W8 L2: Bilingualism

the challenge of bilingualism

  • what doe sit mean to speak a language?

separated or connected?

  • cross-language priming

  • a word in one language makes it easier to retrieve words in the second language

  • STUDY

  • cognates - piano (same in both languages)

  • interlingual homographs - pie (different meanings in different languages , food-eng, foot-spnh)

  • lexical decision task - ask ppts if a word exists or not

  • when bilingual - different pronounciation in the different languages were a little slower (interlingual homographs) but faster when words presented were cognates

  • STUDY

  • interlingual homophones - same meaning words

  • interference found for both languages

  • STUDY

  • in ASL

  • some words had a related signs below words

  • faster when the words were related and the signs were similar

  • slower when the words were unrelated and the signs were similar

  • joint activation also occurred

joint activation

  • languages are alctive even when only one is being used

  • bidirectional influence between languages

code switching

  • switching between languages especially mid-conversation/ sentence

  • within and across language

  • STUDY

  • verbal fluency task - name words with a particular letter

  • when bilinguals did this in their L2 first, they were slower to do the same task with the same letter in L1

  • no effect of naming repeated pictures after a language switch

socio-cultural advantage of bilingualism

  • able to vommunicate with more people

  • access to more culture and relationships with speakers of that language

  • preserving or connecting with heritage

bilinguals vs. monolinguals: Advantages

executive function

  • managing 2 competing overlapping language systems

  • bl better at inhibitory control / executive system

  • EVIDENCE

  • children better at finding figure and identifying correct grammar in odd sentences

  • adults are better at strop task, simon task - older bL showed greater benefits

  • counterexample - no in older bilinguals

  • under some circumstances disadvantages

  • ppts name number in 3 languages

  • naming slowed down in ABA compared to CBA sequences

theory of mind

  • children must realise that different people speak different languages - they must be better at theory of mind

  • false belief theory - sally leaves , marble moves from where she put it, where will she look for it?

  • awareness that sally doesn’t t know what we do

  • EVIDENCE

  • modified theory of mind task

  • 2 children who speak different languages in queue for iced cream

memory

  • bilinguals remember better?

  • EVIDENCE - mixed

  • simon task for more complex paradigm requiring working memory

  • some studies found no advantage on cortis block task for younger but not older bilinguals

general cognition

  • bilinguals show improvement performance on particular cognitive task

disadvantages of bilingualism

  • history of desincouraging bilingualism

  • language control as cultural societal and personal control

vocab

  • language acquisition in children

  • smaller vocab in bilinguals

  • however, it depends on the type of word

  • might be slower at lexical retrieval

  • more tip of the tongue

verbal fluency

  • bl produce fewer words