-relevant language, 59 visuospatial (see Visuospatial attention)
distractors, 60 Attentional disengagement, 59, 139–141
endogenous and exogenous, 59 Attentional engagement, 135
eye movements, 60 Attentional Network Task (ANT), 33
gross effects, 61 Attentional Network Test (ANT), 55, 127
IOR, 58, 59
language, 58
manual reaction time measures, 60 B
mechanisms, 60 Bilingual advantage, 100
neurons control attention and behavioural studies, 6
saccades, 60 classic object-naming task, 5
Posner cueing paradigm, 58 executive control, 6
programme saccade, 61 global socio-political perspective, 7
SCE, 59 Hindi–English bilinguals, 7
social signals, 59 language control, 4, 5
visual search task, 58, 61 language proficiency, 7
bottom-up forms, 134 linguistic, neural and cognitive
complex cognitive mechanisms, 133 underpinnings, 5
components, 138 mechanism of bilingual processing, 5
conscious perception, 134 national and global policies, 8
contemporary models, 137 neural mechanism, 6
course of actions, 134 null results and replication failures, 7

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 179

R. K. Mishra, Bilingualism and Cognitive Control, The Bilingual Mind
and Brain Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92513-4
180 Index

Bilingual advantage (cont.) monitoring, 159

psycholinguists, 4 and monolingual neural networks, 160
semantic memory system, 4 neuroplasticity, 1
social contextual influences, 5 practice of, 164
social issues, 8 real-life communicative scenarios, 175
Stroop task, 5 researchers, 157
Bilingual behaviour, 2 RHM, 158
Bilingual brain, 12 second-language acquisition, 158
ACC, 97, 100 statistical procedures, 157
brain imaging, 100 stimuli, 162
cognitive advantage, 100 tone and tenor of replication failures, 4
cognitive neuroscience, 98 translations, 159
cognitive reserve, 97 Bilinguals, 113, 139
context and language proficiency, 100 activate translation equivalents, 146
continual switching and shifting, 99 attention disengagement (see Attentional
executive control, 97 disengagement)
experience-induced neuroplasticity interactive situations, 119
modulates, 98 interlocutor (see Interlocutors)
fMRI, 97 language switching, 122
graph theory, 98 neural activations, 114
interference suppression, 97 Bimodal bilinguals, 48
monolinguals, 97–99 Brain imaging, 92
response inhibition, 97 Brain networks and attention
Stroop task, 97 acquisition and constant practice, second
top-down cognitive control, 99 language, 37, 38
Bilingual ecology model, 5 ANT, 33
Bilingualism, 157, 167, 168 children and adults, 33
and advantage research complex linguistic and social functions, 32
adaptive control hypothesis, 167 conflict management, 36
interlocutors’ assessment and language consciousness, 38
planning, 167 data, rs-fMRI, 32
laboratory-based tasks, 167 default mode, adult human, 35
real-life communication, 168 dyslexia development, 33
visual attention, 168 executive control, 34, 36
VR, 168 imaging data, 35
BIA model, 158 infancy, 35
cognitive advantages, 159 inhibition of return, 36
communication, 162 location, 36
concept of cognitive reserve, 170 monolingual peers, 36
conceptualisation, executive functions, 164 socio-economic variables, 35
conflicts, 170, 171 structural connectivity, 37
and control, 160, 161 tracking, 35
development, 175
evolution (see Evolution of bilingualism)
executive control, 2, 173, 174 C
framework, 172 Cognitive adaption, 138
goal-directedness, 162 Cognitive advantage of bilingualism, 69, 70,
hypotheses, 163 75–77
illiteracy, 171 challenges, advantage theory
individual difference, 163–167 attentional networks, 76
inhibition, 159 component(s), executive processing, 77
interaction, 161, 162 conflict tasks, 75
levels of executive functions, 164 executive control, 75–77
migration, 169 meta-analysis, 75
Index 181

