Losing Access to the Native Language While Immersed in a Second Language: Evidence for the Role of Inhibition in Second-Language Learning

Linck, Jared A.; Kroll, Judith F.; Sunderman, Gretchen

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02480.x

Cited by 400 publications

(361 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…In addition to the benefits of language transfer identified in the attainment and maintenance of English, exposure to English emerged as a predictor of English proficiency across our overall sample, consistent with previous findings in younger adults 2 (e.g., Marian et al, 2007;Linck et al, 2009) and older adults (Barresi et al, 1998;Nanchen et al, 2017). It is possible that, in learners who cannot engage efficient cognitive control skills to ameliorate interference from other languages, establishment of languagespecific resonance through continued immersion is especially critical in the language acquisition process.…”

Section: Continued Exposure To Englishsupporting

confidence: 78%

“…For example, Barresi et al (1998) found in a longitudinal study that older individuals who reported living in a household with other adults showed better naming performance while those who reported high-passive language exposure through television showed lower performance. In younger bilingual adults and language learners, language exposure has similarly emerged as an important predictor of abilities (e.g., Marian et al, 2007;Linck et al, 2009) and may play an important role in the maintenance of L2 in older adults (e.g., Nanchen et al, 2017). It has been suggested that continued use of a language provides continued activation and strengthens its representations, creating language-specific resonance that boosts the network underlying the novel language and reduces interference from other languages (MacWhinney, 2012).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Predictors of Successful Learning in Multilingual Older Adults Acquiring a Majority Language

et al. 2017

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Understanding language learning in later life can elucidate how linguistic experiences and age-specific cognitive skills can be leveraged for language acquisition, providing insight into how lifelong experiences configure our learning capacity. In this study, we examined to what extent acquisition and maintenance of a non-native language (English) is scaffolded by cognitive skills and previous linguistic experiences in older adults; and to what extent these cognitive/linguistic factors predict older learners' success in acquiring novel functional language. We recruited 53 participants who were native speakers of Mandarin, Spanish, Tagalog, and Somali, had continued to learn English as adults, and were currently exposed to majority-English contexts. To identify contributors to participants' English skills, we administered a language history and self-reported proficiency interview, brief cognitive testing, and verbal fluency tasks in L1 and English. We found that digit span and orientation measures were cognitive predictors of English proficiency, while similarity of known languages to English, L1 skills, and English language exposure were linguistic predictors of English skills. To examine participants' ability to maintain language knowledge and to learn new functional English, we also conducted a preliminary longitudinal service-based study in a subset of 19 participants using our Specific-Purpose English Communication System for Seniors (SPECSS) curriculum. In this subset of SPECSS learners, we identified digit span and orientation, but not age, as cognitive predictors of short-term language maintenance. Further, better novel English learning as a result of our curriculum was observed in learners whose other known languages were less similar to English. Findings inform best practices in developing language curricula for older adults, and help generate new hypotheses on preparedness for language learning across the adult lifespan with a possible interaction between cognitive skills and transfer of knowledge from previous languages in multilingual older learners.

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Section: Continued Exposure To Englishsupporting

confidence: 78%

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confidence: 99%

Predictors of Successful Learning in Multilingual Older Adults Acquiring a Majority Language

et al. 2017

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“…Americans taking a Spanish course in the United States showed lower Spanish proficiency and greater accessibility of English words than a group taking the same course of Spanish in Spain (35). Although the linguistic context outside of class no doubt contributed to the United States group's higher L1 accessibility, the cues in the visual environment may have also mattered: the everyday environment of the United States group was saturated with cues to American culture, which heightened L1 accessibility.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Heritage-culture images disrupt immigrants’ second-language processing through triggering first-language interference

Zhang

Morris

Cheng

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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For bicultural individuals, visual cues of a setting's cultural expectations can activate associated representations, switching the frames that guide their judgments. Research suggests that cultural cues may affect judgments through automatic priming, but has yet to investigate consequences for linguistic performance. The present studies investigate the proposal that heritage-culture cues hinder immigrants' second-language processing by priming first-language structures. For Chinese immigrants in the United States, speaking to a Chinese (vs. Caucasian) face reduced their English fluency, but at the same time increased their social comfort, effects that did not occur for a comparison group of European Americans (study 1). Similarly, exposure to iconic symbols of Chinese (vs. American) culture hindered Chinese immigrants' English fluency, when speaking about both culture-laden and culture-neutral topics (study 2). Finally, in both recognition (study 3) and naming tasks (study 4), Chinese icon priming increased accessibility of anomalous literal translations, indicating the intrusion of Chinese lexical structures into English processing. We discuss conceptual implications for the automaticity and adaptiveness of cultural priming and practical implications for immigrant acculturation and second-language learning.bilingual | cultural psychology | cognitive activation | cross-language interference

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“…Our results confirm such patterns and insists on the spared comprehension in the host language, as a consequence of long lasting immersion. As mentioned before, long-life L2 exposure has been linked to increased grey matter densities in areas such the inferior parietal lobules (Abutalebi et al, 2015) which are involved in with semantic and phonological (Seghier et al, 2004) and temporo-parietal lesions and whose impairment are associated with comprehension deficit in both acute deficits and degenerative situations (Kreisler et al, 2000). It is thus probable that such used-dependent neural plasticity may correlate with second language preservation in late life.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Second language performances in elderly bilinguals and individuals with dementia: The role of L2 immersion

Nanchen

Abutalebi²,

Assal³

et al. 2017

Journal of Neurolinguistics

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With the population aging and an increase in the number of senior immigrant citizens in modern societies, public health systems will be increasingly burdened with the need to deal with the care and treatment of bi-or multilingual individuals with cognitive decline and dementia. This raises complex questions such as which language is better preserved in these elderly individuals, particularly for those facing dementias. The main aim of the present investigation was to study in two groups of immigrant populations whether the first language (L1) or the second language (L2) are better preserved. For this purpose, we assessed by means of cognitive and neurolinguistics testing 20 late-bilingual individuals with neurodegenerative dementia of the Alzheimer and mixed type, and compared their results to a matched control group consisting of 19 subjects. Our results suggest that L1 is not better preserved in individuals with dementia. We report a parallel decline of second language across groups, regardless of the presence of dementia, as well as a significant correlation between language immersion and L2 relative performances (r ¼ 0.379, p ¼ 0.03). Moreover our data suggest that individual with dementia may have a relative sparing of syntactic L2 comprehension. These results suggest that these elderly individuals who have lived in a host country for many years, such as the subjects here investigated, may preserve similarly their L2 as much as their L1, irrespectively of the presence or absence of neurodegenerative disease, and even preserve some features of L2 processes in dementia. These results emphasize the role of immersion in language preservation.

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Losing Access to the Native Language While Immersed in a Second Language: Evidence for the Role of Inhibition in Second-Language Learning

Cited by 400 publications

References 37 publications

Predictors of Successful Learning in Multilingual Older Adults Acquiring a Majority Language

Predictors of Successful Learning in Multilingual Older Adults Acquiring a Majority Language

Heritage-culture images disrupt immigrants’ second-language processing through triggering first-language interference

Second language performances in elderly bilinguals and individuals with dementia: The role of L2 immersion

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