This paper, written from a cognitive psychological perspective, explores the purported bilingual advantage as well as any advantage that bidialectal individuals may have. No bidialectal advantage was found although the authors acknowledge that further work could be done to mitigate for the possible factors which could have produced this result, such as greater difference between dialect and language. A bilingual advantage was only found under certain conditions and the authors state that the bilingual advantage merits further scrutiny.
When bilinguals speak, both fluent language systems become activated in parallel and exert an influence on speech production. As a consequence of maintaining separation between the two linguistic systems, bilinguals are purported to develop enhanced executive control functioning. Like bilinguals, individuals who speak two dialects must also maintain separation between two linguistic systems, albeit to a lesser degree. Across three tests of executive function, we compared bilingual and bidialectal children’s performance to that of a monolingual control group. No evidence for a bidialectal advantage was found. However, in line with a growing number of recent partial and failed replications, we observed a significant bilingual advantage only in one measure in one task. This calls the robustness of the bilingual advantage into question. A comprehensive review of studies investigating advantages of inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility in bilingual children reveals that the bilingual advantage is likely to be both task and sample specific, and the interaction between these factors makes qualification of the effect challenging. These findings highlight the importance of tracking the impact of dual linguistic systems across the lifespan using tasks calibrated for difficulty across different ages.
Ross, J. and Melinger, A. (2017). Bilingual advantage, bidialectal advantage or neither? Comparing performance across three tests of executive function in middle childhood. Developmental Science, 20(4), e12405.