No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
What Every Policymaker Needs to Know About the Cognitive Benefits of Bilingualism
Abstract
This chapter presents evidence that the regular use of two languages (bilingualism) results in a considerable cognitive advantage which is evidenced in a range of studies covering all life stages: from early years, compulsory education and adulthood to, more recently, even advanced age. The chapter draws on the latest research evidence in order to advocate that all stakeholders in education and wider society would benefit from a shift in attitudes and approach to bilingualism and learning other languages. The benefits at the individual and societal level are so significant that acting on this evidence is not only an educational, but also a health and economic imperative. In the conclusion a set of recommendations is provided for the development and implementation of a new approach relevant to all children and adults: a Healthy Linguistic Diet.
... In terms of the theoretical position on the causes of cognitive development, the data here suggest that developing linguistic proficiency in two or more languages does not seem to contribute to children's divergent thinking development. However, the findings also speak to a field which is keen to demonstrate the cognitive advantages of bilingualism beyond linguistic skills (Fox, Corretjer, & Webb, 2019), sometimes for the honourable purpose of justifying the need for more and better quality foreign or second language teaching (Mehmedbegovic, 2018). This study does not show any such bilingual advantage for creativity in children. ...
Most children in the world grow up bilingual, and bilingualism has been linked to a range of linguistic and other cognitive skills. One such skill is creativity, which is thought could be increased in bilinguals due to enhanced executive functions or more diverse cultural experiences. However, extant literature with children has produced mixed results, perhaps due to methodological limitations. In this study, bilingual and monolingual children (N = 111, 60% bilingual) sampled from the same British schools completed three measures of divergent thinking, alongside measures of nonverbal intelligence, vocabulary, and exposure to English. No differences were found between monolingual and bilingual children across any of the divergent thinking tasks or measures, either before or after controlling for possible confounds, and effect sizes were negligible to small. This well-powered, pre-registered study provides no evidence for a bilingual advantage in the divergent thinking component of creativity amongst children, suggesting that previous mixed results may have been due to a high prevalence of false positives. Thus, while bilingualism has many benefits for children, divergent thinking is not one of them.
The complexity of language elements varies from words to phrases, requiring distinct control demands during bilingual language switching. However, the relationships between language control at different language levels (i.e., lexical and phrasal) as well as how multi-level language control interacts with general cognitive control remain largely unclear yet. Therefore, in this study, we set out to scrutinize the dynamic interplay between language control and general cognitive control at both the lexical and phrasal levels. Our findings offer new insights into how bilinguals recruit proactive and reactive control mechanisms across these linguistic levels of different complexities. Furthermore, on the basis of the present findings, we propose a novel dynamic cognitive model for language control.
Key findings include:
(1) High-second language (L2)-proficiency bilinguals could apply greater proactive control to L2 at both linguistic levels, suggesting the monitoring of the less dominant L2.
(2) Reactive control demands vary from lexical and phrasal levels, influenced by L2 proficiency and bilingual typological differences
(3) General proactive cognitive control mechanism is recruited at the lexical control, whereas both general proactive and reactive cognitive control mechanisms are engaged at the phrasal control.
It is intriguing to learn how language interacts with our cognitive control system. The phenomena of bilingual language control provide us with a perfect window to scrutinize this research topic. Studies on cognitive mechanisms of bilingual language control from 1998 to 2023 were systematically reviewed. Experiment paradigms, hypotheses, behavioral markers, and the relationships between language and non-language control mechanisms were discussed. Nevertheless, several issues remain to be solved in the future. The relationship between reactive and proactive bilingual language control mechanisms is largely unclear. Supera-lexicon level (i.e., phrasal) language control was overlooked by previous studies. “Language control” per se should be re-defined through a more precise comparison with non-language control.
There is an emerging literature suggesting that speaking two or more languages may significantly delay the onset of dementia. Although the mechanisms are unknown, it has been suggested that these may involve cognitive reserve, a concept that has been associated with factors such as higher levels of education, occupational status, social networks, and physical exercise. In the case of bilingualism, cognitive reserve may involve reorganization and strengthening of neural networks that enhance executive control. We review evidence for protective effects of bilingualism from a multicultural perspective involving studies in Toronto and Montreal, Canada, and Hyderabad, India. Reports from Toronto and Hyderabad showed a significant effect of speaking two or more languages in delaying onset of Alzheimer's disease by up to 5 years, whereas the Montreal study showed a significant protective effect of speaking at least four languages and a protective effect of speaking at least two languages in immigrants. Although there were differences in results across studies, a common theme was the significant effect of language use history as one of the factors in determining the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Moreover, the Hyderabad study extended the findings to frontotemporal dementia and vascular dementia.
