Education shapes executive functions in aging: Revisiting the bilingual advantage hypothesis

In the cognitive aging literature, bilingualism has been conceptualized as an experiential factor that may alter the structure and functioning of the brain in cognitive tasks. The continuous engagement of two separate language systems is assumed to enhance cognitive performance in later life. However, empirical findings regarding the bilingual advantage in executive functions among older adults have been inconsistent. To explain these discrepancies, influential variables such as educational attainment have been suggested as potential moderators of bilingual effects. This study aimed to compare executive functions – including inhibition, attentional set shifting, and working memory updating – between monolingual and bilingual older adults while accounting for education level, within a cross-sectional group-comparison design. The sample consisted of 99 older persons, recruited through purposive criterion sampling. The tasks employed were computerized versions of the Stroop paradigm to assess inhibition, a set shifting task to measure attentional set shifting, and a Keep-Track task to evaluate working memory updating. Multivariate analysis of variance revealed that monolingual and bilingual participants differed only in updating, with monolinguals performing better. In contrast, participants with higher levels of education significantly outperformed those with lower education in attentional set shifting and working memory updating. The interaction between language status and education was not significant, and none of the pairwise comparisons between combined language × education groups reached significance. The findings suggest that among older people, education – but not bilingualism – contributes to differences in performance on the specific executive function tasks used in this study. Notably, language status, even in interaction with education, did not appear to influence performance on these task measures.