The Effect Of Attention Control On Interference Inhibition Ability Of Different Types Of Bilingual College Students

The existence of “bilingual cognitive advantage” has always been the focus of controversy in the field of bilingual cognition.As an executive function,inhibition which refers to the ability to inhibit task-irrelevant targets or inappropriate behaviors,so as to make more appropriate behavioral responses,consists of interference inhibition and response inhibition.In previous researches,the inhibition advantage of bilinguals is mainly manifested in interference inhibition.However,this advantage is rarely found in young bilinguals,which was attributed by researchers to the highest level of attention efficiency of young bilinguals.Recently,some researchers have proposed an explanatory framework of attention control in terms of bilingual cognitive function.Attention control relates to the supervision of target preservation and conflict resolution.Centering on the framework,this study conducted with different types of bilingual college students,focus on the following two questions.First,whether there are differences in the efficiency of attention control for different types of bilingual college students;Second,on the basis of controlling the attention demands of tasks,under what circumstances will the interference inhibition advantage of proficient bilingual college students appear or disappear.Firstly,three groups of early bilingual students,late proficient bilingual students and late unskilled bilingual students were selected to participate the study through strict selection procedures.Then four experiments were designed to discuss the above two questions.In the experiment 1,attention network(ANT)was adopted to explore the differences of ANT for different types of bilingual college students.According to the result,attention had an effect on interference inhibition,and the overall response time of the late proficient students was much shorter than that of the late unskilled students.But there was no significant difference between the three groups of students in the efficiency of the three ANT,the benefits and costs of orienting network.In the experiment 2,three proportion spatial Stroop task is adopted to discuss the interference inhibition ability of different types of bilingual students.It turns out that integral response time of proficiency bilingual students in the late stage is still shorter than it of unskilled bilingual students in the late stage,and three groups of bilingual students are uneven under three proportion stimulation conditions.conflict effects are biggest with high proportion consistency Stimulation Conditions and they are smallest with high proportion inconsistency stimulation conditions.In the experiment 3,a combination of the spatial Stroop task and switch tasks is adopted to discuss the interference inhibition ability of different types of bilingual students in the relative attributes switch tasks.The result shows that there are no significant differences in integral response time.Alternate switch tasks have highest demand for attention and in it,conflict effects of proficiency bilingual students in the late stage is significantly smaller than conflict effects of bilingual students in the early stage and unskilled bilingual students in the late stage.In the experiment 4,the same access with the experiment 3 is adopted,but an irrelevant attribute is changed,which aims to discuss interference inhibition ability of different types of bilingual students in irrelative attributes switch tasks.The result finds that between-group differences of conflict effects disappear.In conclusion,the research finds that there is no difference between efficiency of ANT in different types of bilingual students.It is easy to find the advantages of proficiency bilingual students on integral response time in an easy task,but the advantages on integral response time disappear in a more difficult task.When the manipulation has higher demand for attention,proficiency bilingual students show advantages of inhibition;on the contrary,their advantages disappear.To sum up,the research based on the explanatory framework of attention control discuss the condition of bilingual inhibition advantages and provide a new idea for deepening the interpretation of the executive function of bilinguals.