The effect of bilingualism on executive functions when languages are similar: a comparison between Hungarian-Serbian and Slovak-Serbian young adult bilinguals.

ABSTRACT: Among the factors argued to contribute to a bilingual advantage in executive function (EF), the combination of languages spoken by the bilingual is often overlooked. In this study, we explored the role of language similarity on memory and EF task by comparing performance of three groups of young adults-Hungarian-Serbian and Slovak-Serbian early balanced bilinguals, and Serbian-speaking monolinguals. Slovak is typologically related to Serbian, which are both Slavic, in contrast to Hungarian, which is Finno-Ugric. On the computerized tasks from the CANTAB battery (CANTAB Cognition, 2016, www.cantab.com), differences between monolinguals and bilinguals emerged on the EF tasks: Stockings of Cambridge (SOC) and Attentional Set Shifting (AST), but not the memory tasks: Delayed Matching to Sample

SUBMITTER: Perovic A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9992248 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature