Monolinguals outperform bilinguals in language but not executive function in aging and cognitive impairment.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: People with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) self-report declining cognitive function, although objective cognitive performance remains normal. SCD is a risk factor for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia. Previous research has found differences in cognitive performance in bilinguals compared with monolinguals. We examined cognitive performance in older adults with and without SCD, and the association between bilingualism and cognitive performance in cognitively healthy older adults, people with SCD, and people with MCI, and the influence of bilingualism on the age of MCI diagnosis. METHOD: = 264) rated their ability in French and English and self-perceived change in concentration and attention, memory, and word-finding. They then completed neuropsychological tests assessing language, memory, and executive function. Participants were monolingual or bilingual and were older adults, reported amnestic or nonamnestic SCD, or had MCI. RESULTS: No differences in cognitive performance were observed between older adults and people with SCD, while people with MCI had lower performance on nearly all tasks. Monolinguals outperformed bilinguals in the Boston Naming Test, letter-number sequencing, California Verbal Learning Test, FAS, animal, vegetable/musical instrument, and A/F switch fluency tasks, but group performance did not differ on executive function tasks. Sensitivity analyses using English L1 bilinguals who completed the first administration of the language tasks in the English or bilingual version showed that monolinguals outperformed bilinguals on only the Boston Naming Test. Monolinguals had a later age of MCI diagnosis than bilinguals in our sample. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that the protective effect of bilingualism reported elsewhere in the literature is not universal. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".