Bilingualism and executive attention: Evidence from studies of proactive and reactive control

According to some accounts, the bilingual advantage is most pronounced in the domain of executive attention rather than inhibition and should therefore be more easily detected in conflict adaptation paradigms than in simple interference paradigms. We tested this idea using two conflict adaptation paradigms, one that elicits a listwide proportion-congruent effect and one that elicits an item-specific proportion-congruent effect. In both cases, the relevant finding is that congruency effects are reduced when the proportion of congruent to incongruent items is smaller. These effects are validated measures of proactive and reactive control, respectively, and are aspects of executive attention known to be associated with individual differences in working memory capacity. We reasoned that if bilingualism affects executive attention in a similar way as does working memory capacity, indices of proactive and reactive control should be comparably associated with continuous variation in language status and working memory capacity. In two experiments, we replicated previous findings that working memory capacity is associated with variation in congruency effects (suggesting greater reliance on proactive control). In contrast, language status had no consistent association with performance, save for a hint that bilingualism may be associated with greater reliance on reactive control. Thus, the bilingual advantage may exist, but not in proactive control or any other aspects of executive attention that have been proposed thus far.