The standard explanation for bilingual effects on cognition is that an aspect of language processing transfers to nonverbal cognitive performance, leading to improvements in executive functioning. However, much evidence is incompatible with that view, and transfer across those domains seems unlikely. The present argument is that bilingual experience modifies cognition through an adaptation to the underlying attention system, making attention more efficient. ‘Transfer’ focuses on the overlap of specific processes, so task similarity predicts outcomes. By contrast, ‘adaptation’ focuses on recruitment of the modified resource, so the degree of attention required predicts outcome. In this view, bilinguals require less attentional effort than monolinguals for similar levels of performance, and outperform monolinguals on tasks with high attention demands regardless of task similarity.

中文翻译：

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双语通过适应而不是转移来改变认知


双语对认知影响的标准解释是，语言处理的一个方面转移到非语言认知表现，导致执行功能的改善。然而，许多证据与这种观点不相容，跨这些域转移似乎不太可能。目前的论点是，双语体验通过适应潜在的注意力系统来改变认知，使注意力更有效。“转移”侧重于特定过程的重叠，因此任务相似性可以预测结果。相比之下，“适应”侧重于招募修改后的资源，因此所需的关注程度可以预测结果。根据这种观点，双语者比单语者需要更少的注意力努力才能获得相似的表现水平，并且无论任务相似性如何，双语者在高注意力要求的任务上都优于单语者。