Beyond Panglossian Optimism: Larger N2 Amplitudes Probably Signal a Bilingual Disadvantage in Conflict Monitoring

AIMS Neuroscience

Hunter A. Johnson¹  Oliver M. Sawi¹  Chirag Dalibar²  Jack Darrow³  Kenneth R. Paap³ 

[1] Cognitive Engineering (LACE) Lab, Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, USA;;;Language, Attention, &

关键词: bilingualism;    executive Function;    ERP;    inhibitory control;    conflict resolution;   

DOI  :  10.3934/Neuroscience.2015.1.1

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

In this special issue on the brain mechanisms that lead to cognitive benefits of bilingualism we discussed six reasons why it will be very difficult to discover those mechanisms. Many of these problems apply to the article by Fernandez, Acosta, Douglass, Doshi, and Tartar that also appears in the special issue. These concerns include the following: 1) an overly optimistic assessment of the replicability of bilingual advantages in behavioral studies, 2) reliance on risky small samples sizes, 3) failures to match the samples on demographic characteristics such as immigrant status, and 4) language group differences that occur in neural measures (i.e., N2 amplitude), but not in the behavioral data. Furthermore the N2 amplitude measure in general suffers from valence ambiguity: larger N2 amplitudes reported for bilinguals are more likely to reflect poorer conflict resolution rather than enhanced inhibitory control.

【 授权许可】

Unknown