This study investigated whether a short-term training session in language switching enhances inhibitory control in English-dominant bilinguals (N = 55) whose second language backgrounds included 17 various languages. The participants completed a pre-training flanker task, a 50-minute numeral-based language-switching task and a post-training flanker task. Results showed significantly reduced flanker effect following the language-switching task. In the switching task, participants exhibited typical switch cost patterns, with slower and less accurate responses on switch trials compared to nonswitch trials. Additionally, switch costs were asymmetrical, with greater costs observed into their first versus second language, consistent with inhibitory control accounts of bilingual language use. Overall, these findings suggest that language switching engages control processes that can have immediate, positive effects on inhibitory control outside the language domain. These results support partial overlap between bilingual language control and domain-general executive processes, highlighting the context-dependent nature of cognitive transfer effects.

Cognitive control supports flexible goal maintenance and conflict resolution. Although bilingual experience has been proposed to enhance its efficiency through sustained language control, emerging evidence suggests these effects reflect adaptive recalibration driven by individual language use rather than domain-general transfer. Here we examined how individual differences in bilingual experience modulate behavioral and neural indices of adaptive attentional control during conflict processing, as indexed by an adaptive Flanker task. Fifty participants (M = 19.6 years) completed the Language and Social Background Questionnaire and an electroencephalography adaptive Flanker task. Event-related potentials in the N100, N200 and P300 windows indexed attentional allocation, conflict detection, and monitoring. Behaviorally, participants showed the expected Flanker interference effect, with no modulation by bilingual experience. In contrast, greater Non-English Social Use, but not overall bilingualism or home use, was associated with attenuated N100s and N200s, suggesting reduced early attentional demands. These neural effects, in the absence of behavioral differences, suggest experience-dependent efficiency in control recruitment rather than enhanced control.

Counterfactual reasoning is the ability to mentally simulate alternative outcomes to past events. Although previous studies have examined specific aspects of counterfactual reasoning, such as outcome direction (upward versus downward) and antecedent structure (additive versus subtractive), little is known about how these different forms are processed within a unified framework. Moreover, although cognitive mechanisms such as working memory and inhibitory control have been previously considered, their role in processing different counterfactual forms remain unclear. The present study consisted of two experiments with adult Turkish speakers. Experiment 1 (N = 44, Mage = 22.21 years) employed a 2 × 2 within-subject design manipulating counterfactual direction (upward versus downward) and antecedent structure (additive versus subtractive). Experiment 2 (N = 40, Mage = 22.17 years) employed a 2 × 2 within-subject design manipulating counterfactual direction and grammatical polarity (consequent-subtractive versus consequent-additive). Individual differences in inhibitory control, working memory and relative clause comprehension were also assessed. The results indicated that upward and consequent-subtractive counterfactuals were processed more quickly than downward and consequent-additive ones. Unexpectedly, additive statements produced quicker responses compared to subtractive ones. Inhibitory control was a strong predictor of performance, whereas working memory had a minimal effect. These results suggest that the processing of counterfactual expressions is influenced by both linguistic and semantic structures.

Preterm-born children are at increased risk for executive function (EF) deficits, particularly in inhibitory control. While bilingualism has been linked to enhanced EF in term-born children, its effects on preterm populations are less understood. This study explored whether bilingualism supports inhibitory control in preterm-born children using behavioral and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) data during a Go/No-Go task. Sixteen preterm-born children (ages 6–7), both bilingual and monolingual, were assessed. Bilingual participants demonstrated faster reaction times (RTs) without compromising accuracy and showed lower levels of oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO) in the frontal lobe, indicating more efficient neural effort. Results underscore a distinct neural and behavioral profile in bilingual preterm children during inhibitory control tasks, emphasizing the role of language experience in shaping EF outcomes. These findings suggest that bilingualism may offer cognitive benefits for inhibitory control in preterm-born children and highlight the potential for bilingualism to support EF development in at-risk groups.

This study investigates the relationship between bilingualism, language use, aging, and interference control using the Color–Word Stroop test task. We examined 158 highly proficient Basque–Spanish bilinguals and 84 Spanish monolinguals (aged 30–80 years) to test whether interference control declines with age and whether bilingual adaptations depend on language use frequency. Language experience was assessed using an adapted Language and Social Background Questionnaire and Color–Word Stroop test interference scores were analyzed by regression models. Results showed that interference control declines with age. Group-level differences between bilinguals and monolinguals were not significant once education was included as a covariate, although a small marginal advantage for bilinguals emerged when using education-adjusted T-scores. Within the bilingual group, higher use of the minority language (Basque) in social contexts was associated with significantly better interference control. Social language use showed a stronger relationship with interference control than home use. These findings highlight that bilingual advantages are not uniform but depend on language use frequency and context, contributing to understanding how bilingual experience shapes cognitive control across the lifespan.

