¡Hola! Nice to Meet You: Language Mixing and Biographical Information Processing

In bilingual communities, social interactions take place in both single- and mixed-language contexts. Some of the information shared in multilingual conversations, such as interlocutors’ personal information, is often required in consequent social encounters. In this study, we explored whether the autobiographical information provided in a single-language context is better remembered than in an equivalent mixed-language situation. More than 400 Basque-Spanish bilingual (pre) teenagers were presented with new persons who introduced themselves by either using only Spanish or only Basque, or by inter-sententially mixing both languages. Different memory measures were collected immediately after the initial exposure to the new pieces of information (immediate recall and recognition) and on the day after (delayed recall and recognition). In none of the time points was the information provided in a mixed-language fashion worse remembered than that provided in a strict one-language context. Interestingly, the variability across participants in their sociodemographic and linguistic variables had a negligible impact on the effects. These results are discussed considering their social and educational implications for bilingual communities

The search for a bilingual advantage in executive functions: a developmental perspective.

222 p.Bilinguals need very intensive language-control mechanisms to produce effective communication and avoid intrusions from the non-target language, because both languages are always active in a bilingual mind (Thierry & Wu, 2007), competing with each other. It is mostly assumed that bilinguals apply inhibition to the non-target language (see, for example, the IC model, Green, 1998). This constant need of inhibition makes bilinguals much better at their general inhibitory abilities as compared to their monolingual counterparts, as claimed by the bilingual advantage defenders (Bialystok et al., 2005). However, recent findings suggest that the repeatedly shown bilingual advantage effect in tasks tapping into domain general inhibition might stem from uncontrolled factors associated to bilingualism, rather than from bilingualism itself, as well as to small sample sizes (Paap & Greenberg, 2013). Crucially, previous evidence tended to neglect the importance of factors such as immigrant status or socio economic status. In the present thesis I aimed at testing the reliability of the criticisms to the bilingual advantage by testing large samples of carefully matched bilingual and monolingual children, young adults and seniors in sets of classic tasks that tap into domain general executive functions, such as Stroop, Flanker and Simon tasks. I found no indication of the bilingual advantage whatsoever, since every bilingual and monolingual group behaved comparably in every task, obtaining highly similar indices. The results are discussed and interpreted in the light of different perspectives.Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Languag

Recycling in Babel: The Impact of Foreign Languages in Rule Learning

Environmental decisions and prosocial behaviors have been shown to be emotionally mediated, and language is at the core of emotions. The language context can alter the way decisions are made, and using a foreign language tends to favor an analytic approach to the decision and reduce its emotional resonance. In the present work, we explored whether or not the strategic use of a native vs. a non-native language could alter the learning of rules that are at the basis of our environmental behavior. To test this, elementary school students carried out a series of tasks that required recycling the employed materials at the end of the session. Children had to put each kind of material used in the corresponding container following basic association rules, resembling the process that they would do at home when recycling. Some students received the whole set of instructions and rules in their native language, while others received them in their foreign language. When the recycling behaviors were compared, results showed that participants who were instructed in their non-native language followed the rules better than their natively instructed peers. These results are discussed in the light of different perspectives, and future directions in the strategic use of language contexts are considered

Better to Be Alone than in Bad Company: Cognate Synonyms Impair Word Learning

The effects of cognate synonymy in L2 word learning are explored. Participants learned the names of well-known concrete concepts in a new fictional language following a picture-word association paradigm. Half of the concepts (set A) had two possible translations in the new language (i.e., both words were synonyms): one was a cognate in participants’ L1 and the other one was not. The other half of the concepts (set B) had only one possible translation in the new language, a non-cognate word. After learning the new words, participants’ memory was tested in a picture-word matching task and a translation recognition task. In line with previous findings, our results clearly indicate that cognates are much easier to learn, as we found that the cognate translation was remembered much better than both its non-cognate synonym and the non-cognate from set B. Our results also seem to suggest that non-cognates without cognate synonyms (set B) are better learned than non-cognates with cognate synonyms (set A). This suggests that, at early stages of L2 acquisition, learning a cognate would produce a poorer acquisition of its non-cognate synonym, as compared to a solely learned non-cognate. These results are discussed in the light of different theories and models of bilingual mental lexicon

The search for a bilingual advantage in executive functions: a developmental perspective.

