Early bilingual experience is associated with change detection ability in adults.

To adapt to their more varied and unpredictable (language) environments, infants from bilingual homes may gather more information (sample more of their environment) by shifting their visual attention more frequently. However, it is not known whether this early adaptation is age-specific or lasts into adulthood. If the latter, we would expect to observe it in adults who acquired their second language early, not late, in life. Here we show that early bilingual adults are faster at disengaging attention to shift attention, and at noticing changes between visual stimuli, than late bilingual adults. In one experiment, participants were presented with the same two visual stimuli; one changed (almost imperceptibly), the other remained the same. Initially, participants looked at both stimuli equally; eventually, they fixated more on the changing stimulus. This shift in looking occurred in the early but not late bilinguals. It suggests that cognitive processes adapt to early bilingual experiences

De effecten van tweetaligheid op cognitie

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Estudo comparativo do acesso semântico no processamento visual de palavras entre brasileiros monolíngues e chineses multilíngues falantes do português do Brasil como língua estrangeira

O priming semântico é uma forma de avaliar o processamento semântico de palavras. Se a semântica é um importante fator contribuinte no reconhecimento visual de palavras, surge a questão de se chineses multilíngues (mandarin como L1 e inglês como L2), que estão aprendendo o português como L3, podem se beneficiar do contexto semântico em tarefa de decisão lexical na Língua Portuguesa, comparado aos controles (brasileiros universitários e crianças). Além de comparar a magnitude do efeito de priming semântico entre a amostra de chineses e de brasileiros, objetivou-se investigar nos chineses a relação entre o desempenho no experimento de priming semântico e na tarefa de consciência fonológica, ambos na língua portuguesa. Participaram do estudo 40 universitários chineses multilíngues, 31 universitários brasileiros e 26 crianças de 3a série. Houve efeito de priming semântico nos chineses e nos brasileiros, universitários e crianças, ou seja, respostas mais rápidas na condição comprime relacionado do que na condição com prime não relacionado. Não houve diferenças significativas na magnitude do efeito entre os grupos de adultos, mas as crianças apresentaram maior magnitude de efeito do que os chineses. Considerando apenas o grupo de chineses, não houve correlação entre os escores na tarefa de decisão lexical no paradigma de priming semântico e a avaliação da consciência fonológica. Chineses parecem ter acessado o significado dos primes apresentados visualmente na Língua Portuguesa, não se diferenciando dos brasileiros adultos e crianças

Color naming in Tsimane’–Spanish bilinguals indicates that differential experience with content domains affects lexical access

AbstractA standard assumption in the bilingual language processing literature is that the ease of access of a word in a language is determined by the speaker’s overall proficiency in the language. Alternatively, it could be that proficiency varies across semantic categories of the bilingual’s two languages. Here, we investigated lexical access in color terms in Tsimane’–Spanish bilinguals. Given that color terms are generally more frequent in Spanish than Tsimane’, participants may have better lexical access for color words in Spanish despite being overall more proficient in Tsimane’. Twenty-two Tsimane’–Spanish bilinguals took part in a picture naming task where participants labeled colors and animals. Participants were equally fast and accurate at naming animals in Tsimane’ and Spanish. However, participants were faster and more accurate at naming colors in Spanish than Tsimane’ except for the three color words that are most frequent (jaibes ~ white, tsincus ~ black, jaines ~ red) in Tsimane’, for which they were equally fast in both Tsimane’ and Spanish. These results suggest that category-specific proficiency is a better predictor for lexical access than overall proficiency.</jats:p

Bilingualism: Consequences for Mind and Brain

Building on earlier evidence showing a beneficial effect of bilingualism on children’s cognitive development, we review recent studies using both behavioral and neuroimaging methods to examine the effects of bilingualism on cognition in adulthood and explore possible mechanisms for these effects. This research shows that bilingualism has a somewhat muted effect in adulthood but a larger role in older age, protecting against cognitive decline, a concept known as “cognitive reserve”. We discuss recent evidence that bilingualism is associated with a delay in the onset of symptoms of dementia. Cognitive reserve is a crucial research area in the context of an aging population; the possibility that bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve is therefore of growing importance as populations become increasingly diverse

