Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
1-2023
Abstract
Drawing on the adaptive control hypothesis, we examined whether older adults' bilingual interactional contexts of conversational exchanges would predict important indices of executive functions (EF). We assessed participants' engagement in each bilingual interactional context - single-language, dual-language, and dense code-switching - and their performance on a series of nonverbal EF measures. Sixty-nine healthy older adults (M-age = 70.39 years; ages 60-93) were recruited from local community centers. We found that the dense code-switching context was associated with enhanced overall EF, but not individual facets of EF (inhibitory control, shifting, and updating). These findings held true when we controlled for a host of covariates. Our findings shed light on aging bilinguals' interactional contexts as crucial bilingual experiences that modulate overall EF. Given that bilingualism is a multidimensional construct, rather than a unidimensional variable, our study underscores the importance of more fine-grained operationalisation of bilingualism when studying its impacts on EF.
Keywords
bilingualism, executive function, interactional contexts
Discipline
Applied Behavior Analysis | Multicultural Psychology | Social Psychology
Research Areas
Psychology
Publication
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
Volume
26
Issue
1
First Page
36
Last Page
47
ISSN
1366-7289
Identifier
10.1017/S1366728922000190
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Citation
YANG, Hwajin, TNG, Yue Qi Germaine, NG, Gilaine Rui, & NG, Wee Qin.(2023). Bilingual interactional contexts predict executive functions in older adults. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 26(1), 36-47.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3759
Copyright Owner and License
Singapore Management University
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728922000190
Included in
Applied Behavior Analysis Commons, Multicultural Psychology Commons, Social Psychology Commons