How aging and bilingualism influence language processing

Abstract

Healthy non-pathological aging is characterized by cognitive and neural decline, and although language is one of the more stable areas of cognition, older adults often show deficits in language production, showing word finding failures, increased slips of the tongue, and increased pauses in speech. Overall, research on language comprehension in older healthy adults show that it is more preserved than language production. Bilingualism has been shown to confer a great deal of neuroplasticity across the life span, including a number of cognitive benefits especially in executive functions such as cognitive control. Many models of bilingual language processing have been proposed to explain bilingual language processing. However, the question remains open of how such models might be modulated by age-related changes in language. Here, we discuss how current models of language processing in non-pathological aging, and models of bilingual language processing can be integrated to provide new research directions.

Late Bilinguals Are Sensitive to Unique Aspects of Second Language Processing: Evidence from Clitic Pronouns Word-Order

“…We compare their performance to a group of native Spanish speaking bilinguals living in the US, immersed in English as the L2. Because recent studies have suggested that the frequency of use in response to L2 exposure and language immersion can influence L1 lexical processing and parsing preferences (e.g., Dussias, 2003; Malt and Sloman, 2003; Dussias and Sagarra, 2007; Schmid, 2010; Rossi and Diaz, 2016; Rossi et al, unpublished) it was important to determine whether the sensitivity to the clitic structure and its word order remained unchanged for native speakers of Spanish across different language contexts. In Experiment 2, we therefore replicated the design of Experiment 1 with functionally monolingual speakers of Spanish living in Spain.…”

“…Moreover, the process of continuous adaptation that the native language undergoes as a result of bilingualism, and prolonged immersion in the L2, has been proposed to reflect one of the earliest adaptive stages of more radical and long-lasting changes in L1 processing, possibly leading to L1 attrition (e.g., Sorace and Filiaci, 2006; Keijzer, 2007; Sorace and Serratrice, 2009; Keijzer, 2010; Schmid, 2010; Rossi and Diaz, 2016; Rossi, et al, unpublished).…”

Redefining Language Death: Evidence From Moribund Grammars

“…The latter, dative case loss in German HLs, is a well‐studied topic that warrants revisiting. Although the remaining speakers of these vernaculars often lack literacy in the heritage language, have reduced opportunities to receive qualitative and quantitative L1 input, have limited opportunities to speak their HL, and are often elderly (e.g., Rossi & Diaz, ; Rothman, ; Yager et al., ), the grammars of these speakers collectively exhibit the maintenance of preimmigration grammatical structures, or systematic restructuring of the grammatical system.…”

“…The latter, dative case loss in German HLs, is a well-studied topic that warrants revisiting. Although the remaining speakers of these vernaculars often lack literacy in the heritage language, have reduced opportunities to receive qualitative and quantitative L1 input, have limited opportunities to speak their HL, and are often elderly (e.g., Rossi & Diaz, 2016;Rothman, 2009;Yager et al, 2015), the grammars of these speakers collectively exhibit the maintenance of preimmigration grammatical structures, or systematic restructuring of the grammatical system. This article is structured as follows: In the next section (Background: Moribund Heritage Languages and Their Speakers) we provide a basic description of the linguistic and sociolinguistic desiderata of moribund HL speakers, with a focus on heritage varieties of German spoken in the Midwestern United States, specifically addressing Language Death, and Attrition in previous literature.…”

BiLex: A computational approach to the effects of age of acquisition and language exposure on bilingual lexical access

“…Examining the differential effects of aging and attrition in bilingual representation and lexical processing was beyond the scope of this study. However, because most of the attrition literature typically involves older adults and therefore their impact in lexical access could be at least partially confounded (Rossi & Diaz, 2016), adaptations of the BiLex model could potentially help to disentangle the effects of aging from those of attrition in bilingual lexical access across different established L1 and L2 attrition profiles (van Els, 1986). Similarly, computational experiments with BiLex could allow examining the effects of decreased language exposure and use and the influence of the other language as main factors influencing language attrition (Goral, 2004).…”