摘要：Older adults experience significant difficulty identifying spoken words compared to younger adults, especially in the context of lexical competitors (Sommers & Danielson, 1999). This difficulty may be greater for bilingual older adults who must manage lexical competition from both within- and across-languages. Because of the greater need to inhibit cross-language competitors during bilingual language processing, it is hypothesized that bilinguals* heightened use of executive functions generates cognitive reserve that protects against age-related cognitive and linguistic declines (Bialystok, CraiK & Luk, 2008). The protective effects of bilingualism may be especially important for older adults, for whom the networks associated with executive function are compromised as a consequence of aging (Bialystok et al., 2008).
