Experiment. Are bilingual people more proficient at multitasking between cognitive tasks?

 Bilingual people are often superior in tasks testing conflict management and inhibitory control because they have experience disregarding irrelevant stimuli in their daily lives. In the classic Stroop task, participants are required to read given words and name the colour of the word’s font. For example, if they are given the word “red” printed in yellow, their task is to say “yellow”. Bilingual people have an advantage here because they can better manage the conflict between the word and font colour, therefore easily being able to ignore the irrelevant word with their inhibitory control.

 Bilingual people’s advantages in executive control are not restricted within the brain’s language network. For example, when bilingual people had to switch between naming pictures in different languages, they showed increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is associated with cognitive skills such as attention and inhibition. As well as that, it was found that language switching also involves structures such as the anterior cingulate cortex, bilateral supermarginal gyrus, and left inferior frontal gyrus regions, which are involved in cognitive control too.

These advantages extend to subcortical brain areas associated with sensory processing. It is proven that bilinguals are better than monolinguals in encoding the fundamental frequency of sounds in the presence of background noise. They show a greater neural response and blood flow in the brain stem. This means bilingual people have benefits in auditory attention too.

Furthermore, it appears that bilingual experience not only alters the way in which the brain processes information, but also its structure. High proficiency in a second language alongside early acquisition is associated with higher grey matter (tissue made of cell bodies which process information) in the left inferior parietal lobe, which is involved in social cognition and language.

These described benefits of bilingualism seem to start early – in a 2009 study led by Agnes Kovacs, 7-month-old babies were presented with an audio cue followed by a puppet appearing on one side of the stage. The babies learned to look at that side in expectation of the puppet. Later, the puppet started appearing on the opposite side of the stage. The babies exposed to a bilingual environment quickly learned to change where they looked, while the monolingual babies did not.

Bilingualism can also help resist the natural decline of cognitive function in the elderly. In a study of monolingual and bilingual people with Alzheimer’s disease, bilingual people showed initial symptoms five years later than monolinguals did and they were diagnosed more than four years later.

Hypothesis

If a person is bilingual, then they will be more proficient in the cognitive multitasking test: that is, they will have a higher average speed and lower average number of mistakes.

Aim and social cause

To investigate whether bilingualism improves cognitive ability, so students are motivated to learn a second language and become global citizens who have proficient understanding of different cultures and globally significant issues.

Risk assessment

Experimental variables

Independent variable: Number of languages participants know.

Dependent variable: Average speed and average number of mistakes in the online multitasking test.

Controlled variables: Age (teenagers) and device used (computers).

Equipment list

• Computer/laptop
• Access to Internet

Method

1. Create a survey on Google Forms with the following questions:

• Age
• Gender
• Class
• Do you understand any languages other than English?
• If yes, which languages?
• What was your average speed on the multitasking test?
• What was your average number of mistakes on the multitasking test?

2. Ask participants to take the multitasking test on  and note their average speed and average number of mistakes.
3. Ask participants to answer the survey.
4. Compile and analyse the results.

Results and data analysis

Discussion

My investigation disproved my hypothesis as monolinguals were more proficient in the multitasking test than bilinguals. They had a higher average speed and a lower average number of mistakes. They only had 0.7 less average mistakes and they were only quicker by an average of one second though, so this is not a resolute conclusion, especially because it contradicts former research. It may be skewed or inaccurate because there was a significantly small sample of monolinguals compared to bilinguals. It was surprisingly difficult to find monolingual participants, so I asked students from other schools and teachers to participate as well, which could also make the results inaccurate. This could be because the ages were not controlled effectively, and the results may be affected by the different age-ranges rather than linguistic ability.

This is illustrated in the trend of quicker average speed and lower number of mistakes in higher classes. Though, there many outliers such as the year sevens having the least mistakes and the teachers not being the quickest. This is due to the small and unequal number of participants in each age group. Therefore, the results do not accurately reflect a trend in better cognitive performances in older participants, so it is unlikely the different ages skewed the results. I can now conclude the experiment’s results were inaccurate due to the small sample of monolingual participants compared to bilingual participants.

If I were to do this investigation again, I would choose a more accessible cognitive test to increase the number of monolingual participants. The test I used was reliable as it had multiple trials and easy to understand as it had a tutorial. It was also effective in testing cognitive ability as it involved multitasking between memorisation and simple computer tasks. However, it had a few issues which made it inaccessible. It was too lengthy for some and it had many optional sections which were confusing and irrelevant. This might’ve repelled some potential participants. It was also inaccessible on phones, but this was a good aspect as it controlled what devices the participants used and kept it consistent.

Conclusion

Overall, the results suggested that monolinguals are more proficient in their cognitive ability, but only by a small fraction. The investigation was flawed so nothing can be concluded from this. However, through this I discovered that Australia has more bilingual speakers than expected, even within schools that are not as culturally diverse. It is great to know that more Australians are learning a second language and becoming global citizens who are bettering their understanding of different cultures and globally significant issues.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Ms. Sayed, Mr. Mohammed and Mr. Apostolou for assisting me with finding participants and helping me improve my work.

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