Bilingual experience and executive control over the adult lifespan: The role of biological sex

Abstract

We investigated whether bilingual language experience over the lifespan impacts women and men in a manner that differentially buffers against age-related declines in executive control. To this end, we investigated whether executive control performance in a lifespan sample of adult women and men were differentially impacted by individual differences in bilingual language experience, assessed using an unspeeded measure of executive control: the Wisconsin Card Sort Test. The results suggested that women showed both the greatest degree of age-related decline across WCST measures, and a greater likelihood than men to express improved performance as a function of increased bilingual experience. We consider implications of this finding for advancing our understanding of the relation between bilingualism and cognition, and also the effects of biological sex on cognitive aging.