Bilingualism aids no advantage on interference control and selective response inhibition among undergraduate psychology students

Bilingualism is inherently beneficial for communication, yet its extensive benefit on Executive Functions (EFs) has been greatly debated in various studies. It is theorised that mixed contentions of bilingual advantage are brought about by an overgeneralised classification of bilinguals. Thus, the present study will adopt Green and Abutalebi (2013) Adaptive Control Hypothesis in evaluating bilingual advantage across different language contexts; single-language, dual-language, and monolinguals. Participants were 366 undergraduate psychology students who completed a combined Go or no-go arrow Flanker task to measure interference control and selective response inhibition. Then, participants were asked to complete a language questionnaire to determine which language group they belong to. We found no significant difference between language groups in flanker effect (p = .014) and no-go accuracy (p = .007) which signifies no difference in inhibitory control among single-language-context, dual-language-context, and monolinguals. Therefore, the present study rejects the notion of bilingual advantage on EFs. Nevertheless, study results might have been confounded by potential error in language classification and types of scale used to operationalise inhibition. Future research is required to generate further findings.