PHILIPPINE JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, 2012, 45 (2), 225-246

MADRAZO & BERNARDO

COPYRIGHT @ 2012 PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION OF THE PHILIPPINES 225

Are Three Languages Better than Two?

Inhibitory Control in Trilinguals
and Bilinguals in the Philippines
Arnel R. Madrazo*
Western Mindanao State University and De La Salle University

Allan B. I. Bernardo**
University of Macau, Macau, China

Previous research has established the superiority of bilinguals‟ inhibitory

control compared to monolinguals, but would trilinguals demonstrate even
more superior inhibitory control? The study tests the hypothesis that there
is no difference between bilinguals and trilinguals due to similar cognitive
processes involved in suppressing information from irrelevant languages,
regardless of the number of irrelevant languages. Filipino-English bilinguals
and Chabacano-English-Filipino trilinguals completed two tests of inhibitory
control (Go-No-Go Task and Sustained Attention Response Task).
Consistent with the hypothesis, the results show no difference in inhibitory
control of the two language groups.
Keywords: Bilingualism, trilingualism, executive control, response inhibition,
inhibitory control, interference suppression

Early research on bilingualism often took a deficit perspective on

bilingualism, viewing bilinguals as suffering from cognitive deficits because
of their bilingual status (Baker, 2006; Hamers & Blanc, 2000). However,
research in the past thirty years has indicated that there are clear cognitive
advantages among bilinguals compared to their monolingual counterparts.
Specific cognitive mechanisms and skills seem to be more developed among
persons who are proficient in two languages compared to those who are
proficient in only one (Bialystok, 1986; Bialystok & Majumber, 1998; Hakuta,
1987; Hakuta & Diaz, 1984; Hamers & Blanc, 2000), and the advantage is

*nelmadrazo@gmail.com
**allanbibernardo@umac.mo
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attributed to strengthening of underlying cognitive mechanisms that required

for processing two linguistic systems. Would these cognitive skills that are
more developed in bilinguals be even stronger among trilinguals? In this
study, we investigate this question, by comparing executive control in a
sample of bilingual (Filipino-English) and trilingual (Chabacano-English-
Filipino) young adults.

The Bilingual Advantage in Executive Control

One of the specific cognitive mechanisms which has been consistently

observed as being stronger in bilinguals compared to monolinguals is
executive control. Executive control is the cognitive ability or mechanism
that allows an individual to inhibit an interfering stimulus and to focus on a
more relevant stimulus (Baddeley, 1986). Executive control involves the
basic ability to monitor and regulate the processing of information. It deals
with intentional selection and application of knowledge employed in solving
problems involving conflict, distraction or inhibition in verbal or non-verbal
processing (Bialystok, 1999). This is a very important cognitive mechanism
that allows individuals to attend to the appropriate information in a complex
environment. For example, executive control allows a person to identify
companions in a crowd by inhibiting irrelevant information in the scene. It is
the same mechanism that allows a student to focus on the voice of the
teacher during a lecture by suppressing other ambient sounds inside the
classroom.
Extensive research has shown that bilinguals consistently outperform
their monolingual counterparts in an array of tasks that involve executive
control (Bialystok, 1999; Bialystok, Craik, Klein & Viswanathan, 2004;
Bialystok & Majumder, 1998; Bialystok, Craik, & Luk, 2008; Cromdal,
1999; Eviatar & Ibrahim, 2000). Bialystok et al. (2008) interpreted this
bilingual advantage as being caused by the constant parallel activation of
two language representations (Costa, Miozzo, & Caramazza, 1999; De
Bot, 1992; Green, 1986; 2000; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Potter, So, von
Eckhardt, & Feldman, 1984; Poulisse & Bongaerts, 1994). The assumption
is that the bilingual‟s two linguistic systems are activated simultaneously in
every language related activity, and conflict is created between the parallel
activation of these two languages (Bialystok, et al. 2008). The conflict
requires that the bilingual person suppress activated information from one
or the other language, depending on what language is being used in a
particular communicative context. This process is complicated because
 MADRAZO & BERNARDO 227

