The well-documented advantage that bilingual speakers demonstrate across the lifespan on measures of controlled attention is not observed in preschoolers' performance on Stroop task variations. We examined the role of task demands in explaining this discrepancy. Whereas the Color/Word Stroop used with adult participants requires interference suppression, the Stroop task typically used with preschoolers requires only response inhibition. We developed an age-appropriate conflict task that measures interference suppression. Fifty-one preschool children (26 bilinguals) completed this new Color/Shape task and the Day/Night task used in previous research. Bilingual in comparison to monolingual children performed better on incongruent trials of the Color/Shape task, but did not differ on other measures. The results indicate that the discrepancy between preschoolers and older individuals in performance on Stroop task adaptations results from characteristics of the task rather than developmental differences. Further, the findings provide additional support for the importance of interference suppression as a mechanism underlying the bilingual advantage.

中文翻译：

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干扰抑制与反应抑制：学龄前儿童斯特鲁普任务表现缺乏双语优势的解释


在学龄前儿童在斯特鲁普任务变化中的表现中，并没有观察到双语使用者在整个生命周期中在控制注意力测量方面所表现出的有据可查的优势。我们研究了任务需求在解释这种差异中的作用。与成人参与者一起使用的颜色/单词 Stroop 任务需要干扰抑制，而通常与学龄前儿童一起使用的 Stroop 任务只需要反应抑制。我们开发了一项适合年龄的冲突任务来衡量干扰抑制。 51 名学龄前儿童（26 名双语者）完成了这项新的颜色/形状任务以及之前研究中使用的日/夜任务。与单语儿童相比，双语儿童在颜色/形状任务的不一致试验中表现更好，但在其他指标上没有差异。结果表明，学龄前儿童和老年人在斯特鲁普任务适应方面的表现差异是由任务的特征而不是发育差异造成的。此外，研究结果为干扰抑制作为双语优势背后机制的重要性提供了额外的支持。