Lexicon development, consumer acceptance, and drivers of liking of quinoa varieties

Science.gov (United States)

Quinoa is becoming increasingly popular, with an expanding number of varieties being commercially available. In order to compare the sensory properties of these quinoa varieties, a common sensory lexicon needed to be developed. Thus, the objective of this paper was to develop a lexicon describing ...

A study of actions in operative notes.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Yan; Pakhomov, Serguei; Burkart, Nora E; Ryan, James O; Melton, Genevieve B

2012-01-01

Operative notes contain rich information about techniques, instruments, and materials used in procedures. To assist development of effective information extraction (IE) techniques for operative notes, we investigated the sublanguage used to describe actions within the operative report 'procedure description' section. Deep parsing results of 362,310 operative notes with an expanded Stanford parser using the SPECIALIST Lexicon resulted in 200 verbs (92% coverage) including 147 action verbs. Nominal action predicates for each action verb were gathered from WordNet, SPECIALIST Lexicon, New Oxford American Dictionary and Stedman's Medical Dictionary. Coverage gaps were seen in existing lexical, domain, and semantic resources (Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus, SPECIALIST Lexicon, WordNet and FrameNet). Our findings demonstrate the need to construct surgical domain-specific semantic resources for IE from operative notes.

Cognate costs in bilingual speech production: Evidence from language switching

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Mirjam Broersma

2016-09-01

Full Text Available This study investigates cross-language lexical competition in the bilingual mental lexicon. It provides evidence for the occurrence of inhibition as well as the commonly reported facilitation during the production of cognates (words with similar phonological form and meaning in two languages in a mixed picture naming task by highly proficient Welsh-English bilinguals. Previous studies have typically found cognate facilitation. It has previously been proposed (with respect to non-cognates that cross-language inhibition is limited to low-proficient bilinguals; therefore, we tested highly proficient, early bilinguals. In a mixed naming experiment (i.e., picture naming with language switching, 48 highly proficient, early Welsh-English bilinguals named pictures in Welsh and English, including cognate and non-cognate targets. Participants were English-dominant, Welsh-dominant, or had equal language dominance. The results showed evidence for cognate inhibition in to ways. First, both facilitation and inhibition were found on the cognate trials themselves, compared to non-cognate controls, modulated by the participants’ language dominance. The English-dominant group showed cognate inhibition when naming in Welsh (and no difference between cognates and controls when naming in English, and the Welsh-dominant and equal dominance groups generally showed cognate facilitation. Second, cognate inhibition was found as a behavioral adaptation effect, with slower naming for non-cognate filler words in trials after cognates than after non-cognate controls. This effect was consistent across all language dominance groups and both target languages, suggesting that cognate production involved cognitive control even if this was not measurable in the cognate trials themselves. Finally, the results replicated patterns of symmetrical switch costs, as commonly reported for balanced bilinguals. We propose that cognate processing might be affected by two different

Inhibitory Control in Speech Comprehension among Dai–Han Bilingual Children

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Yun Tao

2017-08-01

Full Text Available We aimed to investigate differences in inhibitory control ability between proficient and non-proficient Dai–Han bilinguals. Two experiments used a combined stimulus–stimulus and stimulus–response compatibility paradigm for this purpose. Participants were Dai–Han bilingual primary-school students selected from a Dai-speaking town in Yunnan province, China. In Dai language interference condition, participants were asked to complete a picture category task. Results showed that the effect of attentional control for non-proficient bilinguals (NPBs was significantly greater than that for proficient bilinguals (PBs, while the effect of response inhibition was not. This implied that a difference in inhibitory control between PBs and NPBs appeared at the attention control stage when interference by the Dai lexicon emerged. In Han language interference condition, however, participants were also asked to complete the same task. Results showed that the effect of response inhibition for NPBs was significantly greater than that for PBs, but the effect of attentional control was not. This demonstrated that a difference in inhibitory control emerged at the response inhibition stage when interference by the Han lexicon emerged. This pattern of results is opposite to previous researches, which indicated that the difference between PBs and NPBs occurred at the response inhibition stage under first language condition, whereas at the attentional control stage under second language (L2 condition. Based on these, this study suggests that Dai–Han bilinguals showed a remarkable L2 advantage. In addition, results showed that response times (RTs of PBs were faster than RTs of NPBs while confounding variables (e.g., intelligence, etc. were under control. This indicates that the inhibitory control ability of the PBs is superior to that of NPBs in this study.

HMM-based lexicon-driven and lexicon-free word recognition for online handwritten Indic scripts.

Science.gov (United States)

Bharath, A; Madhvanath, Sriganesh

2012-04-01

Research for recognizing online handwritten words in Indic scripts is at its early stages when compared to Latin and Oriental scripts. In this paper, we address this problem specifically for two major Indic scripts--Devanagari and Tamil. In contrast to previous approaches, the techniques we propose are largely data driven and script independent. We propose two different techniques for word recognition based on Hidden Markov Models (HMM): lexicon driven and lexicon free. The lexicon-driven technique models each word in the lexicon as a sequence of symbol HMMs according to a standard symbol writing order derived from the phonetic representation. The lexicon-free technique uses a novel Bag-of-Symbols representation of the handwritten word that is independent of symbol order and allows rapid pruning of the lexicon. On handwritten Devanagari word samples featuring both standard and nonstandard symbol writing orders, a combination of lexicon-driven and lexicon-free recognizers significantly outperforms either of them used in isolation. In contrast, most Tamil word samples feature the standard symbol order, and the lexicon-driven recognizer outperforms the lexicon free one as well as their combination. The best recognition accuracies obtained for 20,000 word lexicons are 87.13 percent for Devanagari when the two recognizers are combined, and 91.8 percent for Tamil using the lexicon-driven technique.

A Lesk-inspired Unsupervised Algorithm for Lexical Choice from WordNet Synsets

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Basile, Valerio; Basili, Roberto; Lenci, Allesandro; Magnini, Bernardo

2014-01-01

The generation of text from abstract meaning representations involves, among other tasks, the production of lexical items for the concepts to realize. Using WordNet as a foundational ontology, we exploit its internal network structure to predict the best lemmas for a given synset without the need

Creating Parsing Lexicons from Semantic Lexicons Automatically and Its Applications

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Ayan, Necip F; Dorr, Bonnie

2002-01-01

...). We also present the effects of using such a lexicon on the parser performance. The advantage of automating the process is that the same technique can be applied directly to lexicons we have for other languages, for example, Arabic, Chinese, and Spanish. The results indicate that our method will help us generate parsing lexicons which can be used by a broad-coverage parser that runs on different languages.

Automatic Prompt System in the Process of Mapping plWordNet on Princeton WordNet

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Paweł Kędzia

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Automatic Prompt System in the Process of Mapping plWordNet on Princeton WordNet The paper offers a critical evaluation of the power and usefulness of an automatic prompt system based on the extended Relaxation Labelling algorithm in the process of (manual mapping plWordNet on Princeton WordNet. To this end the results of manual mapping – that is inter-lingual relations between plWN and PWN synsets – are juxtaposed with the automatic prompts that were generated for the source language synsets to be mapped. We check the number and type of inter-lingual relations introduced on the basis of automatic prompts and the distance of the respective prompt synsets from the actual target language synsets.

