No bilingual advantage in children’s attentional disengagement: Congruency and sequential congruency effects in a large sample of monolingual and bilingual children

•This was a large-scale empirical investigation of the impact of multilingualism on children’s cognitive functioning.•The study utilized large samples, appropriate cognitive outcome measures, and multiple classifications of bilingualism.•There was no evidence of a “bilingual advantage” when confounding variables were controlled for using matched samples.•Bayesian analyses provided support for the null hypothesis that language status did not impact attentional disengagement. According to recent accounts, bilingualism in childhood confers an advantage in a specific domain of executive functioning termed attentional disengagement. The current study tested this hypothesis in 492 children (245 boys; Mage = 10.98 years) from Canada, China, and Lebanon by testing for an association between language status and measures of attentional disengagement. Across the entire sample, monolinguals responded more quickly and accurately than bilinguals on a measure of attentional disengagement but differed in age, socioeconomic status, and general cognitive ability. Differences between monolinguals and bilinguals disappeared when the influence of these confounding variables was controlled using a matched samples analysis (ns = 105). Bayesian analyses further confirmed that the evidence was more likely under the null hypothesis than under the alternative hypothesis. In sum, there was little evidence of an association between language status and attentional disengagement in children.