Is there a bilingual advantage in the ANT task? Evidence from children.
Bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals in a variety of tasks that do not tap into linguistic processes. The origin of this bilingual advantage has been questioned in recent years. While some authors argue that the reason behind this apparent advantage is bilinguals' enhanced executive functioning, inhibitory skills and/or monitoring abilities, other authors suggest that the locus of these differences between bilinguals and monolinguals may lie in uncontrolled factors or incorrectly matched samples. In the current study we tested a group of 180 bilingual children and a group of 180 carefully matched monolinguals in a child-friendly version of the ANT task. Following recent evidence from similar studies with children, our results showed no bilingual advantage at all, given that the performance of the two groups in the task and the indices associated with the individual attention networks were highly similar and statistically indistinguishable.
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain.
Eneko
E
Antón
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain.
Jon A
JA
Duñabeitia
Departamento de Psicología Cognitiva, Social y Organizacional, Faculty of Psychology, University of La Laguna La Laguna, Spain.
Adelina
A
Estévez
Departamento de Psicobiología y Metodología de las Ciencias del Comportamiento, Faculty of Psychology, University of La Laguna La Laguna, Spain.
Juan A
JA
Hernández
Departamento de Psicología Básica y Metodología, Faculty of Psychology, University of Murcia Murcia, Spain.
Alejandro
A
Castillo
Departamento de Psicología Básica y Metodología, Faculty of Psychology, University of Murcia Murcia, Spain.
Luis J
LJ
Fuentes
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain.
Douglas J
DJ
Davidson
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain ; University of Granada Granada, Spain ; Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science Bilbao, Spain ; Departamento de Lengua Vasca y Comunicación, University of the Basque Country EHU/UPV Bilbao, Spain.
Manuel
M
Carreiras
ANT task; attention; bilingual advantage; executive control; inhibitory skills