Cognitive flexibility in younger and older bilingual adults: Evidence from confrontation naming and alternative fluency task

The current study was carried out on 30 randomly selected participants to determine the relationship between cognitive flexibility and ageing in bilinguals. The study was conducted in a quiet environment without any external interferences and followed a randomised controlled trial design. The participants were divided into two groups. The first group comprised 15 individuals in the age range of 18–25 years while the second group comprised 15 individuals in the age range of 55–70 years. Confrontation naming and the generative naming task were administered to the participants. The task had two variants, the first variant required to name the pictures/alternate between lexical items in the first language (L1) only while the second variant required the participants to use second language (L2). Between-group and within-group analysis was carried out to compare the younger and older adults on confrontation naming and alternative fluency naming tasks. A statistically-significant difference between the two groups was seen on the second variant only. Cognitive flexibility was affected in the second group on the second variant of confrontation naming and generative naming task showing that this skill/ability would deplete with ageing.