Lecture 7 - Bilingualism Flashcards
What are the non-cognitive advantages of being multilingual?
- Travel
- Work
- Intercultural understanding and interaction
- Social well being at home and abroad
- Economic and political advantages
What is the Boston naming test typically used for?
Testing for aphasia - ascertaining the extent to which people still have control of their language.
What does the Boston naming test show about bilingualism?
Those who are bilingual are slower at naming pictures and make more errors than monolinguists, even when it is in their first/dominant language.
What did Gollan et al., (2005) show about the Boston naming test and bilingualism?
Bilinguals were not worse than monolinguists if they were told to categorise the pictures, rather than name them (e.g. is the object in the picture human or non-human?)
Shows that bilinguals have particular difficulties with naming.
What is the verbal fluency task?
A test in which as many words as possible have to be generated, for a particular category. Measures verbal functioning.
How do bilinguals typically perform on verbal fluency tasks?
Bilinguals name fewer members of categories - perform worse on verbal fluency tasks (Gollan et al., 2002).
Are tip of the tongue effects more common in bilinguals or monolinguals?
More common in bilinguals (Gollan & Acenas, 2004).
Which domains of language do bilingual children develop more slowly than monolinguals in?
Vocabulary and grammar
Why does language develop more slowly in bilinguals, compared to monolinguals?
Because there is less time in the day for children, so have less input to learn from. Simply, time constraints.
What has been found about improved cognition in bilinguals?
Bilinguals have:
- delayed onset of dementia by 5 years
- have improved cognitive outcomes after stroke.
What is the flanker task?
A test of executive function which measures the time taken for subjects to indicate the direction of the central arrow among an array.
There are either congruent trials, in which the other arrows in the array are pointing in the same direction, on incongruent trials, in which they are not.
What is the typical performance on the flanker task, and how do bilinguals differ?
Typically. subjects make more errors on incongruent trials than congruent trials.
However, the incongruency effect is lesser in bilinguals.
Why do bilinguals have executive function advantages?
Bilinguals have a continuous activation of both languages, meaning they can speak in either at any time.
There is therefore constant interference between the two languages, which has to be managed.
Greater control of the syntactic rules and word choice of each language must be monitored and controlled more closely.
What might explain the advantages of bilinguals on flanker tasks?
Cognitive advantage in bilinguals on flanker tasks is driven by slow responses, potentially due to their improved attentional control, rather than executive control/function.
Describe word search according to Foster’s search model.
- Letters in the word are recognised.
- An initial unit of the word is used as an access unit, which decides which ‘bin’ the word is in (bins may be based on first morpheme, first letter, etc). Finding the relevant bin is parallel.
- Words in the chosen bin are ordered by frequency of usage and are searched for serially.
- The master file is used to retrieve meaning.
