Working memory demand of a task modulates bilingual advantage in executive functions

The present study aimed to investigate the effect of task demand in working memory on bilingual cognitive advantage (interference suppression and response inhibition) in young bilinguals. Experiment 1 was performed with the flanker, Go/No-go, and modified flanker tasks, in which the first two tasks were involved in lower storage demand of working memory and the last task was involved in higher storage demand of working memory. Experiment 2 was performed with the Conditional-Go/No-go task, with a higher processing demand of working memory. Reaction time and accuracy data were analyzed using a repeated measures analysis of variance. In Experiment 1, results showed that compared to monolinguals, the bilingual advantage in interference suppression occurred in the task with high storage demand (i.e., modified flanker task) and not in the low demand task (i.e., flanker task); however, this advantage effect was not observed in response inhibition. In Experiment 2, with the increasing working memory processing demand of tasks, the bilingual advantage in response inhibition was observed. The current study firstly examined the effect of task working memory demand on the bilingual advantage and provided some restrictive conditions for the advantage. Our results provide new evidence to support the effect of bilingual cognitive advantage