null outcomes, 77 executive control, 82

replication, 75 immigration, 81
types of tasks, 75 Indian context, 82
children and adults, 68 influence of culture, 78
cognitive control, 68 language proficiency, 83
effects, 85 migration, 81
executive functions, 68 monolingual control group, 85
neuroplasticity, 67, 68 neurodegenerative diseases, 80
publication bias (see Publication bias) neuroimaging data and differences, 84
reactive control, 68 neurological diseases, 78
replications (see Replications) patient records, 84
socio-economic factors, 68 performance changes, childhood, 79
Cognitive archaeology, 11 prevalence of dementia, 80
Cognitive control, 135–137, 141 societies and cultures, 80
bilinguals, 14 socio-economic status and literacy, 85
causal models, 12 Cognitive science perspective, 3
social settings, 14 Components of control
treatment, 2 cognitive flexibility, 11
Cognitive flexibility, 11, 138 executive control advantage, 9
Cognitive functions, bilingualism frequency of switching, 9
adaptations, 30 language switching, 10
contextual sensitivity and control, 24 monitoring, 10
executive control, 29 potential interlocutors in environment, 10
expression, 27 Conflict monitoring, 138
hominins, 24, 25 Consciousness, 134
Homo sapiens, 25–27 Context
implication, 28 bilingual speakers, 113
joint attention, 29 communicative, 130
language diversification and intermixing, 30 complex interactive, 119
multimodal integration, 29 cultural, 118
Neanderthals and modern humans, 27 face, 113
social complexity, 30, 31 interactive, 129
spatial, 28 interlocutors, 114, 125
working memory, 28, 29 single-language and dual-language, 115
Cognitive mechanisms, 45, 49, 52, 55, 58 social, 121
assumptions, 45 visual cues, 118
attention (see Attention, bilingual mind) Control
inhibition (see Inhibition, bilingual mind) adaptive behaviour, 129
monitoring (see Monitoring, bilingual mind) assessment of proficiency, 127
processes, 62 bilingual effects, 129
RHM/bilingual interactive activation, 45 dynamic adjustments, 126
Switching (see Switching, bilingual mind) type, 127
translation (see Translation, bilingual Cortical activation maps, 93
mind) Cortical representation of L2, 92
Cognitive modelling, 91 Cross-cultural replication, 7
Cognitive processing style, 149 Cross-linguistic interactional contexts, 120
Cognitive psychologists, 148 Crucial cognitive skills, 12
Cognitive psychology, 1 Cultural brain, 105–108
Cognitive reserve, bilingualism and Cultural differences, 150
replication failures Cultural influences, attentional allocation, 148
attention tasks, 83 Cultural neuroscience
control, 78 ageing, 102
dementia diagnosis, 82 attentional
effects, 83 engagement, 101–102
182 Index

Cultural neuroscience (cont.) core computational and neural

mechanisms, 101 mechanisms, 20
system, 104 cultural pressure, 39
brain activity, 103 development, Africa, 20
brain imaging techniques, 102 geopolitical, 158
conflict management, 104 Homo sapiens, 39, 157
contextual assessment, 101 hunter-gatherer lifestyle, 21
cross-cultural psychological, 104 hypothesis, 19
cultures modulate bilingualism, 101 inquiry, 20
language planning and control, 104 material and cognitive conditions, 38
neural and behavioural effects, 101 material and complex symbolic culture,
neural functioning, 105 21, 22
neuroimaging methods, 103 mutation vs. gradual
neuropsychological dysfunctions, 101 brain areas, 24
nonreductionist view, 102 brain size, 24
relative-instruction condition, 102 Chomsky’s system, 22
social–cognitive neuroscience and communication system, 22
cross-cultural psychology, 101 computational capacity, 22
social and cultural phenomenon, 105 computational mechanism, 23
visual perception, 103 cultural, 24
Culture Homo sapiens, 23
Bengali, 116, 117 process, 23
bilingual language activation, 116 symbolic behaviour, 22
Chinese, 116 protection, 21
context, 130 Executive control
executive control, 150 ANT task, 129
homogeneous, 118 awareness, 126
iconic images, 116, 117 bilingual brains exercise, 118
images, 117, 118 challenges of language control, 161
interactive context of bilinguals, 120 components, 129, 161
degree of sensitivity and requirement, 118
environment, 160
D interlocutors, 118, 126–128, 161
Development, bilingualism, see Evolution of issue of, 125
bilingualism magnitude of, 126
Domain-general executive control, 9 monitoring, 115
Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), 95 non-linguistic, 115
oculomotor measures, 147
perceptual system and language activation,
E 118
Evolution of bilingualism, 22–32 proficiency, 127
brain proficient participants, 128
bilingual speakers, 32 recruitment, 126
critical period, 31 requirements, 126, 127
cultures, 31 second-language proficiency, 129
management, two languages, 31 Eye–mind hypothesis, 141
networks (see Brain networks and Eye movement data, 46
attention) Eye movements
social conflict resolution, 31 approach, 143
symbolic activity, 32 attentional deployment, 135
cognitive archaeology, 157, 158 attentional mechanisms, 135
complex cognition (see Cognition attentional shifts, 141
functions, bilingualism) bilingual control, 144
contributing factors, 20 bilingual search advantage, 144
Index 183

