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ABSTRACT
The cognitive advantage (CA) hypothesis claims that multilingualism promotes the development of several basic cognitive capacities. A large number of empirical findings support this hypothesis, but recently there have also been numerous contradictory findings and methodological objections. The present paper extends the investigation of possible cognitive advantages from basic cognitive (executive) functions to broader cognitive competencies such as cognitive flexibility. A promising candidate for this is ‘flexibility of goal adjustment’ (FGA), a capacity of developmental regulation that solves problems through flexible adaptation processes. In a study with N = 119 monolingual and multilingual adults we found the predicted positive correlation between multilingualism and FGA. However, the mediator function of executive capacities entailed in the CA hypothesis operationalised as Stroop and flanker tasks could not be demonstrated.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Terminology concerning the terms bilingualism, tringualism and multilingualism is not consistent across publications. While some authors use the term bilingualism as an umbrella term for all types of additional languages (L2, L3, … Ln, e.g., Ellis Citation2003), other authors differentiate between these terms (e.g., Festman Citation2019). In this paper, we use the term multilingualism to include the knowledge of more than one language (two, three, or more languages) independent of the time of acquisition (at birth or later in life).
2 The entire questionnaire from Brandtstädter and Renner (Citation1990) comprises two scales: In addition to the FGA scale, the scale for tenacious goal pursuit (TGP) consists of 15 items as well. This scale was not analysed in the present study.