Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to BilingualismVol. 13:6 (2023) ► pp.830–853
The effects of using two varieties of one language on cognition
Evidence from bidialectalism and diglossia
Although the question of whether and how bilingualism affects executive functions has been extensively debated,
less attention has been paid to the cognitive abilities of speakers of different varieties of the same language, in linguistic
situations such as bidialectalism and diglossia. Similarly to the bilingual situation, in bidialectalism and diglossia speakers
have two language varieties that are active at the same time. However, these situations have been argued to potentially provide
varied, and possibly fewer, opportunities for mixing or switching between the varieties, which may in turn lead to different
cognitive outcomes than those reported in bilingualism. Here we review the available evidence on the effects of bidialectalism and
diglossia on cognition, and evaluate it in relation to theories of the effects of bilingualism on cognition. We conclude that
investigations of bilingualism, bidialectalism and diglossia must take into account the conversational context and, in particular,
the opportunities for language switching that this affords.
Keywords: bilingualism, bidialectalism, cognition, executive functions, diglossia
Article outline
- 1.Using two languages and its effects on domain general cognition
- 1.1Bilingualism
- 1.2Bidialectalism and diglossia
- 1.3Bidialectalism/diglossia vs. bilingualism
- 2.Studies of executive functions in bidialectalism
- 2.1Children
- 2.2Young adults
- 2.3Older adults
- 3.Studies of executive functions in diglossia
- 3.1Children
- 3.2Young adults
- 4.Bidialectalism and diglossia as interactional language contexts
- 5.Implications for theories of cognitive benefits in bilingualism
- Note
-
References
References (79)
Alloway, T. P. (2012). Alloway Working Memory Assessment 2 (AWMA-2). Pearson.
Antoniou, K., Grohmann, K. K., Kambanaros, M., & Katsos, N. (2016). The effect of childhood bilectalism and multilingualism on executive control. Cognition,
149
1, 18–30. 
Antoniou, K., & Spanoudis, G. C. (2020). An investigation of the multilingual and bi-dialectal advantage in executive control. Cognitive Science Society, 2050–2056.
Auer, P. (2005). Europe’s sociolinguistic unity, or: A typology of European dialect/standard constellations. In N. Delbecque, J. van der Auwera, & D. Geeraerts (Eds.), Perspectives on Variation. De Gruyter Mouton.
Beatty-Martínez, A. L., Navarro-Torres, C. A., Dussias, P. E., Bajo, M. T., Guzzardo Tamargo, R. E., & Kroll, J. F. (2020). Interactional context mediates the consequences of bilingualism for language and cognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition,
46
(6), 1022–1047.
Beatty-Martínez, A. L., & Titone, D. A. (2021). The quest for signals in noise: Leveraging experiential variation to identify bilingual phenotypes. Languages,
6
(4), 168.
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., Klein, R. M., & Viswanathan, M. (2004). Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: Evidence from the Simon task. Psychology and Aging,
19
(2), 290–303.
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., & Luk, G. (2012). Bilingualism: consequences for mind and brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences,
16
(4), 240–250.
Blanco-Elorrieta, E., & Pylkkänen, L. (2018). Ecological validity in bilingualism research and the bilingual advantage. Trends in Cognitive Sciences,
22
(12), 1117–1126.
Blokzijl, J., Deuchar, M., & Parafita Couto, M. C. (2017). Determiner asymmetry in mixed nominal constructions: The role of grammatical factors in data from Miami and Nicaragua. Languages,
2
(4), 20.
Blom, E., Boerma, T., Bosma, E., Cornips, L., & Everaert, E. (2017). Cognitive advantages of bilingual children in different sociolinguistic contexts. Frontiers in Psychology,
8
(552).
Bosma, E., Blom, E., & Versloot, A. (2017). Language balance and cognitive advantages in Frisian-Dutch bilingual children. In F. Lauchlan & M. C. Parafita Couto (Eds.), Bilingualism and Minority Languages in Europe: Current trends and developments (p. 141). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Bosma, E., Hoekstra, E., Versloot, A., & Blom, E. (2017). The minimal and short-lived effects of minority language exposure on the executive functions of Frisian-Dutch bilingual children. Frontiers in Psychology,
8
(1453).
Calvo, A., & Bialystok, E. (2014). Independent effects of bilingualism and socioeconomic status on language ability and executive functioning. Cognition,
130
(3), 278–288.
Carlson, S. M., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2008). Bilingual experience and executive functioning in young children. Developmental Science,
11
(2), 282–298.
Chen, Z. (2003). Attentional focus, processing load, and Stroop interference. Perception & Psychophysics,
65
(6), 888–900.
de Mejía, A.-M. (2002). Power, Prestige and Bilingualism. Multilingual Matters.
