Chapter published in:
Bilingualism, Executive Function, and Beyond: Questions and insights
Edited by Irina A. Sekerina, Lauren Spradlin and Virginia Valian
[Studies in Bilingualism 57] 2019
► pp. 81–99

Cooking pasta in La Paz

Bilingualism, bias, and the replication crisis

| University of Edinburgh
Literature on bilingualism and cognition is characterized by a large amount of conflicting evidence. In some studies, bilinguals perform better then monolinguals on executive tasks involving inhibition, monitoring, and switching but are slower on tasks of lexical processing. Other studies don’t find any significant effects and challenge the very existence of cognitive differences between monolinguals and bilinguals. In this paper I question the assumption that different studies performed in different parts of the world should yield the same results. I argue that the environment (in the widest sense of the word) in which an experiment is conducted can exert profound influence on its outcome. Against the background of the current debate about the replication crisis in science, I propose that conflicting evidence is not a threat to the trustworthiness of scientific research but a sign of the health of a discipline and a welcome opportunity to identify new relevant variables.
Keywords: bilingualism, replication, bias
Published online: 12 June 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.57.06bak
References

References

Abutalebi, J., Della Rosa, P. A., Ding, G., Weekes, B., Costa, A., & Green, D. W.
(2013) Language proficiency modulates the engagement of cognitive control areas in multilinguals. Cortex, 49 (3), 905–911. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Alladi, S., Bak, T. H., Duggirala, V., Surampudi, B., Shailaja, M., Shukla, A. K., Kaul, S.
(2013) Bilingualism delays age at onset of dementia, independent of education and immigration status. Neurology, 81 (22), 1938–1944. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Alladi, S., Bak, T. H., Mekala, S., Rajan, A., Chaudhuri, J. R., Mioshi, Kaul, S.
(2015) Impact of Bilingualism on Cognitive Outcome After Stroke. Stroke, on-line publication: CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Andel, R., Kåreholt, I., Parker, M. G., Thorslund, M., & Gatz, M.
(2007) Complexity of primary lifetime occupation and cognition in advanced old age. Journal of Aging and Health, 19 (3), 397–415. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Andel, R., Silverstein, M., & Kåreholt, I.
(2014) The role of midlife occupational complexity and leisure activity in late-life cognition. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, gbu110.Google Scholar
Bak, T.
(2015) Beyond a simple “yes” or “no”. Cortex, 73, 332–333. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bak, T., & Alladi, S.
(2015) Bilingualism, dementia and the tale of many variables: why we need to move beyond the Western World. Cortex, Published on-line 4 July 2015.Google Scholar
Bak, T., Alladi, H., & Alladi, S.
(2014) Can being bilingual affect the onset of dementia? Future Neurology, 9 (2), 101–103. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bak, T. H.
(2013a) The importance of looking in dark places. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal degeneration, 14 (1), 1–2. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2013b) The neuroscience of action semantics in neurodegenerative brain diseases. Current opinion in neurology. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2016) The impact of bilingualism on cognitive aging and dementia: finding a path through a forest of confounding variables. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, Special Issue on Bilingualism and Ageing. Published on-line 25 January 2016. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bak, T. H., & Chandran, S.
(2012) What wires together dies together: verbs, actions and neurodegeneration in motor neuron disease. Cortex, 48 (7), 936–944. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bak, T. H., Nissan, J. J., Allerhand, M. M., & Deary, I. J.
(2014) Does bilingualism influence cognitive aging? Annals of Neurology. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bak, T. H., Vega-Mendoza, M., & Sorace, A.
(2014) Never too late? An advantage on tests of auditory attention extends to late bilinguals. Frontiers in psychology, 5. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bialystok, E.
(2009) Bilingualism: The good, the bad, and the indifferent. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12 (01), 3–11. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bialystok, E., Abutalebi, J., Bak, T. H., Burke, D., Kroll, J.
(2016) Ageing in two languages: implications for public health. Ageing Research Reviews, Published on-line, 16 March 2016. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I., & Freedman, M.
(2007) Bilingualism as a protection against the onset of symptoms of dementia. Neuropsychologia, 45 (2), 459–464. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bialystok, E., & DePape, A.-M.
(2009) Musical expertise, bilingualism, and executive functioning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 35 (2), 565.Google Scholar
Bialystok, E., & Feng, X.
(2009) Language proficiency and executive control in proactive interference: Evidence from monolingual and bilingual children and adults. Brain and Language, 109 (2), 93–100. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cesar, K. G., Brucki, S. M., Takada, L. T., Nascimento, L. F., Gomes, C. M., Almeida, M. C., Bahia, V. S.