English word frequency and recognition in bilinguals: Inter-corpus comparison and error analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Shi, Lu-Feng

2015-01-01

This study is the second of a two-part investigation on lexical effects on bilinguals' performance on a clinical English word recognition test. Focus is on word-frequency effects using counts provided by four corpora. Frequency of occurrence was obtained for 200 NU-6 words from the Hoosier mental lexicon (HML) and three contemporary corpora, American National Corpora, Hyperspace analogue to language (HAL), and SUBTLEX(US). Correlation analysis was performed between word frequency and error rate. Ten monolinguals and 30 bilinguals participated. Bilinguals were further grouped according to their age of English acquisition and length of schooling/working in English. Word frequency significantly affected word recognition in bilinguals who acquired English late and had limited schooling/working in English. When making errors, bilinguals tended to replace the target word with a word of a higher frequency. Overall, the newer corpora outperformed the HML in predicting error rate. Frequency counts provided by contemporary corpora predict bilinguals' recognition of English monosyllabic words. Word frequency also helps explain top replacement words for misrecognized targets. Word-frequency effects are especially prominent for bilinguals foreign born and educated.

Pre-Algebra Lexicon.

Science.gov (United States)

Hayden, Dunstan; Cuevas, Gilberto

The pre-algebra lexicon is a set of classroom exercises designed to teach the technical words and phrases of pre-algebra mathematics, and includes the terms most commonly found in related mathematics courses. The lexicon has three parts, each with its own introduction. The first introduces vocabulary items in three groups forming a learning…

Iconic Native Culture Cues Inhibit Second Language Production in a Non-immigrant Population: Evidence from Bengali-English Bilinguals.

Science.gov (United States)

Roychoudhuri, Kesaban S; Prasad, Seema G; Mishra, Ramesh K

2016-01-01

We examined if iconic pictures belonging to one's native culture interfere with second language production in bilinguals in an object naming task. Bengali-English bilinguals named pictures in both L1 and L2 against iconic cultural images representing Bengali culture or neutral images. Participants named in both "Blocked" and "Mixed" language conditions. In both conditions, participants were significantly slower in naming in English when the background was an iconic Bengali culture picture than a neutral image. These data suggest that native language culture cues lead to activation of the L1 lexicon that competed against L2 words creating an interference. These results provide further support to earlier observations where such culture related interference has been observed in bilingual language production. We discuss the results in the context of cultural influence on the psycholinguistic processes in bilingual object naming.

Toddlers' Verb Lexicon Diversity and Grammatical Outcomes

Science.gov (United States)

Hadley, Pamela A.; Rispoli, Matthew; Hsu, Ning

2016-01-01

Purpose: The goals of this study were to quantify longitudinal expectations for verb lexicon growth and to determine whether verb lexicon measures were better predictors of later grammatical outcomes than noun lexicon measures. Method: Longitudinal parent-report measures from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (Fenson et al.,…

Lexicon Reduction for Urdu/Arabic Script Based Character Recognition: A Multilingual OCR

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Saeeda Naz

2016-04-01

Full Text Available Arabic script character recognition is challenging task due to complexity of the script and huge number of ligatures. We present a method for the development of multilingual Arabic script OCR (Optical Character Recognition and lexicon reduction for Arabic Script and its derivative languages. The objective of the proposed method is to overcome the large dataset Urdu and similar scripts by using GCT (Ghost Character Theory concept. Arabic and its sibling script languages share the similar character dataset i.e. the character set are difference in diacritic and writing styles like Naskh or Nasta?liq. Based on the proposed method, the lexicon for Arabic and Arabic script based languages can be minimized approximately up to 20 times. The proposed multilingual Arabic script OCR approach have been evaluated for online Arabic and its derivative language like Urdu using BPNN. The result showed that proposed method helps to not only the reduction of lexicon but also helps to develop the Multilanguage character recognition system for Arabic Script.

What is it like to grow up to be bilingual?-A survey report on bilingual high school students-

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Satoshi Tamiya

2014-10-01

Full Text Available In this era of globalization, Japanese teachers as well as teachers in other areas of the world have increasing chances of encountering bilingual students such as returnees and immigrants. It is important to understand the development of these students. The authors conducted a survey about bilingualism on 60 bilingual high school students at an international school in Japan. The survey questions asked about the students’ background and their experiences as a bilingual. Twenty-nine students responded to the survey. The responses were classified according to whether the reported advantages/disadvantages were linguistic, socio-cultural or identity-related. Linguistic disadvantages as well as advantages were experienced by most students. Bilingual influences on identity were mostly favorable, but some difficulties were common. Despite these disadvantages, socio-cultural advantages were prominent. It was reassuring to see that many bilingual high school students felt they were socio-culturally advantaged and mostly felt secure about their identity as a bilingual. However, we should not dismiss linguistic difficulties experienced by many of them and some cases of insecure identity, as these are crucially related to the mental health and creation of self-identity that is typical of adolescence.

Validation of the Danish PAROLE lexicon (upubliceret)

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Møller, Margrethe; Christoffersen, Ellen

2000-01-01

This validation is based on the Danish PAROLE lexicon dated June 20, 1998, downloaded on March 16, 1999. Subsequently, the developers of the lexicon have informed us that they have been revising the lexicon, in particular the morphological level. Morphological entries were originally generated...... automatically from a machine-readable version of the Official Danish Spelling Dictionary (Retskrivningsordbogen 1986, in the following RO86), and this resulted in some overgeneration, which the developers started eliminating after submitting the Danish PAROLE lexicon for validation. The present validation is......, however, based on the January 1997 version of the lexicon. The validation as such complies with the specifications described in ELRA validation manuals for lexical data, i.e. Underwood and Navaretta: "A Draft Manual for the Validation of Lexica, Final Report" [Underwood & Navaretta1997] and Braasch: "A...

Workflow Lexicons in Healthcare: Validation of the SWIM Lexicon.

Science.gov (United States)

Meenan, Chris; Erickson, Bradley; Knight, Nancy; Fossett, Jewel; Olsen, Elizabeth; Mohod, Prerna; Chen, Joseph; Langer, Steve G

2017-06-01

For clinical departments seeking to successfully navigate the challenges of modern health reform, obtaining access to operational and clinical data to establish and sustain goals for improving quality is essential. More broadly, health delivery organizations are also seeking to understand performance across multiple facilities and often across multiple electronic medical record (EMR) systems. Interpreting operational data across multiple vendor systems can be challenging, as various manufacturers may describe different departmental workflow steps in different ways and sometimes even within a single vendor's installed customer base. In 2012, The Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) recognized the need for better quality and performance data standards and formed SIIM's Workflow Initiative for Medicine (SWIM), an initiative designed to consistently describe workflow steps in radiology departments as well as defining operational quality metrics. The SWIM lexicon was published as a working model to describe operational workflow steps and quality measures. We measured the prevalence of the SWIM lexicon workflow steps in both academic and community radiology environments using real-world patient observations and correlated that information with automatically captured workflow steps from our clinical information systems. Our goal was to measure frequency of occurrence of workflow steps identified by the SWIM lexicon in a real-world clinical setting, as well as to correlate how accurately departmental information systems captured patient flow through our health facility.