Dijkstra, J. (2013). Growing up with Frisian and Dutch: The role of language input in the early development of Frisian and Dutch among preschool children in Friesland. Fryske Akademy.
Duñabeitia, J. A., Hernández, J. A., Antón, E., Macizo, P., Estévez, A., Fuentes, L. J., & Carreiras, M. (2014). The inhibitory advantage in bilingual children revisited: myth or reality? Experimental Psychology,
61
(3), 234–251.
Emmorey, K., Luk, G., Pyers, J. E., & Bialystok, E. (2008). The source of enhanced cognitive control in bilinguals. Psychological Science,
19
(12), 1201–1206.
Eriksen, B. A., & Eriksen, C. W. (1974). Effects of noise letters upon the identification of a target letter in a nonsearch task. Perception & Psychophysics,
16
(1), 143–149.
Ferguson, C. A. (1959). Diglossia. Word,
15
(2), 325–340.
Garraffa, M., Beveridge, M., & Sorace, A. (2015). Linguistic and cognitive skills in Sardinian–Italian bilingual children. Frontiers in Psychology,
6
1(1898).
Gathercole, V. C. M., Thomas, E. M., Kennedy, I., Prys, C., Young, N., Guasch, N. V., Roberts, E. J., Hughes, E. K., & Jones, L. (2014). Does language dominance affect cognitive performance in bilinguals? Lifespan evidence from preschoolers through older adults on card sorting, Simon, and metalinguistic tasks. Frontiers in Psychology,
5
1, 1–14.
Gertken, L. M., Amengual, M., & Birdsong, D. (2014). Assessing language dominance with the bilingual language profile. In P. Leclercq, A. Edmonds, & H. Hilton (Eds.), Measuring L2 proficiency: Perspectives from SLA (pp. 208–225). Multilingual Matters.
Green, D. W., & Abutalebi, J. (2013). Language control in bilinguals: The adaptive control hypothesis. Journal of Cognitive Psychology,
25
(5), 515–530.
Guerrero, S. L., Mesite, L., Surrain, S., & Luk, G. (2015). Mixed language use and cognitive flexibility in young bilinguals.
Poster Presented at the
CUNY Workshop on Bilingualism and Executive Function: An Interdisciplinary Approach
,
New York, NY
.
Gullifer, J. W., & Titone, D. (2020). Characterizing the social diversity of bilingualism using language entropy. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 23(2), 283–294.
Gunnerud, H. L., ten Braak, D., Reikerås, E. K. L., Donolato, E., & Melby-Lervåg, M. (2020). Is bilingualism related to a cognitive advantage in children? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 146,(12), 1059–1083.
Hartanto, A., & Yang, H. (2016). Disparate bilingual experiences modulate task-switching advantages: A diffusion-model analysis of the effects of interactional context on switch costs. Cognition,
150
1, 10–19.
(2020). The role of bilingual interactional contexts in predicting interindividual variability in executive functions: A latent variable analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,
149
(4), 609–633.
Hedge, C., Powell, G., & Sumner, P. (2018). The reliability paradox: Why robust cognitive tasks do not produce reliable individual differences. Behavior Research Methods,
50
(3), 1166–1186.
Hofweber, J., Marinis, T., & Treffers-Daller, J. (2019). Predicting executive functions in bilinguals using ecologically valid measures of code-switching behaviour. In Irina A. Sekerina, L. Spradlin, & V. Valian (Eds.), Bilingualism, Executive Function, and Beyond (pp. 181–205). John Benjamins.
Houtzager, N., Lowie, W., Sprenger, S., & De Bot, K. (2017). A bilingual advantage in task switching? Age-related differences between German monolinguals and Dutch-Frisian bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition,
20
(1), 69–79.
Hsu, H. (2021). Cognitive control in older Minnan-Mandarin and Hakka-Mandarin bidialectal adults: Advantages in Stroop-type tasks. Lingua,
253
(31), 103041.
Kaye, A. S. (2001). Diglossia: The state of the art. International Journal of the Sociology of Language,
152
1, 117–129.
Kirk, N. W., Fiala, L., Scott-Brown, K. C., & Kempe, V. (2014). No evidence for reduced Simon cost in elderly bilinguals and bidialectals. Journal of Cognitive Psychology,
26
(6), 640–648.
Kousaie, S., & Phillips, N. A. (2012). Ageing and bilingualism : Absence of a “ bilingual advantage ” in Stroop interference in a nonimmigrant sample. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,
65
(2), 356–369.
