ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to critically review Bialystok and Craik’s recent update to the executive-attention theory that Bialystok introduced in 2019. One goal is to explain the many failures to replicate as failures to use sufficiently difficult tasks, or as failures to understand the difference between adaptation and transfer. Key examples examine the N-back task, the “consistency” of results using global RT, the “consistency” of results using children or older adults, and the advantages obtained with preverbal infants and toddlers. A misleading presentation of the meta-analytic record is corrected. Randy Engle’s componential and empirically validated executive attention construct is contrasted with the unitary attention control construct preferred by Bialystok and Craik. The new model vacillates between extolling the virtues of a unitary view of executive functioning and relying on the seven separate control processes that underly the adaptive control hypothesis (ACH) to make predictions regarding when bilingual advantages should (or should not) occur.
