Neural Processing in Adults with Varying Bilingualism Levels: An ERP Study Using a Visual Oddball Paradigm

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The relationship between bilingualism and cognitive control remains a topic of ongoing debate, partly due to the reliance on solely behavioral measures of cognitive control (Bialystok, 2017), which may not always capture subtle individual differences (Draheim et al., 2019). Prior research has utilized electrophysiological measures to investigate the links between bilingualism and cognitive control; however, the results of these studies are mixed (Antoniou, 2023). Mixed evidence may stem from traditional approaches treating bilingualism as a categorical variable (i.e., bilinguals vs. monolinguals). However, a more nuanced, continuous measure of bilingualism is now advocated by many researchers (e.g., Backer & Bortfeld, 2021; DeLuca et al., 2020; Luk & Bialystok, 2013). To address this gap, we examined whether the degree of bilingualism was associated with an established event-related potential (ERP) index of cognitive control—the P3b. We used the Language Social Background Questionnaire to derive an aggregated bilingualism composite factor score, a proxy for a participant’s overall degree of bilingual language experience (Anderson et al., 2018). A discriminability index ( d′ ) was used to measure behavioral performance. We recorded ERP data from 70 adults during a visual oddball task to elicit the P3b. We examined whether composite scores corresponded with the P3b effect, indicative of cognitive control, while taking into consideration childhood family socioeconomic status (SES), specifically parent education, as it has been linked to cognitive control in adulthood (Isbell et al., 2024). We found a positive association between composite scores and the P3b effect, indicating that more bilingual language experience was associated with greater attention allocation and working memory updating, independent of childhood family SES. However, we found no links between composite scores and behavior. These findings underscore the importance of characterizing bilingualism along a continuum and acknowledging the variability in neural processing strategies among adults with diverse bilingual experience.

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