Author Description

Abstract: It has been well established in the literature that there is a cost to switching tasks. Although it has been shown that this switch cost is robust, there has been a lot of research into areas where people with different capabilities have cognitive advantages that allow them to lower task switch costs. One such area is bilingualism. Prior research has shown that bilinguals reliably show lower switch costs than monolinguals; however, it is unclear how the bilingual advantage emerges. Researchers have shown that fluency is likely more critical than Age of Acquisition (AoA), but the two factors are often confounded in prior studies. This study investigated the nature of the bilingual advantage toward task switching to understand the roles that AoA and fluency play in the bilingual advantage. Early AoA participants (N = 37) and late AoA participants (N = 21), categorized into low vs. high fluency groups, performed a cued color/shape task switching experiment that manipulated crosstalk (interference from the other task) and cue-target interval (CTI; preparation time) across blocks. Results showed a local switch cost for reaction time and error rate, along with a practice effect and an interference effect, replicating prior studies on task switching. A significant effect of CTI showed the inverse of what was expected for the preparation effect, which may be due to the long CTI being too long, leading to attention wander. There was no main effect of AoA or fluency, though both factors entered into higher-level interactions. The early AoA and low fluency group consistently showed better performance than the other groups. This may be due to that group having the most video game players with the greatest experience, which seems to be a confounding participant variable. Future research should consider determining at what length CTI may become too long, as well as how video game experience interacts with the bilingual advantage. The design implications from this study