Objective.

Review the scientific literature to examine the differences on behavioral results in executive-function assessments for bilingual and monolingual.

Method.

It began with a bibliographic search using bilingualism and executive functions and/or attention as keywords; 36 papers fulfilled the inclusion criteria. These results were divided according to the age group studied: children, young adults and older adults.

Results.

The main factors that contributed to the behavioral results on bilingual populations were the age of acquisition and the context of use of the second language. Different patters emerged for the three age groups.

Conclusion.

Better executive performance was linked to the speaker’s natural and useful context of acquisition, and earlier start. Although it presents itself as a methodological problem, the study of bilingualism is important for both school and health-related programs.

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