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Bilingualism and Musicianship Enhance Cognitive Control
Scott R Schroeder1, Viorica Marian1, Anthony Shook1
1Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
Neural Plasticity
|January 29, 2016
Summary
Learning a second language or musical instrument enhances executive control. Bilinguals, musicians, and bilingual musicians all showed improved ability to ignore distracting cues compared to controls.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psychology
Background:
- Bilingualism and musicianship are hypothesized to enhance executive control via experience-dependent plasticity.
- Existing evidence for bilingualism's effect is mixed, and for musicianship, it is limited.
- The combined impact of bilingualism and musicianship on executive control remains unexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the effects of bilingualism, musicianship, and their combination on executive control.
- To determine if these skills enhance the ability to ignore irrelevant information.
Main Methods:
- 219 young adults were divided into four groups: bilinguals, musicians, bilingual musicians, and controls.
- Participants completed a nonlinguistic, nonmusical, visual-spatial Simon task.
- The task assessed the ability to ignore an irrelevant and misinformative cue.
Main Results:
- Bilinguals, musicians, and bilingual musicians demonstrated a significantly enhanced ability to ignore distracting cues compared to controls.
- Performance improvements were comparable across the bilingual, musician, and bilingual musician groups.
- No significant differences in performance were observed between the bilingual, musician, and bilingual musician groups.
Conclusions:
- Both bilingualism and musicianship independently enhance executive control.
- Combined bilingualism and musicianship yield similar executive control benefits as either skill alone.
- Findings support the use of music and foreign language instruction in educational and rehabilitation settings to improve cognitive performance.
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