Bilingual disadvantages are systematically compensated by bilingual advantages across tasks and populations.

ABSTRACT: Bilingualism is linked to both enhanced and hampered performance in various cognitive measures, yet the extent to which these bilingual advantages and disadvantages co-occur is unclear. To address this gap, we perform a systematic review and two quantitative analyses. First, we analyze results from 39 studies, obtained through the PRISMA method. Less than 50% of the studies that show up as results for the term "bilingual disadvantage" report exclusively a disadvantage, that shows bilinguals performing worse than monolinguals in a task. A Bayesian analysis reveals robust evidence for bilingual effects, but no evidence for differences in the proportion of advantages and disadvantages, suggesting that when results from different cognitive domains such as executive functions and verbal fluency

SUBMITTER: Dentella V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10808122 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature