A quantitative study to investigate comprehension ability in monolingual and bilingual speakers and the effect subtitles have on comprehension

There are reports indicating that the ability to speak more than one language provides an individual with a cognitive advantage, however, there are also existing pieces of literature arguing there is no ‘bilingual advantage’ (van den Noort et al., 2019). This study investigates the ‘bilingual advantage’ by using reading and video comprehension tests to assess cognitive ability between 80 participants (63 monolinguals and 17 bilinguals). Research suggests that subtitles facilitate comprehension too (Latifi, 2014): this relationship was explored within the video comprehension task. Results found no significant difference in comprehension ability between language groups, suggesting there is no bilingual advantage. Although there was an improvement in video comprehension when subtitles were present, it was not a significant effect. Directions for future research were discussed.