Neural Evidence for Conflict Monitoring Advantage in Dai-Han Bilinguals: An ERP Study with the Flanker Task

Research on the bilingual advantage in cognitive control has yielded mixed results, particularly across diverse populations. This study examined whether Dai bilinguals in China demonstrate enhanced cognitive control compared to monolinguals. Participants completed a classic Eriksen Flanker task while both behavioral responses and EEG data were recorded. Analyses focused on reaction times, conflict effects, and the ERP components N2 (reflecting conflict monitoring) and P3 (reflecting attentional allocation). Although no significant group differences emerged in behavioral performance, bilinguals showed reduced N2 and increased P3 amplitudes relative to monolinguals, indicating more efficient neural conflict monitoring. No differences were observed in conflict or congruency sequence effects between the groups. These findings suggest a bilingual advantage in neural conflict monitoring, even in the absence of behavioral differences. This advantage was not lateralized and highlights the value of integrating behavioral and ERP measures to better understand bilingual cognitive processing in diverse cultural contexts.