activation and inhibition are influenced by both internal representations (e.g.,

frequently used words tend be activated more easily) and external stimuli
(e.g., other speakers may be currently heard using the words in the non-
target language), and failure of the inhibitory control may result to
unintentional mixing or blending of codes (e.g., using a frequently used
Chabacano word when speaking an English utterance). Thus, the task of
activating and inhibiting linguistic information, of selecting or deselecting
one language or another is a regulatory cognitive process that a bilingual
person engages in regularly in his/her linguistic experiences (Green, 1986;
Ijalba, Obler & Chengappa, 2006).
The argument is that this skill of executive control becomes developed
up to the point that it transfers to other non-linguistic tasks, because executive
control is not a mechanism that is specific to linguistic processing (Bialystok
et al., 2008). In particular, executive control refers to a range of related
cognitive abilities, including the ability to plan and regulate goal-directed
behavior, to sustain attention, to remain objective, and to use information
flexibly for the conception of alternatives and the making of appropriate
choices (Baddeley, 1986). The executive functions are also tapped whenever
it is necessary to ignore responses that may otherwise be automatically
elicited by stimuli in the external environment, and when one wishes to stop
an on-going cognitive process or motor action (Friedman & Miyake, 2004).
These different kinds of inhibitory processes are the specific executive
control functions that are said to be implicated in the daily linguistic
processing of bilinguals.

Trilingualism Compared to Bilingualism

Many scholars assume that trilingualism, the knowledge of tree language

representations, is a phenomenon that can be subsumed under bilingualism.
Indeed, most studies involving trilingualism have been carried out using the
framework of bilingualism. For example, some research investigated the
description of the order of language acquisition in early trilingualism (Barnes,
2006; Cenoz, 2000; De Houwer, 1990; McLaughlin, 1978, 1984; Quay, 2001)
from the perspective of second language acquisition. But, there are other
scholars who assume that the acquisition of a third language is a qualitatively
distinct processes from second language acquisition (Cenoz & Valencia,
1994; Jessner, 1999; Sanz, 2000; Swain, 1981; Swain, Lapkin, Rowen, &
Hart, 1990). However, these studies do not inform the question of whether
executive control will be stronger among trilinguals compared to bilinguals.
 228 PHILIPPINE JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY

Previous studies seem to suggest that the same basic executive control
processes are involved in bilingualism, trilingualism, or multilingualism
regardless of the number of language the person knows. The theory is that
regardless of the number of languages a person speaks, he/she uses the
“shut down” activation process which deactivates or activates one or more
language that are not needed in particular linguistic experiences (McNamara
& Kushnir, 1972; McNamara, Krauthammer, & Bolgar, 1968; Penfield &
Roberts, 1959). When one language is “not-in-use” only one language is
cognitively processing. Thus, there should be no difference in the level of
deactivation or activation between trilinguals and bilinguals. However, at
present, there seems to be no published research studies that actually
demonstrate this lack of differentiation between the executive control
processes of trilinguals and bilinguals.

The Current Study

In this study we test the hypothesis that there is no difference in the

executive control processes between trilinguals and bilinguals by comparing
the performance of a sample of Chabacano-English-Filipino trilinguals to a
sample of English-Filipino bilinguals on two well-established executive control
tasks: the go/no-go task and the sustained attention to response task. These
two tasks are described in detail in the methods section. We hypothesize
that there would be no difference in how the two samples perform in both
tasks.
It is important to note that Chabacano is a very distinct language
compared to Filipino, because it may be argued by some that the Chabacano-
English-Filipino trilinguals are not truly trilingual if one assumes that the
two Philippine languages are actually very similar, and thus involve similar
cognitive representations. Chabacano is considered a Philippine Creole
Spanish (Lipski, 1987). Chabacano words are predominantly derived from
Spanish such as number of words, days, weeks, months and body parts
(Barrios, 2006), consistent with the view that the superstrate language or
the lexifier language of a creole contributes to its vocabulary (Crowley,
1997). Based on the dominance of the superstrate or the lexifier language
of Spanish in Chabacano, it is safe to say that this creole falls under the
Romance language family. This makes Chabacano quite distinct from both
Filipino (which belongs to the Austronesian language family) and English
(which belongs to the Germanic language family). Thus, it can be safely
assumed that proficient Chabacano-English-Filipino trilinguals work with
 MADRAZO & BERNARDO 229

