Research suggests that bilingual language control and executive control (EC) have similar mechanisms and share common brain networks. Managing two languages presumably reinforces these networks and enhances the level of general executive functioning in bilinguals. Despite a huge amount of research, there is not yet any consensus on the nature of the potential bilingual advantage. The overall purpose of the present research was thus to gain insights into the influence of bilingualism on executive functions, by exploring aging-related changes. The domain-general tasks approach consisted in comparing young and older bilinguals with their monolingual peers on tasks that were deliberately chosen to assess different aspects of inhibition (Stroop, Antisaccade, and Stop Signal tasks) and cognitive flexibility (Berg Card Sorting Test, Trail Making Test and verbal fluency). Our goal was to ascertain whether bilinguals outperform monolinguals, and whether this advantage is greater for older bilinguals. Results provided some evidence of a bilingual advantage in verbal tasks involving language processing, such as verbal fluency and the Stroop test, but did not support the hypothesis of a general executive advantage, as bilinguals and monolinguals did not differ on nonlinguistic executive tasks. The language switch task approach consisted in studying the performance of young and older bilinguals on picture naming while switching between their dominant and nondominant languages, and comparing their performance with monolingual speakers in an equivalent switching paradigm. The effects of aging on mixing and switch costs were investigating by analyzing behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) data. Results of these tasks did not reveal any effect of aging on mixing cost in bilinguals. Furthermore, ERP data pointed to a degree of flexibility in older bilinguals, who were able to allocate resources according to task difficulty. Taken together, our results suggest that a bilingual advantage is only observed in language-based tasks.

中文翻译：

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年龄相关的双语和单语使用者对语言控制和执行控制的影响：行为和电生理证据。

研究表明，双语语言控制和执行控制（EC）具有相似的机制，并且共享共同的大脑网络。管理两种语言可能会加强这些网络，并提高双语人员的总执行职能水平。尽管进行了大量研究，但潜在双语优势的性质尚未达成共识。因此，本研究的总体目的是通过探索与衰老有关的变化来获得对双语对执行功能的影响的见解。领域通用任务方法包括将年轻人和老年人与单语同龄人比较故意选择的任务，以评估抑制作用（Stroop，Antisaccade和Stop Signal任务）和认知灵活性（Berg Card Sorting Test，跟踪测试和口语流利度）。我们的目标是确定双语者是否优于单语者，以及这种优势对于年长的双语者是否更大。结果提供了一些证据，证明了在涉及语言处理的口头任务中的双语优势，例如口语流利性和Stroop测验，但不支持一般执行优势的假设，因为双语者和单语者在非语言执行任务上没有区别。语言转换任务方法包括研究年轻和年长的双语者在图片命名方面的表现，同时在其主要和非主要语言之间进行切换，并在等效的切换范例中将其与单语说话者的表现进行比较。通过分析行为和事件相关电位（ERP）数据，研究了老化对混合和转换成本的影响。这些任务的结果并未揭示老化对双语者混合成本的影响。此外，ERP数据指出了年龄较大的双语者的一定程度的灵活性，他们能够根据任务难度分配资源。两者合计，我们的结果表明，只有在基于语言的任务中才能看到双语优势。