Kroll, J. F., & Bialystok, E. (2013). Understanding the consequences of bilingualism for language processing and cognition. Journal of Cognitive Psychology,
25
(5), 497–514.
Lamb, W. (2008). Scottish Gaelic speech and writing: Register variation in an endangered language. Cló Ollscoil na Banríona.
Lauchlan, F., Parisi, M., & Fadda, R. (2013). Bilingualism in Sardinia and Scotland: Exploring the cognitive benefits of speaking a ‘minority’ language. International Journal of Bilingualism,
17
(1), 43–56.
Lehtonen, M., Soveri, A., Laine, A., Järvenpää, J., de Bruin, A., & Antfolk, J. (2018). Is bilingualism associated with enhanced executive functioning in adults? A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin,
144
(4), 394–425.
Lowe, C. J., Cho, I., Goldsmith, S. F., & Morton, J. B. (2021). The bilingual advantage in children’s executive functioning is not related to language status: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Science,
32
(7), 1115–1146.
Luo, L., Craik, F. I. M., Moreno, S., & Bialystok, E. (2013). Bilingualism interacts with domain in a working memory task: Evidence from aging. Psychology and Aging,
28
(1), 28–34.
MacAulay, D. (1993). The Scottish Gaelic language. In D. MacAulay (Ed.), The Celtic languages (pp. 137–248). Cambridge University Press.
Martin-Rhee, M. M., & Bialystok, E. (2008). The development of two types of inhibitory control in monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition,
11
(1), 81–93.
Masica, C. P., & Sinha, A. K. (1986). South Asian Languages: Structure, convergence and diglossia. Shri Jainendra Press.
Miyake, A., Emerson, M. J., Padilla, F., & Ahn, J. (2004). Inner speech as a retrieval aid for task goals: the effects of cue type and articulatory suppression in the random task cuing paradigm. Acta Psychologica,
115
(2–3), 123–142.
Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal Lobe” tasks : A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology,
41
1, 49–100.
Morales, J., Calvo, A., & Bialystok, E. (2013). Working memory development in monolingual and bilingual children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,
114
(2), 187–202.
Morton, J. B., & Harper, S. N. (2007). What did Simon say? Revisiting the bilingual advantage. Developmental Science,
10
(6), 719–726.
Muller, N., & Ball, M. J. (2005). Code-switching and diglossia. In M. J. Ball (Ed.), Clinical Sociolinguistics (pp. 49–62). Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Muysken, P. (2000). Bilingual speech: A typology of code-mixing. Cambridge University Press.
Ooi, S. H., Goh, W. D., Sorace, A., & Bak, T. H. (2018). From Bilingualism to Bilingualisms: Bilingual experience in Edinburgh and Singapore affects attentional control differently. Bilingualism,
21
(4), 867–879.
Oschwald, J., Schättin, A., von Bastian, C. C., & Souza, A. S. (2018). Bidialectalism and bilingualism: Exploring the role of language similarity as a link between linguistic ability and executive control. Frontiers in Psychology,
9
1.
Paap, K. R. (2019). The Bilingual Advantage debate. In J. W. Schwieter & M. Paradis (Eds.), The Handbook of the Neuroscience of Multilingualism (pp. 701–735). Wiley.
Paap, K. R., Anders-Jefferson, R., Zimiga, B., Mason, L., & Mikulinsky, R. (2020). Interference scores have inadequate concurrent and convergent validity: Should we stop using the flanker, Simon, and spatial Stroop tasks? Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications,
5
(1).
Paap, K. R., Johnson, H. A., & Sawi, O. (2015). Bilingual advantages in executive functioning either do not exist or are restricted to very specific and undetermined circumstances. Cortex,
69
1, 265–278.
Pavlou, P. (2004). Greek dialect use in the mass media in Cyprus. International Journal of the Sociology of Language,
168
1.
Pelham, S. D., & Abrams, L. (2014). Cognitive advantages and disadvantages in early and late bilinguals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition,
40
(2), 313–325.
Piper, B. J., Li, V., Eiwaz, M. A., Kobel, Y. V., Benice, T. S., Chu, A. M., Olsen, R. H. J., Rice, D. Z., Gray, H. M., & Mueller, S. T. (2012). Executive function on the Psychology Experiment Building Language tests. Behavior Research Methods,
44
(1), 110–123.
Pliatsikas, C., DeLuca, V., & Voits, T. (2020). The many shades of bilingualism: Language experiences modulate adaptations in brain structure. Language Learning,
70
1.
Poarch, G. J., & Krott, A. (2019). A bilingual advantage? An appeal for a change in perspective and recommendations for future research. Behavioral Sciences,
9
(9), 95.