three distinct linguistic representations compared to English-Filipino

bilinguals.

METHOD

Participants

The complete set of participants comprised of 229 university students

enrolled in various courses in a state university in a province in Western
Mindanao. However, 19 students were eventually excluded from the sample
because they spoke four or more languages. Of the remaining 210
participants, 149 (71%) were female; most (60% of the participants reported
family income of 5,000 to 17,000 pesos a month (corresponding to lower-
middle to middle-income group for the province).
To select the bilingual and trilingual participants, the participants were
asked to complete a language background questionnaire where they were
asked to report the languages they know and use, thus identifying themselves
as either bilingual or trilingual. On this basis, 104 (49.50%) identified
themselves as bilinguals and the remaining 106 (50.50%) identified
themselves as trilinguals. To verify these reports, extemporaneous speaking
tests and essay-writing tests were administered; for the bilinguals, the tests
were administered both in English and Filipino, and for the trilinguals, the
tests were administered in Chabacano, English and Filipino. Details of these
proficiency tests are described in the following section. All the participants
were found to demonstrate at least average proficiency in their reported
languages. In particular, on the average, the bilinguals were rated “proficient”
in both the Filipino (M = 83.35%) and English (79.66%) extemporaneous
speaking tests. The bilinguals were also rated “average” in both the Filipino
(55.61%) and English (55.42%) essay-writing tests. On the other hand, the
trilinguals were rated “proficient” in Chabacano (75.04%), Filipino (81.97%)
and English (79.07%) extemporaneous speaking tests; and was “average”
in the Chabacano (56.98%) essay-writing test, but “proficient” in both the
Filipino (64.78%) and English (62.44%) essay writing tests.

Proficiency Tests

The proficiency tests were measures of reception (comprehension)

and production (speaking/writing) designed to determine the participants‟
degree of bilingualism and trilingualism. There were two proficiency tests
 230 PHILIPPINE JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY

appropriate for college students. These were extemporaneous speaking

and essay test. The former measured the participants‟ understanding of the
questions or issues presented to them and their speaking abilities in three
languages whereas the essay test assessed their understanding of the given
issues or problems and their writing skills. Both proficiency tests were
designed to measure the participants‟ indexes of proficiency and not the
content of reception and production.
Extemporaneous speaking test. This was an oral proficiency test that
measured listening comprehension skill (given question) and speaking skill
in Chabacano (only for trilinguals), Filipino, and English. The participants
were given different questions to answer for each language. The question
was read to the participant to test their listening skill. They were asked to
orally express spontaneously their opinion or reaction using each of the
target languages. Their speech was tape-recorded for evaluation. Three
evaluators who were proficient in Chabacano, Filipino, and English rated
the extemporaneous speaking. The speech was rated using Heaton‟s (1989)
rating scale shown in Appendix A.
Essay test. This is a revised proficiency test used in Madrazo (2005),
an English Proficiency Test administered to college students. Participants
were given pictures indicating environmental issues and which were used
as prompts for the participants to discuss. The participants had to discuss
the issue and propose solution to resolve the problem (i.e., illegal logging or
drug addiction) in just one paragraph using the target language. This revised
essay test was pilot tested with students who had similar characteristics
with the target participants. As with the extemporaneous speaking task,
three evaluators proficient in all three languages rated the essays using a
revised rating scale (based on Heaton, 1999) shown in Appendix B.

