A growing body of research suggests that bilingualism may afford benefits to certain aspects of cognitive functioning. Inconsistent findings may arise because of methodological differences within and across studies. One limitation is that studies often compare linguistically similar languages. The present study recorded brain activity (event-related potentials; ERPs) while English monolinguals, English–French bilinguals, and Arabic–English bilinguals completed an n-back task and a delayed matching-to-sample task. Group ERP differences were observed in the absence of behavioral differences. In the delayed matching-to-sample task, monolinguals exhibited smaller N2 amplitude compared to both bilingual groups, and smaller P3b amplitude compared to English–French bilinguals. In the n-back, English–French bilinguals displayed larger P3b amplitudes than monolinguals and Arabic–English bilinguals. P3b amplitude did not differ between Arabic–English bilinguals and monolinguals in either task. These results suggest that conflicting findings across studies may be due in part to the linguistic distance between the languages under study.

中文翻译：

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单语者和双语者之间的 ERP 差异：语言距离的作用

越来越多的研究表明，双语可能会给认知功能的某些方面带来好处。由于研究内部和研究之间的方法学差异，可能会出现不一致的结果。一个限制是研究经常比较语言上相似的语言。本研究记录大脑活动（事件相关电位；ERP），同时英语单语者、英语-法语双语者和阿拉伯语-英语双语者完成 n-back 任务和延迟匹配样本任务。在没有行为差异的情况下观察到组 ERP 差异。在延迟匹配样本任务中，与双语组相比，单语者表现出更小的 N2 振幅，与英法双语者相比，P3b 振幅更小。在 n-back 中，英语-法语双语者比单语者和阿拉伯语-英语双语者表现出更大的 P3b 振幅。在这两项任务中，阿拉伯语-英语双语者和单语者之间的 P3b 振幅没有差异。这些结果表明，不同研究的相互矛盾的结果可能部分是由于所研究语言之间的语言距离所致。