Understanding the consequences of bilingualism for language processing and cognition

Abstract

Contemporary research on bilingualism has been framed by two major discoveries. In the realm of language processing, studies of comprehension and production show that bilinguals activate information about both languages when using one language alone. Parallel activation of the two languages has been demonstrated for highly proficient bilinguals as well as second language learners and appears to be present even when distinct properties of the languages themselves might be sufficient to bias attention towards the language in use. In the realm of cognitive processing, studies of executive function have demonstrated a bilingual advantage, with bilinguals outperforming their monolingual counterparts on tasks that require ignoring irrelevant information, task switching, and resolving conflict. Our claim is that these outcomes are related and have the overall effect of changing the way that both cognitive and linguistic processing are carried out for bilinguals. In this article we consider each of these domains of bilingual performance and consider the kinds of evidence needed to support this view. We argue that the tendency to consider bilingualism as a unitary phenomenon explained in terms of simple component processes has created a set of apparent controversies that masks the richness of the central finding in this work: the adult mind and brain are open to experience in ways that create profound consequences for both language and cognition.

Tuning the mind: Exploring the connections between musical ability and executive functions

“…There is reason to expect bilingualism to correlate with performance on at least some types of EF tasks (e.g., Kroll & Bialystok, 2013), however, bilingual and monolingual participants in this sample did not differ on any EF scores (all |t|s < 1). 5 Bilinguals have sometimes been shown to outperform monolinguals on both incongruent and congruent trials on inhibitory tasks (thus showing no advantage in inhibition difference scores; e.g., Costa, Hernández, Costa-Faidella, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2009), however bilinguals in this sample performed no differently from monolinguals on either incongruent or congruent trials in the auditory or visual inhibition tasks (all |t|s < 1.34).…”

The neuroanatomy of bilingualism: how to turn a hazy view into the full picture

“…Furthermore, as shown by Paap & Greenberg (2013), tasks typically used to explore some of these components of executive control (e.g. inhibition) do not correlate with each other, pointing to the multidimensional nature of the measures obtained (see also Kroll & Bialystok, 2013). …”

“…At a broad level, the underlying hypothesis for the so-called 'bilingual advantage' in executive functions is that bilinguals are used to constantly dealing with different languages and to preventing mutual interference between languages by selecting the target language while inhibiting the non-target language(s). This practice provides bilinguals with a somewhat enhanced mental flexibility, which results in augmented or improved skills related to the management of conflicting information as compared to monolinguals (see Kroll & Bialystok, 2013, for a review). In other words, speaking several languages can lead to benefits that go beyond the realm of language, impacting on global cognitive functioning and, more specifically, on the mechanisms responsible for selecting one language while managing interference from the other(s).…”

Visual Cues for Language Selection in Bilinguals

“…Being able to restrict language processing to only the target language would seem to be very useful, given that there is a considerable amount of evidence that in lexical access, words from both a bilingual's languages become active (for recent reviews see Kroll & Bialystok, 2013). In the domain of visual word recognition, for instance, many studies have shown differences in the processing of words that are identical or similar in a bilingual's two languages (e.g., cognates such as Dutch and English ring, and interlingual homographs such as list, meaning trick in Dutch), as compared to words without any overlap in form.…”