A diffusion model approach to analyzing performance on the flanker task: the 
role of the DLPFC

Soares, Sergio Miguel Pereira; Ong, Gabriel; Abutalebi, Jubin; Del Maschio, Nicola; Sewell, David; Weekes, Brendan

doi:10.1017/S1366728918000974

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A diffusion model approach to analyzing performance on the flanker task: the role of the DLPFC

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Citation

Soares, S. M. P., Ong, G., Abutalebi, J., Del Maschio, N., Sewell, D., & Weekes, B. (2019). A diffusion model approach to analyzing performance on the flanker task: the role of the DLPFC. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 22(5), 1194-1208. doi:10.1017/S1366728918000974.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000A-75AB-2

Abstract

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) are involved in conflict detection and
conflict resolution, respectively. Here, we investigate how lifelong bilingualism induces neuroplasticity to these structures by
employing a novel analysis of behavioural performance. We correlated grey matter volume (GMV) in seniors reported by
Abutalebi et al. (2015) with behavioral Flanker task performance fitted using the diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978). As
predicted, we observed significant correlations between GMV in the DLPFC and Flanker performance. However, for
monolinguals the non-decision time parameter was significantly correlated with GMV in the left DLPFC, whereas for
bilinguals the correlation was significant in the right DLPFC. We also found a significant correlation between age and GMV
in left DLPFC and the non-decision time parameter for the conflict effect for monolinguals only.
We submit that this is due to cumulative demands on cognitive control over a lifetime of bilingual language processing