Successive bilingualism and executive functions: The effect of second language use on inhibitory control in a behavioural Stroop Colour Word task

Here we examined the role of bilingualism on cognitive inhibition using the Stroop Colour Word task. Our hypothesis was that the frequency of use of a second language (L2) in the daily life of successive bilingual individuals impacts the efficiency of their inhibitory control mechanism. Thirty-three highly proficient successive French-German bilinguals, living either in a French or in a German linguistic environment, performed a Stroop task on both French and German words. Moreover, 31 French monolingual individuals were also tested with French words. We showed that the bilingual advantage was (i) reinforced by the use of a third language, and (ii) modulated by the duration of immersion in a second language environment. This suggests that top-down inhibitory control is most involved at the beginning of immersion. Taken together, the present findings lend support to the psycholinguistic models of bilingual language processing that postulate that top-down active inhibition is involved in language control.