Beyond a simple "yes" and "no".

Beyond a simple " yes " and " no " Citation for published version: Bak, T 2015, 'Beyond a simple " yes " and " no " : A commentary on Paap et al. " Bilingual advantages in executive functioning either do not exist or are restricted to very specific and undetermined circumstances " , Submission to Cortex " Discussion Forum " ' Cortex. General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. A Commentary on Paap et al " Bilingual advantages in executive functioning either do not exist or are restricted to very specific and undetermined circumstances " Submission to Cortex " Discussion Forum " Address for correspondence: Paap and colleagues put forward a clear and simple message: cognitive differences between bilinguals and monolinguals do not exist; papers proposing anything else are methodologically flawed or biased (Paap, Johnson, & Sawi, 2015). Their claims depend critically on two conditions: the representativity and quality of their discussion of the literature and the underlying assumption that all studies should produce the same results, independently of the population in which they were conducted. Unfortunately, their literature review omits a number of relevant studies and only touches the issue of potential population differences. While the authors discuss classical paradigms, such as Simon and flanker task, they seem to miss new developments, such as the introduction of the Test of Everyday Attention, which assesses inhibition as well as switching do not mention some of the largest studies in the field (despite their apparent preoccupation with group size), including studies in which confounding variables (another major concern of the authors) were carefully controlled for. This commentary focuses on topics particularly emphasised by Paap and colleagues: immigration, socioeconomic status (SES) and culture; for a more comprehensive discussion of confounding variables in bilingualism studies, see Bak (in press). I could not agree more with Paap and colleagues that …