Conflict resolution

Bilinguals were generally found to perform better than monolinguals in conflict resolution and goal maintenance tasks (Costa, Hernández, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2008; Costa, Hernández, Costa-Faidella, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2009). Created by Stroop (1992), the stroop task was often employed to measure individuals’ ability of inhibitory control and is used to demonstrate conflict resolution, as elaborated in the following paragraphs:

The stroop task requires participants to name the ink color of given words which could either be congruent or incongruent with the colors that are being spelled (i.e. the word red could be printed in red or yellow ink). The video below illustrates this:

Participants were to inhibit the information of the letters itself, and focus mainly on the ink color. The reaction time and accuracy of the response were taken into account. It was found that bilinguals are better at these tasks (Heidlmayr, Moutier, Hemforth, Courtin, Tanzmeister, & Isel, 2014; Tse, & Altarriba, 2012) and this is often explained by the fact that bilinguals have to be consistently aware of the language they are using. With the need to inhibit irrelevant information from the other language they know, individuals’ cognitive control is constantly being exercised (Linck, Schwieter & Sunderman, 2012).

In addition, the proficiency level of L1 and L2 has been found to play a role in one’s conflict resolution and goal maintenance. Tse and Altarriba (2012) reported that bilinguals respond faster in stroop tasks as their proficiency levels increase. This suggests that with a higher proficiency level in one’s language ability, individuals develop a better ability in goal maintenance and conflict resolution.

Thus, the knowledge of two or more languages aids in the ability of conflict resolution. Above that, the proficiency level of the language actually affects that ability and with a higher proficiency, individuals are found to improve for conflict resolution tasks. In the next section, we will discuss on the effects of L2 on another aspect of cognition – judgement and decision making.

Judgement and Decision Making

Stroop effect

Leave a Reply