Inhibitory Control of Bilingual Individuals

  I read and listened to Professor Martha Ann Bell’s speech on understanding the function of inhibitory control. She focused on monitoring the first initial peak found on the EEG response. This study resulted in the examiner seeing a correlation between frontal alpha power and Inhibitory control impact on the academic skills of their participants. Bell also observed the maternal care of her participants to observe how this could have a positive or negative effect on her data. The inhibitory control increases between 0-4 years of age and then decreases. They also saw a correlation between the Inhibitory control of 4-year-olds and indirect academic skills in 6 years of age. It was found that the frontal alpha power had a positive correlation to the Inhibitory control. Frontal alpha power refers to the first frequency peak, in infants and younger children it is 6-9 Hz.

In Wu’s article, they wrote about bilingual individuals’ ability to use appropriate vocabulary depending on the context. I’ve seen certain words being used as a good thing in one language and meaning a bad word in another language.  Not having good inhibitory control could potentially lead someone into trouble with the language that they are insulting unknowingly. It would be interesting to have an interpreter wear an EEG machine while they are interpreting. Do observe the thought process of an interpreter. The research study we looked at in class of Professor Martha’s was focused on placing electrodes in the prefrontal cortex, in this research paper they placed electrodes in the frontal lobe but it was more specific than that. It was in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This lab focuses on the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is important for reading and speech. The article researching participants who know two languages discovered that there is a correlation between inhibitory control and bilingual ability to cross over. The examiners saw that the participants made more cross-language errors with a lower IC capacity than with a higher IC capacity. 

Whedon, M., Perry, N. B., & Bell, M. A. (2020). Relations between frontal EEG maturation and inhibitory control in preschool in the prediction of children's early academic skills. Brain and cognition, 146, 105636. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2020.105636

Wu YJ, Chen M, Thierry G, Fu Y, Wu J, Guo T. Inhibitory control training reveals a common neurofunctional basis for generic executive functions and language switching in bilinguals. BMC Neurosci. 2021 May 17;22(1):36. doi: 10.1186/s12868-021-00640-5. PMID: 34000982; PMCID: PMC8130123.