ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cognition
The Impact of Bilingualism and Code-Switching on Executive Function Performance
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institute of Psychology, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
- 2School of Psychology, SRH Hochschule Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany
- 3Institute for German as a Foreign Language Philology, Faculty of Modern Philology, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
- 4EEG and Language Processing Laboratory, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Ankara, Türkiye
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Bilingualism, characterized by the use of two or more languages, places unique demands on executive functions (EFs), which are essential for managing cross-linguistic interference. This study investigates EF performance in Turkish-German bilinguals and German monolinguals across five domains: response inhibitonry control, working memory, task-switching, interference control, and attention. Additionally, the influencerole of habitual code-switching behavior oin shaping EF outcomes within bilinguals was explored using a novel scene description game designed to elicit naturalistic code-switching patterns, which approximate participants' habitual bilingual language use.. Results revealed that bilinguals outperformed monolinguals in task-switching accuracy, indicating enhanced cognitive flexibility. However, monolinguals exhibited superior working memory performance, as measured by d-prime scores on the N-Back tTask. No significant group differences were observed in attention-related tasks. Within the bilingual group, the Code-Switching Index (CS Index) emerged as a significant predictor of EF performance, particularly in tasks requiring interference resolution, such as the Stroop Interference tTest. Higher levels of habitual code-switching were associated with increased susceptibility to Stroop interference, suggesting a complex trade-off between cognitive flexibility and interference control efficiency. These findings contribute to understanding the specific effects of bilingualism on EF performance, highlighting domain-specific advantages and challenges.adaptations that emerge in some EF components but are absent in others. By integrating insights from EF research with contemporary theories of cognitive control and bilingual language use, this study underscores the importance of analyzing individual EF domains and accounting for diverse bilingual experiences, such as code-switching behavior, to better understand the cognitive mechanisms underlying bilingualism.
Keywords: bilingualism, code-switching, executive functions, cognitive control, bilingualadvantage
Received: 25 Feb 2025; Accepted: 07 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Özkara, Schneider, Cedden, Von Stutterheim and Meyer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Basak Özkara, basak.oezkara@stud.uni-heidelberg.de
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