Atención e interferencia auditiva en estudiantes universitarios bilingües y monolingües

Abstract

In Peru, an increasing number of young people from Andean and Amazonian communities, many of whom are bilingual, are entering university life. However, research on their cognitive activity is still insufficient. In this context, the present study was undertaken to establish whether there are differences between bilingual and monolingual university students in attention with and without interference under experimental conditions. This is an applied study with 128 monolingual and bilingual university students from universities in Junín, aged between 18 and 31. They were assessed and compared under two conditions (with and without interference), examining their responses to attention tasks. The results showed, among other things, that there are significant differences between monolingual and bilingual university students in both conditions (without auditory interference and with interference) when compared on the attention variable. The differences favored the monolingual students, as they were less distracted and managed to absorb a greater amount of stimuli, which will allow them to perform better cognitive activities. There were no significant differences in attention in the sample when evaluated on attention in both conditions (without interference and with interference). In other words, the university student brain can distribute attention among various stimuli.