A Comparative Analysis of Methods in the Research of Bilingual Semantic Memory

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Tanja Gulan

2016-11-01

Full Text Available The facts that cognitive functioning of the bilingual speakers is different from that of the monolinguals, and that there is a growing number of bilinguals motivated us to write this paper. Such knowledge sets requirements on researchers to include bilingualism as an important variable in their research, even if the bilingualism is not the primary topic of their interest. However, the main topic of this paper was concerned with the methodology and was pointed toward researchers who are new to this area, as well as to those who are more experienced and wish to improve their research in the field of bilingualism. Taken that there is an increase in a number of published papers dealing with the bilingualism, especially regarding the organization of bilingual mental lexicon, we felt the need to offer a review of the most often used research paradigms and findings from this area of research.  This paper consists of three major parts. In the first part, we briefly defined main concepts in the field of bilingualism research followed by a brief discussion on the most important research questions. In the second part of this paper, we gave a review of the most important methods that are used in order to answer the aforementioned research questions. The methods were evaluated with regard to the scope they could be used to answer research questions. Moreover, this paper offered further recommendations for adequate method selection. And finally, the third part of the paper referred to the key methodological factors which a researcher needs to take into account while conceptualizing research and designing the experiment. Also, we gave some recommendations for how to control or annul the effects of those factors on the dependent variable.

Static Analysis Alert Audits: Lexicon and Rules

Science.gov (United States)

2016-11-04

1 Audit Rules and Lexicon Date 00, 2016 © 2016 Carnegie Mellon University [DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT A] This material has been approved for public...DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT A] This material has been approved for public release and unlimited distribution. REV-03.18.2016.0 Static Analysis Alert Audits ...Lexicon And Rules William Snavely 2 Audit Rules and Lexicon Date 00, 2016 © 2016 Carnegie Mellon University [DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT A] This material

Morphosyntax in the Bilingual Mental Lexicon: An Experimental Study of Strong Stems in German

Science.gov (United States)

Krause, Helena; Bosch, Sina; Clahsen, Harald

2015-01-01

Although morphosyntax has been identified as a major source of difficulty for adult (nonnative) language learners, most previous studies have examined a limited set of largely affix-based phenomena. Little is known about word-based morphosyntax in late bilinguals and of how morphosyntax is represented and processed in a nonnative speaker's…

Growth of a Functionally Important Lexicon.

Science.gov (United States)

Zechmeister, Eugene B.; And Others

1995-01-01

Uses a dictionary-sampling method and multiple-choice testing of word knowledge to estimate the lexicon size of junior-high students, college students, and older adults. Suggests that there may yet be a role for direct instruction in affecting lexicon size of functionally important words. (SR)

Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Fifth Edition. Bilingual Education & Bilingualism

Science.gov (United States)

Baker, Colin

2011-01-01

The fifth edition of this bestselling book provides a comprehensive introduction to bilingualism and bilingual education. In a compact and clear style, its 19 chapters cover all the crucial issues in bilingualism at individual, group and national levels. These include: (1) defining who is bilingual and multilingual; (2) testing language abilities…

Automatic Construction and Global Optimization of a Multisentiment Lexicon

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Xiaoping Yang

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Manual annotation of sentiment lexicons costs too much labor and time, and it is also difficult to get accurate quantification of emotional intensity. Besides, the excessive emphasis on one specific field has greatly limited the applicability of domain sentiment lexicons (Wang et al., 2010. This paper implements statistical training for large-scale Chinese corpus through neural network language model and proposes an automatic method of constructing a multidimensional sentiment lexicon based on constraints of coordinate offset. In order to distinguish the sentiment polarities of those words which may express either positive or negative meanings in different contexts, we further present a sentiment disambiguation algorithm to increase the flexibility of our lexicon. Lastly, we present a global optimization framework that provides a unified way to combine several human-annotated resources for learning our 10-dimensional sentiment lexicon SentiRuc. Experiments show the superior performance of SentiRuc lexicon in category labeling test, intensity labeling test, and sentiment classification tasks. It is worth mentioning that, in intensity label test, SentiRuc outperforms the second place by 21 percent.

Bilingualism as a Model for Multitasking.

Science.gov (United States)

Poarch, Gregory J; Bialystok, Ellen

2015-03-01

Because both languages of bilinguals are constantly active, bilinguals need to manage attention to the target language and avoid interference from the non-target language. This process is likely carried out by recruiting the executive function (EF) system, a system that is also the basis for multitasking. In previous research, bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals on tasks requiring EF, suggesting that the practice using EF for language management benefits performance in other tasks as well. The present study examined 203 children, 8-11 years old, who were monolingual, partially bilingual, bilingual, or trilingual performing a flanker task. Two results support the interpretation that bilingualism is related to multitasking. First, bilingual children outperformed monolinguals on the conflict trials in the flanker task, confirming previous results for a bilingual advantage in EF. Second, the inclusion of partial bilinguals and trilinguals set limits on the role of experience: partial bilingual performed similarly to monolinguals and trilinguals performed similarly to bilinguals, suggesting that degrees of experience are not well-calibrated to improvements in EF. Our conclusion is that the involvement of EF in bilingual language processing makes bilingualism a form of linguistic multitasking.

Assessment of second language proficiency in bilingual children with specific language impairment: a clinical perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Verhoeven, Ludo; Steenge, Judit; van Weerdenburg, Marjolijn; van Balkom, Hans

2011-01-01

The goal of this study was to examine to what extent the conditions of restricted input of L2 and SLI have an additive impact on language acquisition. Therefore, the Dutch language achievement of 6-, 7-, and 8-year-old bilingual children with SLI was compared with that of typically developing monolingual Dutch children, typically developing bilingual children, and monolingual Dutch children with SLI. Assuming that speaking a language in varying environments involves distinct subskills that can be acquired in differential patterns, the achievement of phonological, lexical, morphosyntactic and textual abilities were assessed separately. For each of these abilities, it was determined to what extent the conditions of restricted input (first vs. second language) and language deficit (typically developing vs. SLI) cause stagnation or a delay in language acquisition. Bilingual children with SLI perform at a lower level than the other groups in almost all aspects of achievement in Dutch. For language tasks related to the mental lexicon and grammar, an additional disadvantage was evidenced as a result of the combination of learning Dutch as second language and having SLI. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cross-Linguistic Influence in the Bilingual Mental Lexicon: Evidence of Cognate Effects in the Phonetic Production and Processing of a Vowel Contrast.