Recent studies, using predominantly visual tasks, indicate that early bilinguals tend to outperform monolinguals on attention tests. It remains less clear whether such advantages extend to those bilinguals who have acquired their second language later in life. We examined this question in 38 monolingual and 60 bilingual university students. The bilingual group was further subdivided into early childhood (ECB), late childhood (LCB), and early adulthood bilinguals (EAB). The assessment consisted of five subtests from the clinically validated Test of Everyday Attention (TEA). Overall, bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on auditory attention tests, but not on visual search tasks. The latter observation suggests that the differences between bilinguals and monolinguals are specific and not due to a generally higher cognitive performance in bilinguals. Within the bilingual group, ECB showed a larger advantage on attention switching, LCB/EAB on selective attention. We conclude that the effects of bilingualism extend into the auditory domain and are not confined to childhood bilinguals, although their scope might be slightly different in early and late bilinguals.
The rapid endangerment and death of many minority languages across the world is a matter of widespread concern, not only among linguists and anthropologists but among all concerned with issues of cultural identity in an increasingly globalized culture. By some counts, only 600 of the 6,000 or so languages in the world are 'safe' from the threat of extinction. A leading commentator and popular writer on language issues, David Crystal asks the fundamental question, 'Why is language death so important?', reviews the reasons for the current crisis, and investigates what is being done to reduce its impact. This 2002 book contains not only intelligent argument, but moving descriptions of the decline and demise of particular languages, and practical advice for anyone interested in pursuing the subject further.
This book presents an account of the bilingual educational program near Montreal, Canada, referred to as the St. Lambert Experiment. It contains the following chapters: (1) Introduction, (2) The Research Plan and Procedures, (3) The Standings of the Pilot Classes at the End of Grade I, (4) The Follow-Up Classes at the End of Grade I, (5) The Pilot and Follow-Up Classes at Grade II, (6) The Pilot and Follow-Up Classes at Grade III, (7) The Pilot Class at Grade IV, (8) The Program's Effect on Pupils' Attitudes, (9) Pupils' Views of the Program, and (10) The Bilingual Education of Children In Perspective. The appendixes discuss the role of parents and present descriptions of the classes in action. Included are references and an index. (SK)
Children's early concepts are learned through their verbal experiences, knowledge is codified in a linguistic form, and communication defines every aspect of development. Conducting these interactions and learning about the world through two linguistic systems has no effect on the trajectory of development for bilingual children. This chapter explores one aspect of the potential developmental impact of that experience-the development of metalinguistic and literacy skills. It explores the way that bilingualism may alter the manner or rate at which children develop metalinguistic concepts of language and the background skills and early abilities required for reading. The influence of bilingualism on development may have some of its greatest impact in the development of early literacy skills in young children.
In the analysis and control framework, Bialystok identifies analysis (representation) and control (selective attention) as components of language processing and has shown that one of these, control, develops earlier in bilingual children than in comparable monolinguals. In the theory of cognitive complexity and control (CCC), Zelazo and Frye argue that preschool children lack the conscious representation and executive functioning needed to solve problems based on conflicting rules. The present study investigates whether the bilingual advantage in control can be found in a nonverbal task, the dimensional change card sort, used by Zelazo and Frye to assess CCC. This problem contains misleading information characteristic of high-control tasks but minimal demands for analysis. Sixty preschool children, half of whom were bilingual, were divided into a group of younger (M = 4,2) and older (M = 5,5) children. All the children were given a test of English proficiency (PPVT-R) and working memory (Visually-Cued Recall Task) to assure comparability of the groups and then administered the dimensional change card sort task and the moving word task. The bilingual children were more advanced than the monolinguals in the solving of experimental problems requiring high levels of control. These results demonstrate the role of attentional control in both these tasks, extends our knowledge about the cognitive development of bilingual children, and provides a means of relating developmental proposals articulated in two different theoretical frameworks, namely, CCC and analysis-control.
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.
Language Capital: Mapping the Languages of London’s School Children
- J Eversley
- D Mehmedbegovic
- A Sanderson
- T Tinsley
- M Von Ahn
- Wiggins
Rethinking Language Education: From a Monolingual to a Multilingual Perspective
- A Tosi
- C Leung
Languages for the Future. Which Languages the UK Needs Most and Why
- British Council
The Influence of Bilingualism on Cognitive Strategy and Cognitive Development
- S Ben-Zeev
Language, Power and Pedagogy. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters
- J Cummins