Age of Acquisition and Cognitive Advantage in BilingualismWillie Lin and Vivian Cardona

Bilingual Have Cognitive Benefits !

Better Executive Function: The primary processes in the executive system are inhibition, shifting of mental sets (task switching or cognitive flexibility), and updating information in working memory (Miyake et al., 2000).

Protection: More resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset. (Gollan, UCSD)

WHY ?Interference: In a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system interfers the other.

Language Switch: A heightened ability to monitor (Attention Control) the environment. Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often (Conflict Processing) — you may talk to your parents in one language and your peers in another language.

Most research reporting cognitive gains in bilinguals examined bilinguals who learnt their two languages relatively early in life.

But what about Monolinguals that want these cognitive advantages.

It seems that one need to be an early bilingual to enjoy the benefits of improved executive functions.

Research: Do you have to be bilingual from a young age to experience cognitive benefits?

PARTICPANTS: Study #1

Tested 100 subjects (University of South Wales)

1) Monolinguals 2) Early Bilinguals 3) Late Bilinguals

Tao et al.

Chinese - English Bilinguals L1: Chinese L2: English

The age of immersion in the L2 environment was considered as the age of onset of bilingualism and used in the classification of bilinguals

• Monolinguals: Born, and had spent most of their lives, in Australia or other English-speaking countries. All were of Caucasian descent. People whose parents spoke other languages were excluded.

• The Early Bilingual: Individuals who had arrived in Australia at or before age six. The average age of arrival for the group was 0.3 years, due to the large majority (30) being born in Australia.

• The Late Bilinguals: Individuals who had arrived in Australia at or after age 12. The average age of arrival in Australia for the group was 16.2 years (ranging from 12 to 19 years).

Tao et al. Methodology Efficiency of the three attentional networks:

alerting, orienting, and executive control Non-verbal intelligence test Lateralized Attention Network Test A) Which way is the middle arrow pointing to ? B) Cues: Valid (same visual hemishpere as the row of arrows) , Invalid & Center ,

None.

Reaction Time and Mean Error Rate

RESULTS • Monolinguals showed the smallest alerting affect (34.6 ms), th

e intermediate result was obtained for early bilingual group (38 ms), and late bilinguals obtained the largest effect (49 ms).

• The three groups did not differ significantly in the orienting benefit effect (valid).

• For the orienting cost (invalid): monolinguals vs. early bilinguals, monolinguals vs. late bilinguals, and early vs. late bilinguals. The difference between late bilinguals and monolinguals was significant, but the other two comparisons were not.

• Early bilinguals seemed to show enhanced monitoring processes.

• Efficiency of the executive network: The late bilinguals were found to be most efficient in resolution of conflict

Conclusion • Both early and late bilinguals found to have more effi

cient executive network than monolinguals.• Continual practice in monitoring and switching betw

een two language systems can lead to the enhanced executive control due to involvement of inhibitory control processes that are required to select and produce the intended language (Green, 1998).

• Regardless of the age at which bilinguals have acquired their second language, and regardless of the similarity between the two languages.

PARTICPANTS: Study #1

• 150 students• Monolinguals: English the only language they

spoke fluently and used for communication.• Early bilinguals: started active bilingualism

before age 10.• Late bilinguals: started active bilingualism

after age 10.*Measured when they actively started to use

the second language.

Tests Used

• Peabody Picture Video Task, 3rd edition (PPVT) to asses receptive vocabulary.

• Cattell Cultural Fair Intelligence Task (CFIT), to assess non-verbal intelligence.

• Spatial Span Subtest from the Wechsler Memory Scare 3rd edition (WMS).

• Flanker Task

Results1) Found an association between an earlier onset of active bilingualism and higher performance in English receptive vocabulary test.2) The onset age of active bilingualism had a positive correlation with the Flanker Effect meaning that those who were "Early" active bilinguals had a smaller flanker effect. They showed less interference on the flanker task.*The effect of bilingualism on executive control shows increased cognitive benefits and a higher proficiency in second language for those who start to speak it early and continue to use their second language regularly.

Luk et al.

The early and late bilingual participants spoke a largevariety of languages in addition to English: Cantonese(early: 10 participants, late: 8 participants), French (early:5, late: 5), Korean (early: 4, late: 2), Hebrew (early: 2,late: 3), Hindi (early: 2, late: 3), Italian (early: 3, late: 2),Mandarin (early: 1, late: 3), Farsi (early: 1, late: 2), Russian(late: 3), Tamil (early: 2, late: 1), Urdu (early: 2, late:1), Spanish (early: 1, late: 2), Polish (early: 2), Punjabi(early: 1, late: 1), Vietnamese (early: 1, late: 1), andsome languages were spoken by just one of the bilingualspeakers: Marathi (early), Indonesian (late), Portuguese(early), Japanese (late), Gujarati (early), Toisan (early),Twi (early), Turkish (late), Ukrainian (late), Swahili(early), and Bulgarian (late)

CONTROLLED SES TAU ET AL.

Demographics details were also collected to allow any major differences between groups, such as age, gender, and socioeconomic background, to be identified.

In particular, lower socioeconomic status (SES) has been shown to be associated with deficits in aspects of attention, especially in tasks that require filtering information and managing response conflict.