Extensive Experience with Multiple Languages May Not Buffer Age-Related Declines in Executive Function.

Whether bilingualism can improve aspects of cognitive function in late adulthood is hotly debated. A few limited studies have reported that bilingualism may provide a limited buffer against age-related cognitive decline; however, others have not. The present study furthered this inquiry by analyzing the combined effects of age and language experience upon executive function in a geographically diverse online sample. Amazon Mechanical Turk was used to recruit a sample of younger (YA) and older adults (OA) from 24 countries. A total of 81 monolingual participants (YA = 37; OA = 44) and 82 bilingual/multilingual participants (YA = 43; OA = 39) completed task-pure executive function assessments of inhibition, memory updating, and attention switching. YAs performed better than OAs on both the inhibition and updating tasks. On the attention switching task, a greater switch cost occurred when participants had less time to process a stimulus cue. Notably, no effects of language (i.e., bilingualism) were significant: no main effects or interactions with aging were found for executive function performance. The results of the present study challenge the claim that extensive experience with multiple languages can be a reliably protective factor against some normative age-related declines in executive function.

Citation

Kaitlyn M Weyman, Matthew Shake, Jenni L Redifer. Extensive Experience with Multiple Languages May Not Buffer Age-Related Declines in Executive Function. Experimental aging research. 2020 Jul-Sep;46(4):291-310

Mesh Tags

PMID: 32314669

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