(2015) Prevalence of Cognitive Impairment Without Dementia and Dementia in Tremembe, Brazil. Alzheimer disease and associated disorders: 10.1097. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Costa, A., Hernández, M., Costa-Faidella, J., & Sebastián-Gallés, N.
(2009) On the bilingual advantage in conflict processing: Now you see it, now you don’t. Cognition, 113 (2), 135–149. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
de Bruin, A., Bak, T. H., & Della Sala, S.
(2015) Examining the effects of active versus inactive bilingualism on executive control in a carefully matched non-immigrant sample. Journal of Memory and Language, 85, 15–26. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
de Bruin, A., & Della Sala, S.
(2015) The decline effect: How initially strong results tend to decrease over time. Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Duñabeitia, J. A., & Carreiras, M.
(2015) The bilingual advantage: Acta est fabula. Cortex, 73, 371–372. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
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. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Easterbrook, P. J., Gopalan, R., Berlin, J., & Matthews, D. R.
(1991) Publication bias in clinical research. The Lancet, 337 (8746), 867–872. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V.
(1971) Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of personality and social psychology, 17 (2), 124. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ekman, P., Friesen, W. V., O’Sullivan, M., Chan, A., Diacoyanni-Tarlatzis, I., Heider, K., Ricci-Bitti, P. E.
(1987) Universals and cultural differences in the judgments of facial expressions of emotion. Journal of personality and social psychology, 53 (4), 712. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Freedman, M., Alladi, S., Chertkow, H., Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I., Phillips, N. A., Bak, T. H.
(2014) Delaying Onset of Dementia: Are Two Languages Enough? Behavioural Neurology 2014: 808137. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fuller-Thomson, E.
in press). Emerging evidence contradicts the hypothesis that bilingualism delays dementia onset. A Commentary on “Age of dementia diagnosis in community dwelling bilingual and monolingual Hispanic Americans” by Lawton et al., 2014. Cortex.
Fuller-Thomson, E., & Kuh, D.
(2014) The healthy migrant effect may confound the link between bilingualism and delayed onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior, 52, 128. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fuller-Thomson, E., Milaszewski, D., & Abdelmessih, S. A.
(2013) The importance of untangling the role of nativity and bilingualism in Alzheimer’s disease. Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior, 49 (5), 1441; discussion 1442–1443. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gold, B. T., Kim, C., Johnson, N. F., Kryscio, R. J., & Smith, C. D.
(2013) Lifelong bilingualism maintains neural efficiency for cognitive control in aging. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33 (2), 387–396. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gollan, T. H., Montoya, R. I., Fennema-Notestine, C., & Morris, S. K.
(2005) Bilingualism affects picture naming but not picture classification. Memory & cognition, 33 (7), 1220–1234. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gollan, T. H., Salmon, D. P., Montoya, R. I., & Galasko, D. R.
(2011) Degree of bilingualism predicts age of diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in low-education but not in highly educated Hispanics. Neuropsychologia, 49 (14), 3826–3830. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Green, D. W.
(2011) Language control in different contexts: the behavioral ecology of bilingual speakers. Frontiers in psychology, 2: 10.3389. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Green, D. W., & Abutalebi, J.
(2013) Language control in bilinguals: The adaptive control hypothesis. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25 (5), 515–530. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hasher L., Zacks R. T., May, C. P.
(1999) Inhibitory control, circadian arousal and age. In Gopher & Koriat (eds) Cognitive Regulation of Performance: p 563–575. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A.
(2010) The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and brain sciences, 33 (2–3), 61–83. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ivanova, I., & Costa, A.
(2008) Does bilingualism hamper lexical access in speech production? Acta psychologica, 127 (2), 277–288. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Iyer, G. K., Alladi, S., Bak, T. H., Shailaja, M., Mamidipudi, A., & Rajan, A.
(2014) Dementia in developing countries: does education play the same role in India as in the West? Dement. neuropsychol, 8 (2). CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kavé, G., Eyal, N., Shorek, A., & Cohen-Mansfield, J.
(2008) Multilingualism and cognitive state in the oldest old. Psychology and aging, 23 (1), 70. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kosowicz, M., & MacPherson, S. E.
in press). Improving multitasking assessment in healthy older adults using a prop-based version of the breakfast task. Applied Neuropsychology: Adult.
Kovács, Á. M., & Mehler, J.