Science.gov (United States)

Amengual, Mark

2016-01-01

The present study examines cognate effects in the phonetic production and processing of the Catalan back mid-vowel contrast (/o/-/ɔ/) by 24 early and highly proficient Spanish-Catalan bilinguals in Majorca (Spain). Participants completed a picture-naming task and a forced-choice lexical decision task in which they were presented with either words (e.g., /bɔsk/ "forest") or non-words based on real words, but with the alternate mid-vowel pair in stressed position ((*)/bosk/). The same cognate and non-cognate lexical items were included in the production and lexical decision experiments. The results indicate that even though these early bilinguals maintained the back mid-vowel contrast in their productions, they had great difficulties identifying non-words and real words based on the identity of the Catalan mid-vowel. The analyses revealed language dominance and cognate effects: Spanish-dominants exhibited higher error rates than Catalan-dominants, and production and lexical decision accuracy were also affected by cognate status. The present study contributes to the discussion of the organization of early bilinguals' dominant and non-dominant sound systems, and proposes that exemplar theoretic approaches can be extended to include bilingual lexical connections that account for the interactions between the phonetic and lexical levels of early bilingual individuals.

Lexicon and Description of Sui Adjective Intensifiers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

James N. Stanford

2007-01-01

Full Text Available Sui, an indigenous minority language of southwest China, has an elaborate system of adjective intensification. Adjectives are intensified with word-specific, bound morphemes that usually either rhyme with the base or alliterate with the base. Stanford (2007 notes morpho-phonological patterns that suggest reduplication, rhyme, alliteration, The Emergence of the Unmarked (McCarthy & Prince 1994, Yip 2001, identity avoidance, and “Copy But Don’t Repeat” (Kennard 2004. However, the adjective intensifiers defy a simple, fully predictable explanation in such terms; the intensifier lexicon may be best described as “patterned variety,” a case of lexicalized poetry or a poeticized lexicon. Word formation is guided by general patterns, but each specific intensifier may vary within those overall guidelines. Many adjectives have multiple intensifiers that bear subtle semantic and pragmatic distinctions. The current paper serves as a complement to Stanford (2007 by providing a detailed lexicon of the Sui adjective intensifiers for future reference and further analysis. This lexicon is based on the author’s fieldwork and represents the first detailed account of Sui adjective intensifiers for the wider linguistic community.

Shared cross-modal associations and the emergence of the lexicon

OpenAIRE

Cuskley, Christine F.

2013-01-01

This thesis centres around a sensory theory of protolanguage emergence, or STP. The STP proposes that shared biases to make associations between sensory modalities provided the basis for the emergence of a shared protolinguistic lexicon. Crucially, this lexicon would have been grounded in our perceptual systems, and thus fundamentally non-arbitrary. The foundation of such a lexicon lies in shared cross-modal associations: biases shared among language users to map properties in ...

How much exposure to English is necessary for a bilingual toddler to perform like a monolingual peer in language tests?

Science.gov (United States)

Cattani, Allegra; Abbot-Smith, Kirsten; Farag, Rafalla; Krott, Andrea; Arreckx, Frédérique; Dennis, Ian; Floccia, Caroline

2014-11-01

Bilingual children are under-referred due to an ostensible expectation that they lag behind their monolingual peers in their English acquisition. The recommendations of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) state that bilingual children should be assessed in both the languages known by the children. However, despite these recommendations, a majority of speech and language professionals report that they assess bilingual children only in English as bilingual children come from a wide array of language backgrounds and standardized language measures are not available for the majority of these. Moreover, even when such measures do exist, they are not tailored for bilingual children. It was asked whether a cut-off exists in the proportion of exposure to English at which one should expect a bilingual toddler to perform as well as a monolingual on a test standardized for monolingual English-speaking children. Thirty-five bilingual 2;6-year-olds exposed to British English plus an additional language and 36 British monolingual toddlers were assessed on the auditory component of the Preschool Language Scale, British Picture Vocabulary Scale and an object-naming measure. All parents completed the Oxford Communicative Development Inventory (Oxford CDI) and an exposure questionnaire that assessed the proportion of English in the language input. Where the CDI existed in the bilingual's additional language, these data were also collected. Hierarchical regression analyses found the proportion of exposure to English to be the main predictor of the performance of bilingual toddlers. Bilingual toddlers who received 60% exposure to English or more performed like their monolingual peers on all measures. K-means cluster analyses and Levene variance tests confirmed the estimated English exposure cut-off at 60% for all language measures. Finally, for one additional language for which we had multiple participants, additional language CDI production scores were

Conceptual representation of verbs in bilinguals: semantic field effects and a second-language performance paradox.

Science.gov (United States)

Segalowitz, Norman; de Almeida, Roberto G

2002-01-01

It is well known that bilinguals perform better in their first language (L1) than in their second lanaguage (L2) in a wide range of linguistic tasks. In recent studies, however, the authors have found that bilingual participants can demonstrate faster response times to L1 stimuli than to L2 stimuli in one classification task and the reverse in a different classification task. In the current study, they investigated the reasons for this "L2-better-than-L1" effect. English-French bilinguals performed one word relatedness and two categorization tasks with verbs of motion (e.g., run) and psychological verbs (e.g., admire) in both languages. In the word relatedness task, participants judged how closely related pairs of verbs from both categories were. In a speeded semantic categorization task, participants classified the verbs according to their semantic category (psychological or motion). In an arbitrary classification task, participants had to learn how verbs had been assigned to two arbitrary categories. Participants performed better in L1 in the semantic classification task but paradoxically better in L2 in the arbitrary classification task. To account for these effects, the authors used the ratings from the word relatedness task to plot three-dimensional "semantic fields" for the verbs. Cross-language field differences were found to be significantly related to the paradoxical performance and to fluency levels. The results have implications for understanding of how bilinguals represent verbs in the mental lexicon. Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).

Guessing lexicon entries using finite-state methods

OpenAIRE

Koskenniemi, Kimmo Matti

2018-01-01

A practical method for interactive guessing of LEXC lexicon entries is presented. The method is based on describing groups of similarly inflected words using regular expressions. The patterns are compiled into a finite-state transducer (FST) which maps any word form into the possible LEXC lexicon entries which could generate it. The same FST can be used (1) for converting conventional headword lists into LEXC entries, (2) for interactive guessing of entries, (3) for corpus-assisted interactiv...

The New Lexicon Poeticum

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wills, Tarrin Jon

The New Lexicon Poeticum (lexiconpoeticum.org) is a project to produce a new lexicographic resource covering Old Norse poetry (initially the category known as skaldic poetry). It is based on the corpus produced by the Skaldic Project (supported project no. 60 of the Union Académique Internationale...... number of words that only exist through editorial conjecture, and omits large numbers of words that are evidenced in the manuscript tradition, particularly as manuscript variants are largely ignored. This situation has left a significant gap in methodologies between the material evidence of the poetic....... The new resource will be linked directly to these resources, enabling the lexicon to be understood in its complex contexts. ONP, founded in 1939, is the major dictionary of Old Norse. The poetic corpus was specifically excluded from ONP because of the lack of a reliable edition of this material — a lack...

