Marzecová, A. 1 , Bukowski, M. . 1 , Lupiáñez, J. 2 , Boros, M. 1 & Wodniecka, Z. 1
1 Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
2 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
Bilingual advantage in cognitive control is vastly documented, although several studies, mostly with young adults, failed to replicate the effect. To investigate effects of bilingualism on attentional control in this age group, early Hungarian-Polish bilinguals were compared to Hungarian monolinguals by means of two tasks. The first task tapped two types of cognitive conflict - S-R (Simon) and S-S (Stroop)- in conditions with vs. without distraction. Non-verbal (arrows) and verbal (words up and down) stimuli were used. Bilinguals and monolinguals did not differ in the efficiency of conflict resolution for either type of material, despite bilinguals being faster and more accurate than monolinguals when processing verbal stimuli. The second task was a categorization switching task with social stimuli (faces). Participants categorized faces either according to gender or age following an endogenous cue (colored frame). Although no significant between-group differences were observed in RT, bilinguals were more accurate than monolinguals. Bilingual advantage was most pronounced on trials with partial repetitions; on complete repetitions (i.e. the same task performed on consecutive trials), monolinguals were as accurate as bilinguals. The results suggest that bilinguals are more efficient than monolinguals when processing verbal material and demonstrate enhanced flexibility of categorization with increasing task demands.