关键词: 中英双语者, 熟练水平, 认知灵活性, 抑制控制, 反应抑制

Abstract:

A large number of studies demonstrated bilinguals’ advantage in cognitive control and some researchers explored the components of cognitive control. Bialystok and Viswanathan(2009) compared three components of cognitive control between bilingual children and monolingual children. However, there are three gaps: (1) Whether existing results are suitable for Chinese-English Bilinguals? (2) Compared to non-proficient bilinguals, whether proficient bilinguals also have advantage in some components of cognitive control? (3) Whether the influence of bilingualism on some components of cognitive control in bilingual children is consistent with that in bilingual adults? The present study aims at solving these questions. Thirty non-proficient Chinese-English bilinguals and thirty proficient Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to administer ‘faces task’. All participants were adults. Before this task, all participants should finish Raven Intelligence Test, culture, ethnic background and SES survey to eliminate the influence of some irrelevant variables. In face task, the colored eyes could be looking either straight ahead or towards one of the two boxes, creating straight eyes task and gaze shift task. Participants should press the key on the same side as the box containing the asterisk if the eyes turned green and the opposite side if the eyes turned red. Two methods were used to assess inhibitory control. One method was assessed by the difference in RT between trials in which the eyes looked towards the target and those in which the eyes looked away from the target in the gaze shift task. The result showed that non-proficient Chinese-English bilinguals produced a larger cost than proficient Chinese-English bilinguals, t(57)=2.107，p=0.040. The other method was assessed by the difference between gaze shift and straight eye trials. The result showed that non-proficient Chinese-English bilinguals produced a slightly larger cost than proficient Chinese-English bilinguals, t(57)=1.843, p=0.071. Switching was assessed by the difference between mixed and single block presentations. The result showed that non-proficient Chinese-English bilinguals produced a larger cost than proficient Chinese-English bilinguals, t(57)=2.006， p=0.050. Response suppression was assessed by the difference between red and green eye trials. The result showed that the difference between the two groups was not significant, t(57)=0.964，p=0.339. These results demonstrate that bilingualism contributes to inhibitory control and switching, but does little help to response suppression. Compared to non-proficient Chinese-English bilinguals, proficient Chinese-English bilinguals have advantage in inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility, but not in switching. These results not only enrich existing studies on bilingualism, but also help us understand the different effect of bilingualism on components of cognitive control.

Key words: Chinese-English bilinguals, proficiency level, Cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, response suppression