Bilinguals respond more appropriately to changing demands: Study

SINGAPORE — Due to the frequent use of two languages in everyday life, bilingual individuals are able to respond more appropriately to changing demands, according to a new study.

Led by Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) psychology academic, Assistant Professor Qu Li, the study, titled “Bilingual advantage in executive control when task demands are considered”, involved 64 university students, aged between 18 and 28 years.

Half of the participants were Chinese monolinguals from China, while the remaining were Chinese Singaporeans who are proficient in both Chinese and English.

During the study, the participants were given computer-simulated tasks to be completed under a variety of conditions. They were asked to match pictures according to colours and then told to match pictures according to shapes. A mix of 20 colours and 20 shapes was used during the trials, which took place from October 2013.

The switch from colours to shapes forced participants to integrate several actions at a single time, such as quickly changing their focus to give their responses based on shapes, rather than colours.

The researchers monitored the time taken for responses and the accuracy of the participants’ answers.

From their findings, they found that participants who were bilingual were better at making appropriate responses according to changing tasks. For instance, when both groups were given 900 milliseconds to complete a difficult task, bilingual participants scored 0.8 out of 1 for accuracy, while monolingual participants scored 0.6.

The researchers also noted that bilingual participants were able to focus on completing the new task successfully and suppress the urge to think about competing demands.

“Compared with monolingual people, bilingual people are advanced in executive control — managing limited cognitive resources to fulfil particular task goals,” said the researchers.

Asst Prof Qu, who is from NTU’s Division of Psychology, told TODAY: “This task reflects daily life in Singapore — sometimes, we need to speak English, while at others, we need to speak our mother tongue. As bilinguals often switch between two languages, they are more sensitive and responsive when the environmental demands change.”

The researchers acknowledged that the study had its limitations. For one, the scientists had collected data from psychological tests instead of real-life scenarios.

Asst Prof Qu noted that the study also looked only at bilingual people in their 20s, and research involving other age groups is needed to further generalise the findings.

More studies are needed to determine if the same benefits of bilingualism extend to other language groups, the researchers added.

Their findings were published in the March edition of the Bilingualism: Language and Cognition journal.