AUTHOR=Oschwald Jessica , Schättin Alisa , von Bastian Claudia C. , Souza Alessandra S. TITLE=Bidialectalism and Bilingualism: Exploring the Role of Language Similarity as a Link Between Linguistic Ability and Executive Control JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=9 YEAR=2018 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01997 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01997 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=
The notion of bilingual advantages in executive functions (EF) is based on the assumption that the demands posed by cross-language interference serve as EF training. These training effects should be more pronounced the more cross-language interference bilinguals have to overcome when managing their two languages. In the present study, we investigated the proposed link between linguistic and EF performance using the similarity between the two languages spoken since childhood as a proxy for different levels of cross-language interference. We assessed the effect of linearly increasing language dissimilarity on linguistic and EF performance in multiple tasks in four groups of young adults (aged 18–33): German monolinguals (