Revisiting the bilingual advantage in attention in low SES Greek-Albanians: does the level of bilingual experience matter?

The replicability of findings supporting a bilingual advantage in cognitive control has been questioned lately, with socioeconomic status (SES) and bilingualism type (e.g. early-late, dominant-balanced) as suggested confounding variables. It has lately also been argued that bilingual experience (switch cost asymmetry – SCA between the languages), might correlate with interference control. We further investigated this, with a homogeneous group of 45 young bilingual adults. Participants were carefully matched with 45 Greek-speaking monolinguals on age, gender, SES (mostly low), and non-verbal intelligence, and they were given the Attentional Network Test task and a language-switching task measuring SCA. The factor language group did not interact with congruency or cueing. Finally, conflict resolution did not correlate with SCA. Findings are discussed in relation to the present samples’ characteristics and evidence suggesting an underrepresentation of the bilingual advantage in lower SES bilinguals.