Psychological Development and Education ›› 2014, Vol. 30 ›› Issue (5): 512-519.

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Bilingual Language Proficiency and Mental Set Shifting in Cognitive Control

XIE Zhi-long   

  1. Foreign Languages College, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang 330022, China
  • Online:2014-09-15 Published:2014-09-15

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Abstract: The study aimed to investigate the impact of language proficiency on the aspect of mental set shifting in cognitive control. By administering the experiments of language switch and task switch, two unbalanced Chinese-English bilingual groups (40 participants, mean age=20.30), homogeneous in L1 proficiency but differing in L2 proficiency, were compared. The results found better performance for the high L2 proficiency group in language switch but no group difference in task switch. The results indicated that L2 proficiency did not exert a significant impact upon mental set shifting in cognitive control. Nevertheless, regression analysis indicated that L2 proficiency did not correlate with mental set shifting but L2 use significantly predicted switch costs and language switching frequency significantly predicted mix costs. These results suggest that L2 use and language switching frequency may be important variables modulating mental set shifting. The findings are insightful to the theory that bilingualism enhances cognitive control and provide further evidence to clarify the specific source of bilingual advantage and to clarify the specific aspect of cognitive control that may be affected.

Key words: bilingualism, L2 proficiency, mental set shifting, cognitive control

CLC Number: 

  • G442
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