The Lasting Effects of Language Acquisition: Testing Cognitive Abilities after L2 Attrition

Abstract

Decades of psycholinguistic research have attempted to determine whether a “bilingual advantage” exists for cognitive abilities (e.g., Bialystok & Craik, 2010; Cummins, 1977; for a meta-analysis, see Grundy & Timmer, 2017). More recent work has shifted away from investigating the broader questions of cognition and working memory (WM) to focus on specific domains within those capacities (e.g., Linck, Osthus, Koeth, & Bunting, 2014). Despite the multitude of studies examining differences between monolinguals and bilinguals, individuals who have undergone second language loss (L2 attrition) have often been overlooked in this literature and absent from cognitive task performance comparisons, leaving questions as to what “bilingual advantage” may endure after the attrition process. The current study utilizedAmazon Mechanical Turk’s TurkPrime service to test English monolinguals (n=29), English-Spanish bilinguals (n=20), and English speakers with an attrited L2 of Spanish (n=27) in Working Memory and Cognitive Control tasks (digit spans, reading span, numerical Stroop) and a test of Spanish language knowledge. Results confirm the existence of an advantage over monolinguals for bilinguals and attriters on the forward digit span task, as well as an attriter advantage over bilinguals and monolinguals on multiple cognitive tasks. The results imply that some enhanced cognitive capacity exists in bilinguals and L2 learners and is retained as a cognitive mechanism despite loss of conscious language knowledge(L2 attrition).