Executive Control Tasks

Two executive control tasks were used in the study, and both used
novel shapes in order to ensure that there would be no linguistic information
activated during the task. Other versions of the same two tasks involved
letters or letter like characters, and these were not used in order to ensure
that there was no linguistic system activated during the task. Meaningful
shapes or objects were also not used because these were likely to activate
names or labels in one of the participants‟ languages. Both tasks were
instantiated and administered using a laptop computer with14-inch monitor
using the Superlab (Version 4.0) software.
 MADRAZO & BERNARDO 231

Go/no-go task. The go/no-go task (also referred to as the flanker

task) is a commonly used task in neuropsychological and cognitive studies
of executive control (see e.g., McVay & Kane, 2012; Rubia et al., 2001;
Verbruggen & Logan, 2008, 2009), and has been used to study executive
control in non-Western populations (Qi et al., 2010) and even with children
(Janos, Grange, Steiner, & White, 2012). The task has also been extensively
used in studies that compare executive control in bilinguals and monolinguals
(Bialystok, Barac, Blaye, & Poulin-Dubois, 2010; Emmorey, Luk, Pyers,
& Bialystok, 2008; Festman, Rodriguez-Fornelis, & Munte, 2010; Gollan,
Sandoval, & Salmon, 2011). The go/no-go task we used in the current
study is based on Nielson, Langenecker, and Garavan‟s (2002) adaptation
of the task, which assessed how well people inhibit a manual response such
as a key press. The stimuli were novel shapes (DeSchepper & Treisman,
1996), which were displayed in the center of the computer screen. Each
shape displayed was illustrated in black illustration and placed against a
white background.
As in any typical go/no-go task, there were three types of trial involving
distinct shapes: a go trial, no-go trial, and a lure trial (see Figure 1 for
shapes). In a go trial, a go-shape was displayed on the screen and the
participants were asked to press the spacebar of the keyboard. In a no-go
trial, other shapes different from the go-shapes were displayed and
participants were required not to press the spacebar when these other
shapes were shown on the screen. Researchers generally assume that no-
go trials involve basic response inhibition, which is a specific form of
executive control. In a lure trial, a go-shape was presented immediately
following a go trial, but the participants were told not to press the spacebar
when they see a go-shape that follows a previous go trial with the same
go-shape. In other words, participants were told that go responses (or
presses) were to be made only to alternating go-shapes. It was the
participants‟ responses to lure trials which were of interest in the current
study because the tendency to press the assigned key was greater in these
lure trials than in the no-go trials, thus the need to inhibit the pressing action
was also greater in the lure trials. Accuracy in the lure trials is considered
a strict test of executive control.

Figure 1. Sample go-shapes used in go-no-go task.

 232 PHILIPPINE JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY

The various trials were presented using the Superlab 4.0 software,
which was programmed to present the trials and to record the participants‟
responses. For all the three types of trials, each individual trial was began
with the presentation of a fixation point on the screen that was displayed
for 250 ms. The fixation point was immediately followed by a presentation
of shape which was displayed for 750 ms or until the participant responded.
After 750 ms or after the participant responded, the next trial began with
the presentation of the fixation point again. There were 1,030 trials in total:
510 no-go trials, 310 go trials, and 210 lure trials. These trials were arranged
randomly with the constraints that go trials do not occur more than three
successive times and there were no successive lure trials. The participants
underwent 13 practice trials prior to the test proper, and the task began
when the participants had indicated they understood the instructions. There
were no rest periods in the task.
The indicator variable for this task was the difference between the
proportion accuracy of inhibition in no-go trials and proportion accuracy of
inhibition in lure trials. Because the lure trial is assumed to require stronger
response inhibition compared to the no-go trials, a smaller difference meant
more successful inhibition of responses in lure trials (i.e., because the
participant was as good in inhibiting the response in the lure trials and the
no-go trials). On the other hand, larger differences in accuracy indicated
weaker inhibitory control (i.e., because the participant was poorer in
inhibiting the response in the lure trials compared to the basic no-go
trials.)
Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). This task was originally
developed by Robertson, Manly, Andrade, Baddeley, and Yiend (1997) as
measure of response inhibition, and is thus, another task to measure inhibitory
control. Although not as commonly used as the go/no-go task, it is
nevertheless typically used in neuropsychological and cognitive studies of
executive control (McVay & Kane, 2009; Smallwood et al., 2004;
Smallwood, McSpadden, & Schooler, 2007), and is also used with clinical
populations (Robertson et al., 1997). Like the go/no-go task, the SART has
also been used in studies comparing executive control in monolingual and
bilingual populations (Bialystok et al., 2008).
For the present study, the same Superlab software was programmed to
execute the task. The nine novel shapes were presented one at a time in
the center of a computer screen in random order. The participants were
asked to press the response key (the space bar on the keyboard) as quickly
as possible, except for a particular shape, which was identified for the
participants ahead of time. This shape is called inhibit shape, and
 MADRAZO & BERNARDO 233