Poarch, G. J., & van Hell, J. G. (2012). Executive functions and inhibitory control in multilingual children: Evidence from second-language learners, bilinguals, and trilinguals. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,
113
(4), 535–551.
(2019). Does performance on executive function tasks correlate? In I. A. Sekerina, L. Spradlin, & V. Valian (Eds.), Bilingualism, executive function, and beyond: Questions and insights (pp. 223–236). John Benjamins.
Poarch, G. J., Vanhove, J., & Berthele, R. (2019). The effect of bidialectalism on executive function. International Journal of Bilingualism,
23
(2), 612–628.
Pot, A., Keijzer, M. C. J., & De Bot, K. (2018). Intensity of multilingual language use predicts cognitive performance in some multilingual older adults. Brain Sciences,
8
(5).
Poulin-Dubois, D., Blaye, A., Coutya, J., & Bialystok, E. (2011). The effects of bilingualism on toddlers’ executive functioning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,
108
(3), 567–579.
Ross, J., & Melinger, A. (2017). Bilingual advantage, bidialectal advantage or neither? Comparing performance across three tests of executive function in middle childhood. Developmental Science,
20
(4), 1–21.
Rouder, J. N., & Haaf, J. M. (2019). A psychometrics of individual differences in experimental tasks. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review,
26
(2), 452–467.
Rowe, C., & Grohmann, K. K. (2013). Discrete bilectalism: towards co-overt prestige and diglossic shift in Cyprus. International Journal of the Sociology of Language,
224
1, 119–142.
Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Joshi, R. M. (2014). Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives. Springer Science & Business Media.
Scaltritti, M., Peressotti, F., & Miozzo, M. (2017). Bilingual advantage and language switch: What’s the linkage? Bilingualism,
20
(1), 80–97.
Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology,
18
(6), 643–662.
Surrain, S., & Luk, G. (2019). Describing bilinguals: A systematic review of labels and descriptions used in the literature between 2005–2015. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition,
22
(2), 401–415.
Valian, V. (2015). Bilingualism and cognition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition,
18
1, 3–24.
Verhagen, J., Mulder, H., & Leseman, P. P. M. (2017). Effects of home language environment on inhibitory control in bilingual three-year-old children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition,
20
(1), 114–127.
Wechsler, D., & Kodama, H. (1949). Wechsler intelligence scale for children (Vol. 1). Psychological corporation.
Yang, H., Hartanto, A., & Yang, S. (2016). The complex nature of bilinguals’ language usage modulates task-switching outcomes. Frontiers in Psychology,
7
1.
Cited by (11)
Cited by 11 other publications
Alrwaita, Najla, Carmel Houston-Price, Lotte Meteyard, Toms Voits & Christos Pliatsikas
2024. Executive functions are modulated by the context of dual language use: diglossic, bilingual and monolingual older adults. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 27:1 ► pp. 178 ff. 
Feleke, Tekabe Legesse
2024. Dialect separation and cross-dialectal influence: a study on the grammatical gender of Oromo. Linguistics
Feleke, Tekabe Legesse
2024. Dialect Recognition via Lexical Processing: Is It a Viable Litmus Test?. Languages 9:6 ► pp. 186 ff.
Ibrahim, Raphiq
2024. The Impact of Diglossia on Executive Functions and on Reading in Arabic. Brain Sciences 14:10 ► pp. 963 ff.
Siew, Cynthia S. Q.
2024. A comparison of word humor ratings across speakers of North American, British, and Singapore English. Memory & Cognition
Treffers-Daller, Jeanine
Wei, Xuehu, Thomas C. Gunter, Helyne Adamson, Matthias Schwendemann, Angela D. Friederici, Tomás Goucha & Alfred Anwander
2024. White matter plasticity during second language learning within and across hemispheres. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121:2
Xie, Zhilong, Adam John Privitera & Yueyan Huang
2024. Bilingualism from a holistic perspective: investigation of bilingual effects on cognitive control. Current Psychology
Xie, Zhilong & Qianyun Zhong
2024. Bilingualism but not bidialectalism influences cognitive control among young adult Chinese–English bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingualism 28:3 ► pp. 591 ff.
Zeng, Wenqi, Christine Shea, Jill Beckman & Ethan Kutlu
2024. Bidialectal variety switching: the effects of language use and social contexts. Frontiers in Language Sciences 2
Alrwaita, Najla, Lotte Meteyard, Carmel Houston-Price & Christos Pliatsikas
2022. Is There an Effect of Diglossia on Executive Functions? An Investigation among Adult Diglossic Speakers of Arabic. Languages 7:4 ► pp. 312 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.