ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the first systematic review of the effects of bilingualism on inhibitory control, which, surprising to many, showed no bilingual advantage in inhibitory control. These null results were confirmed in larger scale studies that followed shortly thereafter. Three of the studies share the strengths of using bilinguals immersed in a bilingual region, monolingual control groups from the same country, a very large number of participants, multiple age groups, and multiple measures of executive functioning (EF). If ideal bilinguals acquire both languages early, are highly fluent in both, and switch languages very often, it appears that ideal bilingualism does not enhance EF. The chapter concludes with a critique of a small-n study that used questionable measures of Simon task performance to conclude that their results supported an advantage in inhibitory control.
