A CODA effect: Executive control and spatial attention in bimodal bilinguals

This study investigated whether lifelong bimodal bilingualism could enhance cognitive functioning in two nonlinguistic domains: executive control and visuospatial attention. Three groups participated in the study: bimodal bilinguals-hearing "children of deaf adults" (CODA) using Polish Sign Language and Polish spoken language, unimodal bilinguals (using two spoken languages), and monolinguals (using one spoken language). Participants performed two versions of the flanker task: a flanker task with different spatial gaps (stimulus eccentricities) between target and flanker stimuli, and an attention network test with different degrees of stimulus lateralization (relative to the central fixation). The two tasks assessed the behavioral efficiency of conflict resolution and spatial processing under different visuospatial demands. The results showed that bimodal and unimodal bilinguals did not differ significantly in the efficiency of conflict resolution, while both bilingual groups outperformed monolinguals. Secondly, bimodal bilinguals showed specific modulatory effects in visuospatial processing, compared to both unimodal bilinguals and monolinguals. In conclusion, contrary to previous claims, the current findings suggest that lifelong bimodal bilingualism might provide an effective "training" augmenting specific aspects of both executive control and visuospatial attention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).