222 p.Bilinguals need very intensive language-control mechanisms to produce effective communication and avoid intrusions from the non-target language, because both languages are always active in a bilingual mind (Thierry & Wu, 2007), competing with each other. It is mostly assumed that bilinguals apply inhibition to the non-target language (see, for example, the IC model, Green, 1998). This constant need of inhibition makes bilinguals much better at their general inhibitory abilities as compared to their monolingual counterparts, as claimed by the bilingual advantage defenders (Bialystok et al., 2005). However, recent findings suggest that the repeatedly shown bilingual advantage effect in tasks tapping into domain general inhibition might stem from uncontrolled factors associated to bilingualism, rather than from bilingualism itself, as well as to small sample sizes (Paap & Greenberg, 2013). Crucially, previous evidence tended to neglect the importance of factors such as immigrant status or socio economic status. In the present thesis I aimed at testing the reliability of the criticisms to the bilingual advantage by testing large samples of carefully matched bilingual and monolingual children, young adults and seniors in sets of classic tasks that tap into domain general executive functions, such as Stroop, Flanker and Simon tasks. I found no indication of the bilingual advantage whatsoever, since every bilingual and monolingual group behaved comparably in every task, obtaining highly similar indices. The results are discussed and interpreted in the light of different perspectives.Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Languag

The impact of bilingualism on executive functions and working memory in young adults

Published: February 13, 2019A bilingual advantage in a form of a better performance of bilinguals in tasks tapping into executive function abilities has been reported repeatedly in the literature. However, recent research defends that this advantage does not stem from bilingualism, but from uncontrolled factors or imperfectly matched samples. In this study we explored the potential impact of bilingualism on executive functioning abilities by testing large groups of young adult bilinguals and monolinguals in the tasks that were most extensively used when the advantages were reported. Importantly, the recently identified factors that could be disrupting the between groups comparisons were controlled for, and both groups were matched. We found no differences between groups in their performance. Additional bootstrapping analyses indicated that, when the bilingual advantage appeared, it very often co-occurred with unmatched socio-demographic factors. The evidence presented here indicates that the bilingual advantage might indeed be caused by spurious uncontrolled factors rather than bilingualism per se. Secondly, bilingualism has been argued to potentially affect working memory also. Therefore, we tested the same participants in both a forward and a backward version of a visual and an auditory working memory task. We found no differences between groups in either of the forward versions of the tasks, but bilinguals systematically outperformed monolinguals in the backward conditions. The results are analysed and interpreted taking into consideration different perspectives in the domain-specificity of the executive functions and working memory.For this research, JAD has been partially funded by grant PSI2015-65689-P from the Spanish Government (http://www.ciencia.gob.es/), EA has been partially funded by grant PI2015-1-27 from the Basque Government (http://www.euskadi.eus/gobierno-vasco/departamento-educacion/), and MC has been partially funded by ERC-AdG-295362 grant from the European Research Council (https://erc.europa.eu/), by the AThEME project funded by the European Union (grant number 613465, http://www.atheme.eu/), and by grant Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa SEV-2015- 0490 provided by the Spanish Government (http:// www.ciencia.gob.es). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. There was no additional external funding received for this study

Solving Logistic-Oriented Bin Packing Problems Through a Hybrid Quantum-Classical Approach