(2009) Cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (16), 6556–6560. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lawton, D. M., Gasquoine, P. G., & Weimer, A. A.
(2014) Age of dementia diagnosis in community dwelling bilingual and monolingual Hispanic Americans. Cortex.Google Scholar
Linck, J. A., Kroll, J. F., & Sunderman, G.
(2009) Losing access to the native language while immersed in a second language: Evidence for the role of inhibition in second-language learning. Psychological science, 20 (12), 1507–1515. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ljungberg, J. K., Hansson, P., Andrés, P., Josefsson, M., & Nilsson, L.-G.
(2013) A longitudinal study of memory advantages in bilinguals. PloS one, 8 (9), e73029. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Luk, G., & Bialystok, E.
(2013) Bilingualism is not a categorical variable: Interaction between language proficiency and usage. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25 (5), 605–621. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Open Science Collaboration
(2015) Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349 (6251), aac4716. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Paap, K. R., & Greenberg, Z. I.
(2013) There is no coherent evidence for a bilingual advantage in executive processing. Cognitive psychology, 66 (2), 232–258. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
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. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Park, D. C., Lodi-Smith, J., Drew, L., Haber, S., Hebrank, A., Bischof, G. N., & Aamodt, W.
(2014) The Impact of Sustained Engagement on Cognitive Function in Older Adults The Synapse Project. Psychological science, 25 (1), 103–112. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Saer, D. J.
(1922) An Inquiry Into the Effect of Bilingualism Upon the Intelligence of Young Children. Journal of Experimental Pedagogy, 14, 25–38.Google Scholar
Schroeder, S. R., Marian, V., Shook, A., & Bartolotti, J.
(2015) Bilingualism and Musicianship Enhance Cognitive Control. Neural Plasticity, 501, 717861.Google Scholar
Smart, E. L., Gow, A. J., & Deary, I. J.
(2014) Occupational complexity and lifetime cognitive abilities. Neurology, 83 (24), 2285–2291. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sterling, T. D.
(1959) Publication decisions and their possible effects on inferences drawn from tests of significance – or vice versa. Journal of the American statistical association, 54 (285), 30–34.Google Scholar
Stern, Y.
(2002) What is cognitive reserve? Theory and research application of the reserve concept. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 8 (03), 448–460. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sumner, P., Vivian-Griffith, S., Boivin, J., Williams, A., Venetis, C. A., Davis, A., Ogden, J., Whelan, L., Hughes, B., Dalton, B., Boy, B., Chambers C. D.
(2014) The associatio between exaggeration in health-related science and academic press releases: a retrospective observational study. British Medical Journal, 349, g:7015.Google Scholar
Tao, L., Marzecová, A., Taft, M., Asanowicz, D., & Wodniecka, Z.
(2011) The efficiency of attentional networks in early and late bilinguals: the role of age of acquisition. Frontiers in psychology, 2: 10.3389. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Titone, D., & Baum, S.
(2014) The future of bilingualism research: Insufferably optimistic and replete with new questions. Applied Psycholinguistics, 35 (05), 933–942. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Valian, V.
(2015) Bilingualism and cognition: A focus on mechanisms. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18 (01), 47–50. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vega-Mendoza, M., West, H., Sorace, A., & Bak, T. H.
(2015) The impact of late, non-balanced bilingualism on cognitive performance. Cognition, 137, 40–46. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Woumans, E., & Duyck, W.
(2015) The bilingual advantage debate: Moving toward different methods for verifying its existence. Cortex, 73, 356–357. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Woumans, E., Santens, P., Sieben, A., Versijpt, J., Stevens, M., & Duyck, W.
(2015) Bilingualism delays clinical manifestation of Alzheimer’s disease. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18 (03), 568–574. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Yang, H., Hartanto, A., & Yang, S.
in press). The importance of bilingual experience in assessing bilingual advantages in executive functions. Cortex.
Yeung, C. M., John, P. D. S., Menec, V., & Tyas, S. L.
(2014) Is Bilingualism Associated With a Lower Risk of Dementia in Community-living Older Adults? Cross-sectional and Prospective Analyses. Alzheimer disease and associated disorders: 28 (4), 326–332. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Zahodne, L. B., Schofield, P. W., Farrell, M. T., Stern, Y., & Manly, J. J.
(2014) Bilingualism does not alter cognitive decline or dementia risk among Spanish-speaking immigrants. Neuropsychology, 28 (2), 238. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by other publications

Chung-Fat-Yim, Ashley, Geoffrey B. Sorge & Ellen Bialystok
2020. Continuous effects of bilingualism and attention on Flanker task performance. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 23:5 ► pp. 1106 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 06 january 2021. 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.