Comprehensive Study on Lexicon-based Ensemble Classification Sentiment Analysis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Łukasz Augustyniak

2015-12-01

Full Text Available We propose a novel method for counting sentiment orientation that outperforms supervised learning approaches in time and memory complexity and is not statistically significantly different from them in accuracy. Our method consists of a novel approach to generating unigram, bigram and trigram lexicons. The proposed method, called frequentiment, is based on calculating the frequency of features (words in the document and averaging their impact on the sentiment score as opposed to documents that do not contain these features. Afterwards, we use ensemble classification to improve the overall accuracy of the method. What is important is that the frequentiment-based lexicons with sentiment threshold selection outperform other popular lexicons and some supervised learners, while being 3–5 times faster than the supervised approach. We compare 37 methods (lexicons, ensembles with lexicon’s predictions as input and supervised learners applied to 10 Amazon review data sets and provide the first statistical comparison of the sentiment annotation methods that include ensemble approaches. It is one of the most comprehensive comparisons of domain sentiment analysis in the literature.

Investigative change detection: identifying new topics using lexicon-based search

Science.gov (United States)

Hintz, Kenneth J.

2002-08-01

In law enforcement there is much textual data which needs to be searched in order to detect new threats. A new methodology which can be applied to this need is the automatic searching of the contents of documents from known sources to construct a lexicon of words used by that source. When analyzing future documents, the occurrence of words which have not been lexiconized are indicative of the introduction of a new topic into the source's lexicon which should be examined in its context by an analyst. A system analogous to this has been built and used to detect Fads and Categories on web sites. Fad refers to the first appearance of a word not in the lexicon; Category refers to the repeated appearance of a Fad word and the exceeding of some frequency or spatial occurrence metric indicating a permanence to the Category.

Mandarin-English Bilinguals Process Lexical Tones in Newly Learned Words in Accordance with the Language Context.

Science.gov (United States)

Quam, Carolyn; Creel, Sarah C

2017-01-01

Previous research has mainly considered the impact of tone-language experience on ability to discriminate linguistic pitch, but proficient bilingual listening requires differential processing of sound variation in each language context. Here, we ask whether Mandarin-English bilinguals, for whom pitch indicates word distinctions in one language but not the other, can process pitch differently in a Mandarin context vs. an English context. Across three eye-tracked word-learning experiments, results indicated that tone-intonation bilinguals process tone in accordance with the language context. In Experiment 1, 51 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 26 English speakers without tone experience were taught Mandarin-compatible novel words with tones. Mandarin-English bilinguals out-performed English speakers, and, for bilinguals, overall accuracy was correlated with Mandarin dominance. Experiment 2 taught 24 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 25 English speakers novel words with Mandarin-like tones, but English-like phonemes and phonotactics. The Mandarin-dominance advantages observed in Experiment 1 disappeared when words were English-like. Experiment 3 contrasted Mandarin-like vs. English-like words in a within-subjects design, providing even stronger evidence that bilinguals can process tone language-specifically. Bilinguals (N = 58), regardless of language dominance, attended more to tone than English speakers without Mandarin experience (N = 28), but only when words were Mandarin-like-not when they were English-like. Mandarin-English bilinguals thus tailor tone processing to the within-word language context.

Lexicon Optimization for Dutch Speech Recognition in Spoken Document Retrieval

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ordelman, Roeland J.F.; van Hessen, Adrianus J.; de Jong, Franciska M.G.

In this paper, ongoing work concerning the language modelling and lexicon optimization of a Dutch speech recognition system for Spoken Document Retrieval is described: the collection and normalization of a training data set and the optimization of our recognition lexicon. Effects on lexical coverage

Lexicon optimization for Dutch speech recognition in spoken document retrieval

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ordelman, Roeland J.F.; van Hessen, Adrianus J.; de Jong, Franciska M.G.; Dalsgaard, P.; Lindberg, B.; Benner, H.

2001-01-01

In this paper, ongoing work concerning the language modelling and lexicon optimization of a Dutch speech recognition system for Spoken Document Retrieval is described: the collection and normalization of a training data set and the optimization of our recognition lexicon. Effects on lexical coverage

Human Factors Military Lexicon: Auditory Displays

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Letowski, Tomasz

2001-01-01

.... In addition to definitions specific to auditory displays, speech communication, and audio technology, the lexicon includes several terms unique to military operational environments and human factors...

Grammar-Lexicon Distinction in a Neurocognitive Context

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ishkhanyan, Byurakn

hypotheses and testing them through using various methods. The grammar-lexicon distinction and working memory are thus central topics of this thesis. The results suggest a potential for a successful integration of the two theories. The findings further provide evidence for Boye & Harder’s (2012......) understanding of the grammar-lexicon distinction, and for the involvement of working memory in language production, as the REF-model would predict. As a starting point for integrating the two theories, the present thesis gives directions for future research on the neurocognitive underpinning of language and its...... relation to working memory....

Developing a reduced consumer-led lexicon to measure emotional response to beer

OpenAIRE

Chaya, Carolina; Eaton, Curtis; Hewson, Louise; Fernández Vázquezc, Rocío; Fernández-Ruiz, Virginia; Smart, Katherine A.; Hort, Joanne

2015-01-01

Previous researchers have recently recommended and utilised consumer-led lexicons to measure emotional response. This study further advances this approach by 1) making the lexicon generation process more efficient by using consumer focus groups as opposed to individual consumer interviews and 2) decreasing the number of responses required from each consumer by reducing the lexicon to categories of similar terms. In response to 10 lager samples which were manipulated in order to control select...

Ou wyn in nuwe sakke: 'n Kritiese waardering van Bijbels lexicon

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anna Nel Otto

2011-10-01

Full Text Available

Opsomming: Bijbels lexicon is 'n Nederlandse leksikon wat woorde en uitdrukkings bevat wat aan die Bybel ontleen is en wat ná 1945 nog bekend was. Die teikengebruikers van hierdie leksikon is waarskynlik persone wat graag die Bybel lees en diegene wat belangstel in die oor-sprong en agtergrond van die Nederlandse taal. Die inleiding tot die leksikon bevat baie inligting, onder andere oor hoe die leksikon saamgestel is, 'n uiteensetting van tipes leksikale items en motivering vir lemmakeuses en tydvak wat gedek word, hoe om leksikale items na te slaan, ens. Selfs niegelowiges sal die leksikon kan gebruik, aangesien die inleiding ook agtergrondsinligting in blokvorm bevat, nl. 'n uiteensetting van die inhoud van die Bybel, en inligting oor Nederlandse Bybelvertalings, spreekwoordversamelings en Bybelse name. Die voordele van hierdie leksikon is dat dit slegs huidige gebruiksvoorbeelde bevat en daarom dus neologismes en veranderde betekenisse akkommodeer. Hoewel die outeurs in enkele gevalle afwyk van die terminologie vir verskillende tipes leksikale items, soos deur hulle self omskryf, is die hantering van woordeboekartikels oor die algemeen baie konsekwent en inligting is maklik toeganklik. Die waarde van die leksikon sou moontlik verder verhoog kon word deur die gebruik van meer kruisverwysings.