The Bin Packing Problem is a classic problem with wide industrial applicability. In fact, the efficient packing of items into bins is one of the toughest challenges in many logistic corporations and is a critical issue for reducing storage costs or improving vehicle space allocation. In this work, we resort to our previously published quantum-classical framework known as Q4RealBPP, and elaborate on the solving of real-world oriented instances of the Bin Packing Problem. With this purpose, this paper gravitates on the following characteristics: i) the existence of heterogeneous bins, ii) the extension of the framework to solve not only three-dimensional, but also one- and two-dimensional instances of the problem, iii) requirements for item-bin associations, and iv) delivery priorities. All these features have been tested in this paper, as well as the ability of Q4RealBPP to solve real-world oriented instances.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, paper accepted for being presented in the upcoming 26th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems - ITSC 202

Does bilingualism shape inhibitory control in the elderly?

Epub ahead of print 14/5/2016Bilingualism has been argued to benefit executive functioning. However, recent research suggests that this advantage may stem from uncontrolled factors or incorrectly matched samples. In this study we test the effects of bilingualism on elderly lifelong bilinguals whose cognitive abilities are in decline, thus making any benefits more salient. Firstly we compare 24 bilinguals and 24 carefully matched monolinguals on verbal and the numerical Stroop tasks, obtaining no differences in monitoring or inhibitory measures. Secondly we explore the modulations that the proficiency in the L2 might cause to executive control functions, as measured by the same tasks, by testing 70 elderly bilinguals who vary in their L2 mastery from very low to perfectly fluent. Results show no modulation in any of the indices due to L2 proficiency. These results add to the growing body of evidence showing that the bilingual advantages might indeed be due to other factors rather than bilingualism.This research has been partially funded by Grants PSI2015-65689-P and SEV-2015-0490 from the Spanish Government, PI2015-1-27 from the Basque Government, AThEME-613465 from the European Union and an ERCAdG- 295362 Grant from the European Research Counci

Optimization of Image Acquisition for Earth Observation Satellites via Quantum Computing

Satellite image acquisition scheduling is a problem that is omnipresent in the earth observation field; its goal is to find the optimal subset of images to be taken during a given orbit pass under a set of constraints. This problem, which can be modeled via combinatorial optimization, has been dealt with many times by the artificial intelligence and operations research communities. However, despite its inherent interest, it has been scarcely studied through the quantum computing paradigm. Taking this situation as motivation, we present in this paper two QUBO formulations for the problem, using different approaches to handle the non-trivial constraints. We compare the formulations experimentally over 20 problem instances using three quantum annealers currently available from D-Wave, as well as one of its hybrid solvers. Fourteen of the tested instances have been obtained from the well-known SPOT5 benchmark, while the remaining six have been generated ad-hoc for this study. Our results show that the formulation and the ancilla handling technique is crucial to solve the problem successfully. Finally, we also provide practical guidelines on the size limits of problem instances that can be realistically solved on current quantum computers

Does learning a language in the elderly enhance switching ability?

The bilingual advantage has been subject of research repeatedly over the last decade. Many studies have supported the idea of the existence of a higher functioning in domain general cognitive abilities among bilingual samples as compared to monolingual samples. However, this idea has been recently challenged by a number of scholars, and a recent body of evidence suggests that the acquisition of a new language does not necessarily involve an enhancement of domain-general non-linguistic abilities. In the current study we aimed at exploring the relationship between language learning and switching ability in elderly monolingual participants who learned a second language during a whole academic year. A colour-shape switching task was used as a measure of switching ability and was administered twice in a pre-test/post-test design, both to the critical group of seniors attending a language-learning course on a regular basis and to a group of age-matched monolingual seniors who did not attend to any language-learning course and that served as controls. Results showed that switching costs in the post-test were not significantly different from those in the pre-test in either the experimental or the control groups, demonstrating that the acquisition of a second language in the elderly does not necessarily lead to an enhancement of switching ability as measured by switching costs. We acknowledge the need of further longitudinal L2 training studies to reach clear conclusions on the effects of language learning in domain-general executive control