Correlation between bilingual linguistic experience factors and inhibitory control

Abstract: There is an ongoing debate in the literature on the hypothesis of a bilingual advantage in the executive functions and linguistic factors possibly related to it. This exploratory research aimed to investigate which bilingual linguistic experience factors could be correlated to inhibitory control. It was found that the inhibitory control correlated negatively to the amount of mixing (of two or more languages while speaking) the bilinguals performed. There was also a negative correlation between inhibitory control and the mean age of acquisition of a third language. The evidence goes against the conceptions on the relationship between linguistic experience factors and executive functions found in the literature, which would predict that the amount of mixing and age of acquisition of a third language would be associated with higher inhibitory control.