Trilingual language experience and executive functions

Abstract

Speaking two or more languages has been shown to engage executive functions (Bialystok & Feng, 2009; Colzato, Bajo, DenWildenberg, & Paolieri, 2008; Jurado & Rosselli, 2007; Soveri, Rodriguez-Fornells, & Laine, 2011). As a consequence of this daily practice, bilingual speakers often out-perform their monolingual peers on tasks of executive functions (Bialystok & Feng, 2009; Costa, Hernandez, Costa-Faidella, & Sebastian-Galles, 2009; Costa, Hernandez, & Sebastian-Galles, 2008; Soveri et al., 2011). The current study explored how language experiences predict performance on executive function tasks in trilingual adults in Hong Kong. Seventy-two right-handed young adults participated in the study. Their native language was Cantonese. They learned their second language (L2), English, and third language (L3), Mandarin, before the age of seven. They completed two computerized tasks that tap the executive functions of inhibition and shifting using modified versions of the Attention Network Task (ANT) and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), respectively. Questionnaires were used to elicit information about their language background and language switching experience. This information was used as the predicting variables in statistical analysis. A series of multiple regression analysis were carried out to identify to what degree background factors and switching factors predicted performance on the ANT and WCST. Overall, the results show that the models did not statistically predict performance on the executive function tasks, which may be due to little variance in the predicting variables.