The effect of bilingualism and age on inhibitory control

The study by Salvatierra and Rosselli (2010) examined whether bilingualism is a protective factor against age-related cognitive effects by exploring the effects of bilingualism in an inhibitory control task (Salvatierra, & Rosselli, 2010). Existing research evidence in the literature is not conclusive and does not provide a definitive position on whether or not being bilingual offers any protective benefits to people cognitive functioning as they age.
Studies that have demonstrated a bilingual advantage, (Bialystok, Craik, & Freedman, 2007; Kaye, Eyal, Shorek, & Cohen-Mansfield, 2008) reported that language proficiency was high in both languages.
Salvatierra and Rosselli’s (2010) hypothesis was that the bilingual groups would do better than the monolingual groups on the Simon task. The Simon task refers to reaction times, which are usually faster and more accurate when the light stimulus occurs in the same relative location as the response information processing (Simon and Wolf, 1963). Explanations for the Simon effect generally refer to the interference that occurs in the response selection stage of decision making.
Secondly, the researchers hypothesized that there would be further differentiation between the balanced and non-balanced bilinguals. Balanced verses non-balanced refer to the level of language proficiency in the dominant and less dominant language. Bilinguals with similar naming scores on the Boston Naming Test are described as balanced bilinguals whereas those with differences between their Spanish and English scores are defined as non-balanced bilinguals.
The study group comprised of college students, their families and friends with a total of 108 monolinguals and 125 bilinguals. All of the bilinguals were English-Spanish speakers and all of the participants came from South Florida,