ReviewTrends in cognitive sciences2024
Bilingualism modifies cognition through adaptation, not transfer.
Review in Trends in cognitive sciences, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- A Large-Scale Study on the Relation Between Multilingualism and Social Traits in Adults With and Without Autism Diagnoses.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Article
- Limited protective effects of multilingualism against age-related cognitive decline.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- Modulations of the P3b effect as a function of bilingual language experience.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The interactive effect of L2 proficiency and interpreting experience on cognitive control.Journal of psycholinguistic research · 2026Article
- Rethinking language, cognition and assessment in psychosis: How bilingualism challenges psychiatry and how natural language processing can help.Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2026Review
- Neural signatures of word learning: How individual differences shape ERPs and oscillations in the early stages of learning a new language.Neuropsychologia · 2026Article
- Missing the Mix: Perceiving Code-Switches as a Mechanism for Bilingual Adaptation.Child development perspectives · 2026Article
- Bilingual effects on cognitive control: a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 50 years of research.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Associations Between Second-Language Proficiency and Executive Functions in Autistic and Neurotypical Children.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2026Article
- No evidence that selection is resource-demanding in conflict and bilingual language production tasks: Implications for theories of adaptive control and language-control associations.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Article
- Voir La Vie Sans Rose-Colored Glasses.Experimental psychology · 2025Article
- Is adaptation the new 'bilingual advantage'?Trends in cognitive sciences · 2025Article
- Examining the role of early bilingualism on interference suppression and prefrontal connectivity.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
The standard explanation for bilingual effects on cognition is that an aspect of language processing transfers to nonverbal cognitive performance, leading to improvements in executive functioning. However, much evidence is incompatible with that view, and transfer across those domains seems unlikely. The present argument is that bilingual experience modifies cognition through an adaptation to the underlying attention system, making attention more efficient. 'Transfer' focuses on the overlap of specific processes, so task similarity predicts outcomes. By contrast, 'adaptation' focuses on recruitment of the modified resource, so the degree of attention required predicts outcome. In this view, bilinguals require less attentional effort than monolinguals for similar levels of performance, and outperform monolinguals on tasks with high attention demands regardless of task similarity.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.