participants were instructed not to press anything and wait for the next
number.
Each trial began with a mask, consisting of a black square that was
presented for 500 ms on the space where the novel shapes appeared. After
a 250-ms interval, one of the nine novel shapes appeared and remained on
the screen until the participant pressed response key. Aparticipant‟s response
initiated the next trial. When the stimulus was the inhibit shape, the next
trial started after 2,000 ms. Excluding instructions, practice trials, and self-
correct responses, there were 243 trials in total (216 safe trials and 27
inhibit trials), arranged in 27 blocks of nine trials each. (Self-correct responses
occur when instances when a participant double presses a trial, in effect,
self-correcting an error that was recognized.) Prior to the actual trials, the
participants were given 36 practice trials in four blocks of nine trials.
The task began when the participants had indicated they understood
the instructions. There were no rest periods in the SART task. The indicator
variable for this task was the difference between the bilinguals‟ accuracy
(measured in proportion or percent) of inhibit trials and the trilinguals‟
accuracy of inhibit trials.

RESULTS

In this section, we present the comparison of the results from the

bilingual and the trilingual participants. We hypothesized that there would
be no difference in the performance of both groups of participants, consistent
with the hypothesis that the executive control mechanisms are enhanced to
the same degree in bilinguals and trilinguals.

Go/no-go task

The descriptive statistics for the accuracy for the bilingual and trilingual
participants are summarized in Table 1. Participants were expected to be
more accurate in the no-go trials compared to the lure trials, and this was
verified in the ANOVA. All participants were more accurate in no-go
trials than in lure trials for all participants, F (1, 208) = 125.5, MSE = 687,
p < 0.0001; and there was no interaction effect between language groups
and type of trial, F (1, 208) = 1.0, MSE = 6, n.s., which indicates that there
was no difference in the performance on the two inhibition tasks between
the bilinguals and trilinguals.
 234 PHILIPPINE JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY

Table 1. Mean accuracy (and standard deviation, in percent scores) in the

go/no-go tasks

Language group No-go trialsM (SD) Lure trialsM (SD)

Bilinguals 98.90 (0.67) 96.58 (2.29)

Trilingual 98.77 (0.80) 95.98 (4.24)

Sustained Attention to Response Task

The mean accuracy and standard deviations in the inhibit trials were
computed for the two language groups. For the bilingual participants, the
mean accuracy was 71.98% (SD = 19.90) and for the trilingual participants,
the mean was 71.88% (SD = 18.29). The Analysis of Variance indicated
that there was no significant difference between the two groups, F (1, 208)
= 0.00, MSE =1.00, n.s., consistent with the hypothesis.