Head start for target language in bilingual listening

In this study we investigated the availability of non-target language semantic features in bilingual speech processing. We recorded EEG from Dutch-English bilinguals who listened to spoken sentences in their L2 (English) or L1 (Dutch). In Experiments 1 and 3 the sentences contained an interlingual homophone. The sentence context was either biased towards the target language meaning of the homophone (target biased), the non-target language meaning (non-target biased), or neither meaning of the homophone (fully incongruent). These conditions were each compared to a semantically congruent control condition. In L2 sentences we observed an N400 in the non-target biased condition that had an earlier offset than the N400 to fully incongruent homophones. In the target biased condition, a negativity emerged that was later than the N400 to fully incongruent homophones. In L1 contexts, neither target biased nor non-target biased homophones yielded significant N400 effects (compared to the control condition). In Experiments 2 and 4 the sentences contained a language switch to a non-target language word that could be semantically congruent or incongruent. Semantically incongruent words (switched, and non-switched) elicited an N400 effect. The N400 to semantically congruent language-switched words had an earlier offset than the N400 to incongruent words. Both congruent and incongruent language switches elicited a Late Positive Component (LPC). These findings show that bilinguals activate both meanings of interlingual homophones irrespective of their contextual fit. In L2 contexts, the target-language meaning of the homophone has a head start over the non-target language meaning. The target-language head start is also evident for language switches from both L2-to-L1 and L1-to-L

Brain potentials reveal semantic priming in both the 'active' and the 'non-attended' language of early bilinguals

A key question in the study of bilingual functioning is whether both the languages known are active at all times or whether one language can be selectively inactivated when bilingual individuals are tuned to the other language. Psycholinguistic and neuroscientific investigations have provided inconsistent data regarding the level of semantic activation of the two languages, even in the case of highly proficient bilinguals. In the present study, highly proficient, early Welsh/English bilinguals were presented with words in both their languages and were required to make word length decisions on words in one language while disregarding words in the other. Participants were not explicitly told about the organization of the word stream in pairs manipulating (a) semantic relatedness, (b) language of the prime and (c) language of the target in a fully counterbalanced two-by-two-by-two design. We observed significant semantic priming for both English and Welsh target words, irrespective of the active language, and independent of performance in the low-level letter counting task. We conclude that accessing the meaning of a written word is automatic in the two languages even when fluent bilingual adults are instructed to disregard words in one of their languages

Individual Differences in Proactive and Reactive Control in Bilinguals

This study investigated individual differences in bilinguals’ use of proactive and reactive control processes during an executive control task (the AX-CPT) in relation to aspects of the bilingual experience (e.g., second language proficiency). Participants were presented with cue-target letter pairs, one letter at a time (AX, AY, BX, or BY; B and Y are any letter other than A or X) and were instructed to press the “yes” button for AX pairs and the “no” button for any other pair. They completed three blocks which varied in terms of the most frequent trial type (AX-70% vs. AY-70% vs. BX-70%). Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 15 young adult bilinguals during the AX-CPT. The N2, an ERP related to conflict detection, was analyzed in conjunction with behavioural performance. Individual variations in cognitive control strategy were differentially associated with aspects of bilingualism in the AX-70 and AY-70 blocks. In the AX-70 block, greater engagement of proactive control was associated with shorter overall reaction times (RTs), lower accuracy, and enhanced conflict detection. In the AY-70 block, a proactive strategy was associated with lower accuracy, but similar RTs compared to a reactive strategy. Different patterns of association were found between self-reported language-switching behaviours and cognitive control strategy in the AX-70 block compared to the AY-70 block. The results support the idea of individual differences in the relative use of proactive and reactive mechanisms in bilinguals. These differences were related to aspects of language-switching which is an important source of interindividual variability among bilinguals