The influence of bilingualism and bidialectalism on executive control: evidence from a short-term language switching training paradigm

The present study compared bilingualism with bidialectalism in their respective impact on executive control, using a short-term language switching training paradigm for participants who were both bidialectals (Shanghainese-Mandarin Chinese) and bilinguals (Chinese-English). Twenty participants were assigned to a control group where no language switching was involved. Another twenty participants were assigned to an experimental group where language-switching training was applied in two ways: bidialectal-switching between Shanghainese and Mandarin Chinese, and bilingual-switching between Mandarin and English. Their executive control ability was tested via a Simon task before and after each type of language training. The results showed that bilingual switching could involve better executive control and subsequently led to better performance on the Simon task than bidialectal switching. Therefore, the association between language switching control and domain-general executive control could be affected by the languages involved in switching, thus shedding further light on the relations between linguistic and non-linguistic control mechanisms.