Sleutelwoorde: BETEKENIS, BYBEL, EIENAAM, HEDENDAAGSE GEBRUIK, HER-KOMS, LEKSIKOGRAFIE, LEKSIKON, NEDERLANDS, NEOLOGISME, SITAAT, SPREEK-WOORD, VASTE UITDRUKKING

Abstract: Old Wine in New Bottles: A Critical Appreciation of Bijbels lexicon. Bijbels lexicon is a Dutch lexicon which includes words and fixed expressions which have been borrowed from the Bible and which were still known after 1945. The target users of this lexicon are probably people who are fond of reading the Bible and those who are interested in the origin and background of the Dutch language. The introduction to the dictionary contains much information, inter alia on how

Mandarin-English Bilinguals Process Lexical Tones in Newly Learned Words in Accordance with the Language Context

Science.gov (United States)

Quam, Carolyn; Creel, Sarah C.

2017-01-01

Previous research has mainly considered the impact of tone-language experience on ability to discriminate linguistic pitch, but proficient bilingual listening requires differential processing of sound variation in each language context. Here, we ask whether Mandarin-English bilinguals, for whom pitch indicates word distinctions in one language but not the other, can process pitch differently in a Mandarin context vs. an English context. Across three eye-tracked word-learning experiments, results indicated that tone-intonation bilinguals process tone in accordance with the language context. In Experiment 1, 51 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 26 English speakers without tone experience were taught Mandarin-compatible novel words with tones. Mandarin-English bilinguals out-performed English speakers, and, for bilinguals, overall accuracy was correlated with Mandarin dominance. Experiment 2 taught 24 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 25 English speakers novel words with Mandarin-like tones, but English-like phonemes and phonotactics. The Mandarin-dominance advantages observed in Experiment 1 disappeared when words were English-like. Experiment 3 contrasted Mandarin-like vs. English-like words in a within-subjects design, providing even stronger evidence that bilinguals can process tone language-specifically. Bilinguals (N = 58), regardless of language dominance, attended more to tone than English speakers without Mandarin experience (N = 28), but only when words were Mandarin-like—not when they were English-like. Mandarin-English bilinguals thus tailor tone processing to the within-word language context. PMID:28076400

MOTIVATIONAL LEXICON IN ANTHONY ROBBINS’ UNLIMITED POWER

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nur Faidatun Naimah

2016-12-01

Full Text Available In the language learning process, motivation, one of psychological factors, has a great role in endorsing students to be a successful learner. Based on the issues, the choice of words that can influence the students to do the best is practically required by the teachers. So that, teacher as a motivator has a power to influence the students to take action for achieving their excellent learning, using what Anthony Robbins suggest on his book; Unlimited Power. The writer formulated the aims of this study as follow; (1 to identify the motivational lexicons in Unlimited Power from the psychological perspective, and (2 to describe how motivational lexicons in Unlimited Power take apart in the pedagogical field. This research used qualitative research to find out the data. The data analysis technique that researcher used is content analysis since they were texts in Unlimited Power. Researcher found three motivational lexicons used by Anthony Robbins in his book Unlimited Power; think, challenge, and remember. Think used as a tool to lead his readers to come to their memory, re-identify some main points, and consider about the certain thing. Challenge used to pump readers’ emotion, gave a test, and invited them to take action. Remember used as a tool to bring back a piece of information he provided before and try to keep it in readers’ mind. Anthony’s motivational lexicons in Unlimited Power also can use in the pedagogical field. Teacher can use them in the teaching-learning process as it determines the effectiveness of rewards for what students do and apparently influential factor for learning process.

Motivational Lexicon in Anthony Robbins’ Unlimited Power

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nur Faidatun Naimah

2016-12-01

Full Text Available In the language learning process, motivation, one of psychological factors, has a great role in endorsing students to be a successful learner. Based on the issues, the choice of words that can influence the students to do the best is practically required by the teachers. So that, teacher as a motivator has a power to influence the students to take action for achieving their excellent learning, using what Anthony Robbins suggest on his book; Unlimited Power. The writer formulated the aims of this study as follow; (1 to identify the motivational lexicons in Unlimited Power from the psychological perspective, and (2 to describe how motivational lexicons in Unlimited Power take apart in the pedagogical field. This research used qualitative research to find out the data. The data analysis technique that researcher used is content analysis since they were texts in Unlimited Power. Researcher found three motivational lexicons used by Anthony Robbins in his book Unlimited Power; think, challenge, and remember. Think used as a tool to lead his readers to come to their memory, re-identify some main points, and consider about the certain thing. Challenge used to pump readers’ emotion, gave a test, and invited them to take action. Remember used as a tool to bring back a piece of information he provided before and try to keep it in readers’ mind. Anthony’s motivational lexicons in Unlimited Power also can use in the pedagogical field. Teacher can use them in the teaching-learning process as it determines the effectiveness of rewards for what students do and apparently influential factor for learning process.

Concise Lexicon for Sign Linguistics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

dr. Jan Nijen Twilhaar; Dr. Beppie van den Bogaerde

2016-01-01

This extensive, well-researched and clearly formatted lexicon of a wide variety of linguistic terms is a long overdue. It is an extremely welcome addition to the bookshelves of sign language teachers, interpreters, linguists, learners and other sign language users, and of course of the Deaf

Limits on Monolingualism? A comparison of monolingual and bilingual infants’ abilities to integrate lexical tone in novel word learning.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Leher eSingh

2016-05-01

Full Text Available To construct their first lexicon, infants must determine the relationship between native phonological variation and the meanings of words. This process is arguably more complex for bilingual learners who are often confronted with phonological conflict: phonological variation that is lexically relevant in one language may be lexically irrelevant in the other. In a series of four experiments, the present study investigated English-Mandarin bilingual infants’ abilities to negotiate phonological conflict introduced by learning both a tone and a non-tone language. In a novel word learning task, bilingual children were tested on their sensitivity to tone variation in English and Mandarin contexts. Their abilities to interpret tone variation in a language-dependent manner were compared to those of monolingual Mandarin learning infants. Results demonstrated that at 12 to 13 months, bilingual infants demonstrated the ability to bind tone to word meanings in Mandarin, but to disregard tone variation when learning new words in English. In contrast, monolingual learners of Mandarin did not show evidence of integrating tones into word meanings in Mandarin at the same age even though they were learning a tone language. However, a tone discrimination paradigm confirmed that monolingual Mandarin learning infants were able to tell these tones apart at 12 to 13 months under a different set of conditions. Later, at 17 to 18 months, monolingual Mandarin learners were able to bind tone variation to word meanings when learning new words. Our findings are discussed in terms of cognitive adaptations associated with bilingualism that may ease the negotiation of phonological conflict and facilitate precocious uptake of certain properties of each language.

