ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a tutorial regarding the distinctive cognitive control challenges created by speaking two languages rather than just one. One or more of these challenges must form the basis for predicting that bilingualism enhances executive functioning. Furthermore, this demand must recruit a domain-general control process, and not one specialized for bilingual language control, if it is to transfer to nonverbal tests of executive functioning. Although the evidence for coactivation of the non-target lexicon is compelling, the evidence that inhibitory control is used to manage the competition between the two lexicons is weak. Among the commonly used paradigm for examining inhibition only the n-2 repetition effect is both robust and immune to alternative explanations based on upregulation. Language switching in the wild does not appear to be effortful and dissociates from nonverbal task switching. Consequently, switching costs and mixing costs derived from performance in cued switching tasks may be poor candidates for yielding bilingual advantages.