cognitive processing, 135 Inhibitory of return (IOR), 134

executive control, 142, 144 Interactive contexts, 120, 129, 130
inhibitory control, 147 Interference, 116, 118
manual vs. ocular responses, 141 Interlocutors
ocular responses, 142 ANT task, 128
oculomotor control in bilinguals, 135 assessment, language proficiency, 120
oculomotor responses, 142 awareness, 126
physiological responses, 141 bilinguals, 114, 118, 122, 126, 127
Posner’s cueing paradigm, 135 brains exercise, 118
premotor theory of attention, 141 speakers, 120–122
saccade preparedness, 143 bottom-up control, 122
saccadic responses, 141 cartoon, 124
Stroop effect, 142 cognitive functioning, 126
top-down and bottom-up control, 135 context, 114
transient and continuous states of cultural context, 118
cognition, 141 decision-making, 121
visual world paradigm, 147 dynamic assessment of proficiency, 127
Eye tracking, 94, 141 EEG effects, 123
effect, 123
executive control, 126, 127
F experimental conditions, 125
Faces, 115–118 face facilitates lexical access, 122
Functional magnetic resonance imaging language activation, 121
(fMRI), 92, 97, 98, 103, 105 language identity, 113
language proficiency, 124
language selection, 114, 119
I language switching, 119, 129
Iconic images, 117 monolingual, 120, 126
Ideomotor theory of action control, 121 mutual language proficiencies, 120
Individual differences participants, 122
cognitive sciences, 165 sensitivity of bilinguals, 120
executive control task performance, 166 switching language, 127
factors, 163 voluntary naming paradigm, 120
linguistic or non-linguistic tasks, 164
Stroop task, 166
test–retest reliability, 166 L
Inhibition, 4, 5, 7, 12 Language control
Inhibition of return (IOR), 58, 139 assessment of interlocutor language
Inhibition, bilingual mind proficiency, 120
ACC, 49 linguistic and non-linguistic context, 130
brain, 49 social setting, 121
control, 50 Language selection, 150
inhibitory processes, 50 Language switching, 4, 9, 119, 122
mechanism, 51 Linguistic and non-linguistic conflict tasks, 12
meta-analysis, 51 Linguistic and non-linguistic switching, 9
mixed blocks/pure blocks, 50 Linguistic and social habits, 55
non-selective, 50, 51
processes, 50
psycholinguistic theories, 51 M
selective, 50 Mixed blocks/pure blocks, 50
Stroop-like task, 51 Monitoring, bilingual mind, 10–12
Stop Signal task, 49, 51 ACC, 55, 56
types, 50 ANT, 55
Inhibitory control, 148 conflict management, 56
184 Index

Monitoring, bilingual mind (cont.) executive function, 69

cultural context, 57, 58 failures (see Replication failures)
demands, 55, 56 investigation of truth, 70
environment, 55 publication bias, 69
executive control, 55, 57 researchers, 67
language proficiency levels, 57 validity, 69
mechanism, 57 Revised hierarchical model (RHM),
socio-linguistic scenarios, 57 45, 46
working memory, 56
Multi-voxel pixel analysis, 92
S
Scenes, 115–118
N Selective attention, 137, 138, 144, 147
Neural structures, 94, 96, 101, 105–107 Sequential congruency effects (SCEs), 59
Neuroimaging methods, 103 Social attention, 12
Neuroplasticity, 1 Social cognitive abilities, 11
Social communitive context, 137
Socio-linguistic analysis, 54
O Stop Signal task, 49, 51
Oculomotor inhibitory control task, 147 Stroop-like task, 51
Oculomotor programme, 135, 142 Stroop task, 49, 51, 143, 147
Switching, 9, 11, 12
bilingual brain
P anterior coagulate cortex, 95
Posner cueing paradigm, 58 bilingual speech community, 95
Posner’s cueing task, 139 bottom-up stimuli, 96
Proficiency, 94 conflict resolution, 95
Psycholinguistic theories, 51 linguistic, 95
Psycholinguistics of bilingualism, 2–4, 12 neural networks, 95
Publication bias non-linguistic, 95
area, 72 top-down cognitive control, 96
bilingual advantages, 74 voluntary mechanism, 96
discipline, 74 bilingual mind
distribution effects, sample sizes, 72 adaptive control hypothesis, 54
executive control literature, 71 code-switch, 52, 53
fields, 71 cognitive and psycholinguistic
methodological issues, 71 implications, 55
negative outcomes, 72 dual code-switchers, 54
neuroscience studies, 72 executive control, 52, 53
null outcomes, 70 inhibition, 52
positive outcomes, 70, 72 language, 52, 54
power calculations, 72 mode, 53
and trends, 71 social context, 52, 54

R T
Reflexive eye movement (attentional shifts), 142 Translation, 12
Replication failures, 3, 6, 7, 12, 78, 147 bilingual mind
age group, 76 ASL, 48
and cognitive reserve (see Cognitive bimodal, 48
reserve, bilingualism and replication eye movement data, 46
failures) fixations, 48
behavioural data, 67 language control mechanisms, 45
neural data, 67 non-selective cross-language
Replications, 69 activation, 46
advantages and disadvantages, 69 non-selective parallel activation, 48
Index 185

phonological and semantic level, 48 V

recognition task, 46, 47 Visual search task, 58, 61
RHM, 46 Visual world eye-tracking data, 13
second-language learning, 49 Visual world paradigm, 142, 145–147
second-language proficiency, 46 Visuospatial attention, 135, 137
spoken words, 46 Voluntary naming, 120