A Unified Framework for Creating Domain Dependent Polarity Lexicons from User Generated Reviews.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Muhammad Zubair Asghar

Full Text Available The exponential increase in the explosion of Web-based user generated reviews has resulted in the emergence of Opinion Mining (OM applications for analyzing the users' opinions toward products, services, and policies. The polarity lexicons often play a pivotal role in the OM, indicating the positivity and negativity of a term along with the numeric score. However, the commonly available domain independent lexicons are not an optimal choice for all of the domains within the OM applications. The aforementioned is due to the fact that the polarity of a term changes from one domain to other and such lexicons do not contain the correct polarity of a term for every domain. In this work, we focus on the problem of adapting a domain dependent polarity lexicon from set of labeled user reviews and domain independent lexicon to propose a unified learning framework based on the information theory concepts that can assign the terms with correct polarity (+ive, -ive scores. The benchmarking on three datasets (car, hotel, and drug reviews shows that our approach improves the performance of the polarity classification by achieving higher accuracy. Moreover, using the derived domain dependent lexicon changed the polarity of terms, and the experimental results show that our approach is more effective than the base line methods.

The Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon: An Instrument for Psycholinguistic Research

Science.gov (United States)

Estivalet, Gustavo L.; Meunier, Fanny

2015-01-01

In this article, we present the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon, a new word-based corpus for psycholinguistic and computational linguistic research in Brazilian Portuguese. We describe the corpus development, the specific characteristics on the internet site and database for user access. We also perform distributional analyses of the corpus and comparisons to other current databases. Our main objective was to provide a large, reliable, and useful word-based corpus with a dynamic, easy-to-use, and intuitive interface with free internet access for word and word-criteria searches. We used the Núcleo Interinstitucional de Linguística Computacional’s corpus as the basic data source and developed the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon by deriving and adding metalinguistic and psycholinguistic information about Brazilian Portuguese words. We obtained a final corpus with more than 30 million word tokens, 215 thousand word types and 25 categories of information about each word. This corpus was made available on the internet via a free-access site with two search engines: a simple search and a complex search. The simple engine basically searches for a list of words, while the complex engine accepts all types of criteria in the corpus categories. The output result presents all entries found in the corpus with the criteria specified in the input search and can be downloaded as a.csv file. We created a module in the results that delivers basic statistics about each search. The Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon also provides a pseudoword engine and specific tools for linguistic and statistical analysis. Therefore, the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon is a convenient instrument for stimulus search, selection, control, and manipulation in psycholinguistic experiments, as also it is a powerful database for computational linguistics research and language modeling related to lexicon distribution, functioning, and behavior. PMID:26630138

The Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon: An Instrument for Psycholinguistic Research.

Science.gov (United States)

Estivalet, Gustavo L; Meunier, Fanny

2015-01-01

In this article, we present the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon, a new word-based corpus for psycholinguistic and computational linguistic research in Brazilian Portuguese. We describe the corpus development, the specific characteristics on the internet site and database for user access. We also perform distributional analyses of the corpus and comparisons to other current databases. Our main objective was to provide a large, reliable, and useful word-based corpus with a dynamic, easy-to-use, and intuitive interface with free internet access for word and word-criteria searches. We used the Núcleo Interinstitucional de Linguística Computacional's corpus as the basic data source and developed the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon by deriving and adding metalinguistic and psycholinguistic information about Brazilian Portuguese words. We obtained a final corpus with more than 30 million word tokens, 215 thousand word types and 25 categories of information about each word. This corpus was made available on the internet via a free-access site with two search engines: a simple search and a complex search. The simple engine basically searches for a list of words, while the complex engine accepts all types of criteria in the corpus categories. The output result presents all entries found in the corpus with the criteria specified in the input search and can be downloaded as a.csv file. We created a module in the results that delivers basic statistics about each search. The Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon also provides a pseudoword engine and specific tools for linguistic and statistical analysis. Therefore, the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon is a convenient instrument for stimulus search, selection, control, and manipulation in psycholinguistic experiments, as also it is a powerful database for computational linguistics research and language modeling related to lexicon distribution, functioning, and behavior.

Il Lexicon of Scholarly Editing: una bussola nella Babele delle tradizioni filologiche

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Spadini, E.; Dillen, Wout; Zanardo, Monica

2016-01-01

The paper presents the Lexicon of Scholarly Editing, a multilingual digital lexicon of philological terms, that aims to facilitate the international exchange, gathering definitions from the variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to textual criticism, textkritik, critique textuelle,

Using dictionaries to study the mental lexicon.

Science.gov (United States)

Anshen, F; Aronoff, M

The notion of a mental lexicon has its historical roots in practical reference dictionaries. The distributional analysis of dictionaries provides one means of investigating the structure of the mental lexicon. We review our earlier work with dictionaries, based on a three-way horserace model of lexical access and production, and then present the most recent results of our ongoing analysis of the Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition on CD-ROM, which traces changes in productivity over time of the English suffixes -ment and -ity, both of which originate in French borrowings. Our results lead us to question the validity of automatic analogy from a set of existing words as the driving force behind morphological productivity. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.

Vowel reduction in word-final position by early and late Spanish-English bilinguals.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Emily Byers

Full Text Available Vowel reduction is a prominent feature of American English, as well as other stress-timed languages. As a phonological process, vowel reduction neutralizes multiple vowel quality contrasts in unstressed syllables. For bilinguals whose native language is not characterized by large spectral and durational differences between tonic and atonic vowels, systematically reducing unstressed vowels to the central vowel space can be problematic. Failure to maintain this pattern of stressed-unstressed syllables in American English is one key element that contributes to a "foreign accent" in second language speakers. Reduced vowels, or "schwas," have also been identified as particularly vulnerable to the co-articulatory effects of adjacent consonants. The current study examined the effects of adjacent sounds on the spectral and temporal qualities of schwa in word-final position. Three groups of English-speaking adults were tested: Miami-based monolingual English speakers, early Spanish-English bilinguals, and late Spanish-English bilinguals. Subjects performed a reading task to examine their schwa productions in fluent speech when schwas were preceded by consonants from various points of articulation. Results indicated that monolingual English and late Spanish-English bilingual groups produced targeted vowel qualities for schwa, whereas early Spanish-English bilinguals lacked homogeneity in their vowel productions. This extends prior claims that schwa is targetless for F2 position for native speakers to highly-proficient bilingual speakers. Though spectral qualities lacked homogeneity for early Spanish-English bilinguals, early bilinguals produced schwas with near native-like vowel duration. In contrast, late bilinguals produced schwas with significantly longer durations than English monolinguals or early Spanish-English bilinguals. Our results suggest that the temporal properties of a language are better integrated into second language phonologies than

A principled relation between reading and naming in acquired and developmental anomia: Surface dyslexia following impairment in the phonological output lexicon

