Symbiosis, Parasitism and Bilingual Cognitive Control: A Neuroemergentist Perspective

Abstract

Interest in the intersection between bilingualism and cognitive control and accessibility to neuroimaging methods has resulted in numerous studies with a variety of interpretations of the bilingual cognitive advantage. Neurocomputational Emergentism (or Neuroemergentism for short) is a new framework for understanding this relationship between bilingualism and cognitive control. This framework considers Emergence, in which two small elements are recombined in an interactive manner, yielding a non-linear effect. Added to this is the notion that Emergence can be captured in neural systems using computationally inspired models. This review poses that bilingualism and cognitive control, as examined through the Neuroemergentist framework, are interwoven through development and involve the non-linear growth of cognitive processing encompassing brain areas that combine and recombine, in symbiotic and parasitic ways, in order to handle more complex types of processing. The models that have sought to explain the neural substrates of bilingual cognitive differences will be discussed with a reinterpretation of the entire bilingual cognitive advantage within a Neuroemergentist framework incorporating its neural bases. It will conclude by discussing how this new Neuroemergentist approach alters our view of the effects of language experience on cognitive control. Avenues to move beyond the simple notion of a bilingual advantage or lack thereof will be proposed.

Age of acquisition impacts the brain differently depending on neuroanatomical metric

“…This is in line with Klein et al (), who also found that later AoA relates to thicker left SPL, although in their study this was a continuous (not categorical) relationship. The findings of the left SPL, IPL, and STG fit with the argument that late bilinguals in particular may achieve L2 resonance via metacognitive processes that rely on nonlanguage areas (e.g., recoding, rehearsal, and imagery) in order to defend against L1 entrenchment (Berken et al, ; Hernandez, Claussenius‐Kalman, Ronderos, & Vaughn, ; Hernandez, Li, & MacWhinney, ).…”

Bilingualism, Demographics, and Cognitive Control: A Within-Group Approach

“…The effects are developmental, dynamic, and non-linear, and are likely the products of different forms of bilingual experiences. Thus it is suggested that future research of the bilingual advantage should not center on whether language experience affects cognitive control or not, but on how language experience at different points in life dynamically affects cognitive control (Li et al, 2014;Hernandez et al, 2018Hernandez et al, , 2019.…”

Effect of Picture-Book Reading With Additive Audio on Bilingual Preschoolers’ Prefrontal Activation: A Naturalistic Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study

“…Future ecological research should consider the tasks of language production and comprehension together, especially for non-balanced bilingual children. Finally, given the latest direction in bilingualism study – i.e., that bilingualism is not a categorical label ( Luk and Bialystok, 2013 ) and should be regarded as a gradient or spectrum of the experience-based dynamic process ( Hernandez et al, 2018 ; DeLuca et al, 2019 , 2020 ; Pliatsikas, 2019 ; Pliatsikas et al, 2019 ; Sulpizio et al, 2020a ) – future studies on the effects of bilingualism on children’s brains should consider complex variables, ecological validity, and tracking paradigm.…”

“…The abundant bilingual exposure in this age range may have reconstructed the neural network on the formation of attention-demanding word identification processes to a large extent. The BAPSS theory and Neuroemergentism framework claim that the shift of recruitment from frontal to posterior and subcortical regions is modulated with L2 exposure and learning time (Grundy et al, 2017;Hernandez et al, 2018). In other words, young children who are on the way to learning English perhaps undergo the early stages of neural specialization.…”