This study examined whether self-assessed multilingual proficiency and use of additional languages predict individual differences in inhibitory control (IC) and mind wandering (MW) among UK university students. Sixty-five participants completed a Go/No-Go task measuring response inhibition and the BMW-3 questionnaire, which assessed unintentional, intentional and meta-awareness dimensions of MW. Multilingualism was operationalised using a continuous composite index integrating self-rated proficiency and daily use of non-native languages. The index scores were not significantly associated with response inhibition or meta-awareness. However, higher multilingual proficiency index scores were significantly associated with lower levels of unintentional MW. These findings suggest that, moving beyond categorical comparisons, greater self-reported multilingual proficiency and use of additional languages may support the regulation of internally directed thought, rather than externally triggered IC. Implications for future research and potential applications in education and attention-related interventions are discussed.

This study investigated L2 learners’ interpretation of quantifier scope, focusing on the influence of individual differences, including L2 proficiency, working memory (WM) and inhibitory control (IC). A picture selection task using the covered-box paradigm (CBP) was conducted with 70 Chinese-speaking learners of English and a control group of 40 native English speakers. The results revealed that inverse scope (IS) posed particular challenges for L2 learners, leading to reduced, non-target-like access. We attribute this difficulty to factors such as negative L1 transfer, limited L2 input and increased processing demands associated with IS compared to surface scope (SS). More importantly, WM and IC significantly influenced L2 learners’ interpretation patterns, with their effects mediated by L2 proficiency. We also observed individual variation in scope interpretations among native speakers, particularly with negatively quantified (NQ) sentences. This variation provides valuable evidence of individual differences in native speakers’ grammatical knowledge and was partly driven by cognitive factors. Altogether, the findings contribute novel evidence for both domain-general and domain-specific mechanisms underlying quantifier scope interpretation in L2 learners as well as in native speakers.

In a close replication study of Darcy et al., (2016), Huensch (2024) reported a lack of clear relationships between inhibitory control (IC) and phonological processing, contrary to the initial findings. Given the general unreliability of response-time differences, which are often the basis of IC measures and could potentially mask small effects, we performed secondary analyses on Huensch’s (2024) open data set to investigate (a) the extent to which the reliability of IC measures could be improved using model-based approaches (Hui & Wu, 2024), (b) the correlations between the different IC tasks, and (c) their predictive power for phonological processing, based on the more reliable indices. Results showed that model-based approaches generally improved reliability, and particularly for the Stroop and Simon tasks to acceptable levels. Yet, correlations between IC tasks remained low, and partial correlation and hierarchical regression still failed to reveal significant relationships between IC and phonological processing, further confirming Huensch’s (2024) findings.

Effects of language switching in bilinguals have been extensively investigated, but the majority of studies have focused on switching in language production. Here we explored intrasentential switching between Chinese and English, employing a self-paced reading paradigm, with Chinese/English using radically different orthographic systems. In addition, we investigated whether L2 (English) proficiency influences switch costs. Results revealed that switch costs emerged only when switching into L1 (Chinese); by contrast, when switching into L2, a less reliable facilitatory effect was observed. L2 proficiency affected reading speed for English stimuli, but it did not directly modulate switch costs. Moreover, we have integrated various findings from previous research and identified that the use of different comparison patterns is a major contributing factor to the inconsistency in results among prior studies. We suggest that in cross-script language switching, switch costs stem from a general cognitive control mechanism rather than from activation within the bilingual mental lexicon.

Prior work has yielded mixed findings regarding the relationship between language control and domain-general inhibitory control. Here, we tested the possibility that omnibus language ability would moderate the relationship between language control and inhibitory control in bilingual children. We tested 43 Spanish-English bilingual children (ages 4–5.92 years; 25 females). Children engaged in play-based interactions with their parent, and rates of cross-speaker switches (using a language different from one used by parent) indexed language control. Inhibitory control was measured via a non-verbal flanker task. Analyses revealed that higher frequency of cross-speaker code-switches was associated with better inhibitory control only for children with higher levels of language ability. For children with lower language skills, there was no association between switches and inhibitory control. These findings align with the literature linking cognitive control and language control in bilinguals and extend it to indicate that the strength of the language system constrains this link.