DISCUSSION

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that trilinguals
would show no advantage over bilinguals in the executive control function
of inhibitory control. The results involving two inhibitory control tasks both
supported this hypothesis. We note that the verification of our hypothesis
actually involves the acceptance of the statistical null hypothesis, and in
such cases, we should be concerned of Type II error (accepting the
null hypothesis when it should be rejected). In order to rule out the possibility
of having a large probability of committing Type II error, we determined
the power of our analysis to assess medium size differences in the means
( = .50). The computed power,  = 3.66 indicates that our analysis has a
.97 to .98 probability of rejecting the statistical null hypothesis for a one-
tailed test using  = .05, or .95 to .96 probability of rejecting the statistical
null hypothesis for a two-tailed test using  = .05. Thus, we can be confident
that in verifying our hypothesis, we were not actually committing a Type II
error.
The results of the study indicate that three languages are not necessarily
better than two when it relates to executive control. Interestingly, extensive
research indicates that having two languages is consistently better than
having just one language as regards executive control, and inhibitory control,
 MADRAZO & BERNARDO 235

in particular (Bialystok et al., 2008). Research suggests that bilinguals have

to suppress the activation of linguistic information in the irrelevant language
while processing information in the target language, and this constant
cognitive task of the bilingual enhances the inhibitory control mechanisms
of the bilingual compared to their monolingual counterparts (Green, 1986;
Ijalba et al., 2006). If so, why does adding a third language not enhance this
inhibitory control mechanism even further?
Several researchers have argued that regardless of the number of
languages a person speaks, the cognitive mechanism involved in suppressing
one or more other irrelevant languages is the same (McNamara & Kushnir,
1972; McNamara et al., 1968; Penfield & Roberts, 1959). In a manner of
speaking, there is only one cognitive process involved in “shutting down” or
deactivating the irrelevant language system, and it does the same whether
there are one or two or more irrelevant languages. Thus, it seems that the
enhancements in the executive control brought about by knowing two
languages is not actually enhanced as one acquires more languages.
It is important to note, however, that some researchers have suggested
that the two inhibition tasks used in our study actually involve response
inhibition, which is considered to be a lower level of inhibitory control. The
research literature on inhibitory control typically distinguishes between two
types of inhibitory processes: interference suppression and response
inhibition. The tasks used in the current study involve response inhibition, or
stopping a behavior that appears to be cued or elicited by the external
environment but is not intended by the person and stopping a self-initiated
action because something in the environment makes it inappropriate. On
the other hand, interference suppression involves the inhibition of a distractor;
in particular, it involves the gating or ignoring of distracting stimuli (e.g.,
visual or auditory) that are present in the environment but are irrelevant to
the task at hand. It is the ability to inhibit certain stimulus so that one can
focus on the important aspect of the environment to do the intended task.
Why is this distinction relevant to our findings? The inhibitory response
required in a bilingual or trilingual language system requires the interference
suppression (i.e., suppressing information from the irrelevant language that
is activated together with the information from the target language). Thus,
it is possible that the benefits of adding languages into the cognitive system
would benefit interference suppression, but not response inhibition. There
is some indication in the previous literature that seems to support this
possibility. For example, research involving interference suppression and
response inhibition in bilingual children (Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008)
 236 PHILIPPINE JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY

and young adult bilinguals (Bialystok et al., 2008) showed that bilinguals, in
both studies, demonstrate better interference suppression compared to
monolinguals. But, there was no difference between bilinguals and
monolinguals in response inhibition. Thus, it seems that bilinguals‟ advantage
in the executive control processes might be specific to interference
suppression. Therefore, it may be possible, that if trilinguals would acquire
stronger inhibitory control, it would be specific to interference suppression.
Bunge, Dudukovic, Thomason, Vaidya, and Gabrieli (2002) also
described interference suppression as a higher level inhibitory mechanism,
whereas response inhibition is a lower level inhibitory mechanism. Bialystok
et al. (2008) even described response inhibition as merely “motoric.” Perhaps,
the lower level inhibition tasks (response inhibition) are routine for all persons
so much so that even monolingual persons have rather well-developed skills
related to this type of inhibitory control, and having two or three languages
would not further enhance this particular inhibitory control function. Indeed,
an inspection of the accuracy scores in the go-no-go task indicates that
both bilingual and trilingual participants were performing at very high levels
of accuracy, which suggests that both groups have very high levels of
response inhibition. The accuracy scores for the sustained attention to
response task were also rather high, although not as high as those in the go-
no-go task. However, in the more demanding higher level inhibitory task
(interference suppression), the bilingual person‟s more extensive experience
and more developed inhibitory control skills can be demonstrated more
strongly compared to the monolingual person. And perhaps, a trilingual person
would develop this skill even further.
These two speculative arguments related to the differences between
response inhibition and interference suppression point to an alternative
explanation and hypothesis regarding the difference in inhibitory control (or
lack thereof) between bilinguals and trilinguals. Thus, it is possible that no
differences were found between bilinguals and trilinguals in the present
study because we were not looking at the right kind of inhibitory control
mechanism. It is, therefore, a limitation of the study that the task used to
assess inhibitory control only focused on response inhibition. Amore complete
assessment of the difference between bilinguals and trilinguals should involve
other inhibitory control tasks, particularly those that involve interference
suppression. Future research studies should focus on this fuller range of
inhibitory control tasks.
We wish to note another limitation of our study, which was more
methodological in nature. Ideally, the comparison between the bilinguals
and trilinguals should have provided evidence for their equivalence in other
 MADRAZO & BERNARDO 237

relevant variables (e.g., other cognitive functions). However, in the present

study, we did not gather data on other variables that could establish the
equivalency between the groups. We should note, however, that we
hypothesized no difference between the bilinguals and trilinguals in the study,
and the lack of evidence for equivalency between the groups may or may
not be seen as problematic in that regard. In any case, future studies that
seek to compare executive control between bilinguals and trilinguals should
include measures that could be used to establish the equivalency between
the groups.

CONCLUSION

In recent months, the so called-bilingual advantage has been covered

in feature articles and blogs in various popular media outlets. These articles
refer to studies that document how bilingual samples perform better in
various cognitive tasks, usually involving executive control functions such
as those used in the present study. The implication of such studies is that
being bilingual or acquiring bilingualism is good, and these types of findings
are particularly significant in cultures and educational systems which are
still debating the value of bilingual education. In countries like the Philippines,
bilingual education has been in place officially for almost four decades,
since the implementation of the Bilingual Education Policy in 1974, and
experimentations involving bilingual education have been tried since 1939
(see Bernardo, 2004). Yet there are still lingering debates on the wisdom of
such a policy, as there are still sectors of Philippine society who advocate
an English-only policy in education, and who do not seem to be convinced
that there are actually advantages to knowing more than one language.
Fortunately, the Department of Education has taken a strong position against
such a policy by reaffirming the bilingual education, and more importantly
by implementing the mother-tongue-based multilingual education policy
starting 2012. Thus, at least for the formal basic education system in the
Philippines, there seems to be an appreciation of the cognitive advantages
of being bilingual. But in the context of a new multilingual education policy,
is being multilingual or trilingual better than being bilingual?
The current study was undertaken precisely to verify the hypothesis
that trilinguals and bilinguals do not differ in their levels of inhibitory control,
and the results of the study support the hypothesis. The results can be
interpreted as being consistent with the theory that the same inhibitory
process operates to suppress information from the irrelevant languages,
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whether the irrelevant language is one (in the case of bilinguals) or two (in
the case of trilinguals) irrelevant languages. However, the discussion points
to the possibility that another type of inhibitory control (inhibitory suppression)
was not assessed in the study, and thus, future studies are needed to rule
out this alternative explanation.
Given that there are currently rather few studies on the psychological
processes in trilinguals, it is important to undertake studies that explore
these processes in trilinguals, and even to investigate whether trilinguals
are different from or similar to bilinguals. The Philippines provides a very
rich context within which such explorations can be undertaken as many
Filipinos speak multiple languages and dialects, and the Department of
Education has embarked on a large-scale multilingual education policy in
the early grades. We hope that, with its limitations notwithstanding, our
small study contributes a significant but small step towards better
understanding the cognitive psychological processes that are similar between
bilinguals and trilinguals in the Philippines.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The completion of the study was supported by a Faculty Development

Grant from the Commission on Higher Education awarded to the first author.
The authors thank Adrianne John Galang and Claire Madrazo for technical
assistance in conducting the study, and also Pilar Caparas, Janet Paster,
Cherry Rose Madrazo and Thom de Borja for various forms of research
assistance.

