A diffusion model approach to analyzing young adults’ bilingual advantage for the flanker task

Abstract

Reports of the bilingual advantage on executive control are inconsistent particularly in young participants. One reason may be the lack of precision regarding measurement of cognitive processes underlying the bilingual advantage. The present study compared the performance on the Flanker task of 29 young monolinguals (mean age = 18.69) and 30 young bilinguals (mean age = 20). Following the methodology reported by Ong, Sewell, Weekes, McKague and Abutalebi (2016) with bilingual seniors, Flanker performance was analyzed using the diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978), which assumes decision-making process is a stochastic evidence accumulation process composed of empirically validated psychological parameters including drift rate and non-decision time. Results showed a bilingual advantage for young adults in drift rate suggesting differences in speed of evidence accumulation during decision processes, with no differences in other parameters. The conclusion is that young bilinguals evidence an advantage in conflict monitoring most likely due to their bilingual experience.