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 MADRAZO & BERNARDO 243

APPENDIX A

Rating Scale for Oral Communication Test (based on Heaton, 1989)

Vocabulary
Score Description
5 Very Good : Sophisticated range-effective word/
idiom choice and usage
4 Good to Average: Adequate range; occasional errors of
word/ idiom form, choice and usage
3 Fair to Poor : limited range- frequent errors of word/
idiom from/choice, usage
2 Very Poor : Essentially translated-limited knowledge
of English vocabulary

Organization
Score Description
5 Very Good : Fluent expression - ideas clearly stated
4 Good to Average: Somewhat choppy-loosely organized but
main ideas stand out
3 Fair to Poor : Non-fluent-ideas confused or discounted
2 Very Poor: Seems not able to communicate; no
organization

Language Use
Score Description
5 Excellent
to Very Good : Effective complex constructions
4 Good to Average: Major problems in simple/
complex constructions
3 Fair to poor : major problems in simple/ complex
constructions
2 Very Poor : Virtually no mastery of sentence
construction rules
 244 PHILIPPINE JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY

Pronunciation
Score Description
5 Excellent to Demonstrate comprehensible
Very Good : pronunciation of words
4 Good to Average: Occasional errors in pronouncing
commonly used words
3 Fair to poor : Frequent errors of pronouncing
commonly used words
2 Very Poor : Incomprehensible enunciation of almost
all the words uttered
Note: Each participant‟s total score was divided by 20 to get a percentage score.
The percentage scores were interpreted as follows: 81% and higher was Very
Proficient, 61%-80% was Proficient, 41%-60% was Average, 21%-40% was Poor,
and 20% or less was Very Poor.
 MADRAZO & BERNARDO 245

APPENDIX B

Revised Rating Scale for Essay Writing Test (based on Heaton, 1989)

Vocabulary
Score Description

5 Very Good : Sophisticated range-effective word/

idiom choice and usage
4 Good to Average: Adequate range; occasional errors of
word/ idiom form, choice and usage
3 Fair to Poor : limited range- frequent errors of word/
idiom from/choice, usage
2 Very Poor : Essentially translated-limited knowledge
of English vocabulary

Organization
Score Description
5 Very Good : Fluent expression- ideas clearly stated
4 Good to Average: Somewhat choppy-loosely organized but
main ideas stand out
3 Fair to Poor : Non-fluent-ideas confused or discounted
2 Very Poor : Seems not able to communicate -no
organization

Language Use
Score Description
5 Excellent to
4 Very Good : Effective complex constructions
Good to Average: Major problems in simple/
complex constructions
3 Fair to poor : major problems in simple/ complex
constructions
2 Very Poor : Virtually no mastery of sentence
construction rules
 246 PHILIPPINE JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY

Mechanics
Score Description
5 Excellent to
Very Good : Demonstrate mastery of conventions
4 Good to Average: Occasional errors of spelling,
punctuation
3 Fair to Poor : Frequent errors of spelling, punctuation,
capitalization
2 Very Poor : No mastery of conventions- dominated
by errors of spelling, punctuation,
capitalization, paraphrasing
Note: Each participant‟s total score was divided by 20 to get a percentage score.
The percentage scores were interpreted as follows: 81% and higher was Very
Proficient, 61%-80% was Proficient, 41%-60% was Average, 21%-40% was Poor,
and 20% or less was Very Poor.

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