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Naama eFriedmann

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Lexical retrieval and reading aloud are often viewed as two separate processes. However, they are not completely separate--they share components.This study assessed the effect of an impairment in a shared component, the phonological output lexicon,on lexical retrieval and on reading aloud. Because the phonological output lexicon is part of the lexical route for reading, individuals with an impairment in this lexicon may be forced to read aloud via the sublexical route and therefore show a reading pattern that is typical of surface dyslexia.To examine the effect of phonological output lexicon deficit on reading, we tested the reading of 16 Hebrew-speaking individuals with phonological output lexicon anomia, 8 with acquired anomia following brain damage and 8 with developmental-anomia.We established that they had a phonological output lexicon deficit according to the types of errors and the effects on their naming in a picture naming task, and excluded other deficit loci in the lexical retrieval process according to a line of tests assessing their picture and word comprehension, word and nonword repetition, and phonological working memory.After we have established that the participants have a phonological output lexicon deficit, we tested their reading. To assess their reading and type of reading impairment, we tested their reading aloud, lexical decision, and written word comprehension.We found that all of the participants with phonological output lexicon impairment showed, in addition to anomia, also the typical surface dyslexia errors in reading aloud of irregular words,words with ambiguous conversion to phonemes,and potentiophones (words like now that, when read via the sublexical-route,can be sounded out as another word, know. Importantly, all the participants performed flawlessly on pseudohomophone lexical-decision and on homophone/potentiophone reading comprehension, indicating spared orthographic-input-lexicon and spared access to it and

Of black sheep and white crows: Extending the bilingual dual coding theory to memory for idioms

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Lena K. Pritchett

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Are idioms stored in memory in ways that preserve their surface form or language or are they represented amodally? We examined this question using an incidental cued recall paradigm in which two word idiomatic expressions were presented to adult bilinguals proficient in Russian and English. Stimuli included phrases with idiomatic equivalents in both languages (e.g. “empty words/пycтыe cлoвa” or in one language only (English—e.g. “empty suit/пycтoй кocтюм” or Russian—e.g. “empty sound/пycтoй звyк”, or in neither language (e.g. “empty rain/пycтoй дoждь”. If idioms are stored in a language-specific format, then phrases with idiomatic equivalents in both languages would have dual representation, and should therefore be more easily recalled than phrases with idiomatic meaning in only one language. This result was obtained. As such, the findings support the dual-coding theory of memory and are also compatible with models of the bilingual lexicon that include language tags or nodes.

Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Sixth Edition

Science.gov (United States)

Baker, Colin; Wright, Wayne E.

2017-01-01

The sixth edition of this bestselling textbook has been substantially revised and updated to provide a comprehensive introduction to bilingualism and bilingual education in the 21st century. Written in a compact and clear style, the book covers all the crucial issues in bilingualism at individual, group and societal levels. Updates to the new…

Repetition and masked form priming within and between languages using word and nonword neighbors

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dijkstra, A.F.J.; Hilberink-Schulpen, B.J.H.; Heuven, W.J.B. van

2010-01-01

If access to the bilingual lexicon takes place in a language independent way, monolingual repetition and masked form, priming accounts should be directly applicable to bilinguals. We tested such an account (Grainger and Jacobs, 1999) and extended it to explain bilingual ejects from L2 to L1. Dutch

Vowel reduction in word-final position by early and late Spanish-English bilinguals

Science.gov (United States)

2017-01-01

Vowel reduction is a prominent feature of American English, as well as other stress-timed languages. As a phonological process, vowel reduction neutralizes multiple vowel quality contrasts in unstressed syllables. For bilinguals whose native language is not characterized by large spectral and durational differences between tonic and atonic vowels, systematically reducing unstressed vowels to the central vowel space can be problematic. Failure to maintain this pattern of stressed-unstressed syllables in American English is one key element that contributes to a “foreign accent” in second language speakers. Reduced vowels, or “schwas,” have also been identified as particularly vulnerable to the co-articulatory effects of adjacent consonants. The current study examined the effects of adjacent sounds on the spectral and temporal qualities of schwa in word-final position. Three groups of English-speaking adults were tested: Miami-based monolingual English speakers, early Spanish-English bilinguals, and late Spanish-English bilinguals. Subjects performed a reading task to examine their schwa productions in fluent speech when schwas were preceded by consonants from various points of articulation. Results indicated that monolingual English and late Spanish-English bilingual groups produced targeted vowel qualities for schwa, whereas early Spanish-English bilinguals lacked homogeneity in their vowel productions. This extends prior claims that schwa is targetless for F2 position for native speakers to highly-proficient bilingual speakers. Though spectral qualities lacked homogeneity for early Spanish-English bilinguals, early bilinguals produced schwas with near native-like vowel duration. In contrast, late bilinguals produced schwas with significantly longer durations than English monolinguals or early Spanish-English bilinguals. Our results suggest that the temporal properties of a language are better integrated into second language phonologies than spectral

How bilingualism protects the brain from aging: Insights from bimodal bilinguals.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Le; Abutalebi, Jubin; Emmorey, Karen; Gong, Gaolang; Yan, Xin; Feng, Xiaoxia; Zou, Lijuan; Ding, Guosheng

2017-08-01

Bilingual experience can delay cognitive decline during aging. A general hypothesis is that the executive control system of bilinguals faces an increased load due to controlling two languages, and this increased load results in a more "tuned brain" that eventually creates a neural reserve. Here we explored whether such a neuroprotective effect is independent of language modality, i.e., not limited to bilinguals who speak two languages but also occurs for bilinguals who use a spoken and a signed language. We addressed this issue by comparing bimodal bilinguals to monolinguals in order to detect age-induced structural brain changes and to determine whether we can detect the same beneficial effects on brain structure, in terms of preservation of gray matter volume (GMV), for bimodal bilinguals as has been reported for unimodal bilinguals. Our GMV analyses revealed a significant interaction effect of age × group in the bilateral anterior temporal lobes, left hippocampus/amygdala, and left insula where bimodal bilinguals showed slight GMV increases while monolinguals showed significant age-induced GMV decreases. We further found through cortical surface-based measurements that this effect was present for surface area and not for cortical thickness. Moreover, to further explore the hypothesis that overall bilingualism provides neuroprotection, we carried out a direct comparison of GMV, extracted from the brain regions reported above, between bimodal bilinguals, unimodal bilinguals, and monolinguals. Bilinguals, regardless of language modality, exhibited higher GMV compared to monolinguals. This finding highlights the general beneficial effects provided by experience handling two language systems, whether signed or spoken. Hum Brain Mapp 38:4109-4124, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Lifelong bilingualism maintains neural efficiency for cognitive control in aging.

Science.gov (United States)

Gold, Brian T; Kim, Chobok; Johnson, Nathan F; Kryscio, Richard J; Smith, Charles D

2013-01-09

Recent behavioral data have shown that lifelong bilingualism can maintain youthful cognitive control abilities in aging. Here, we provide the first direct evidence of a neural basis for the bilingual cognitive control boost in aging. Two experiments were conducted, using a perceptual task-switching paradigm, including a total of 110 participants. In Experiment 1, older adult bilinguals showed better perceptual switching performance than their monolingual peers. In Experiment 2, younger and older adult monolinguals and bilinguals completed the same perceptual task-switching experiment while functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed. Typical age-related performance reductions and fMRI activation increases were observed. However, like younger adults, bilingual older adults outperformed their monolingual peers while displaying decreased activation in left lateral frontal cortex and cingulate cortex. Critically, this attenuation of age-related over-recruitment associated with bilingualism was directly correlated with better task-switching performance. In addition, the lower blood oxygenation level-dependent response in frontal regions accounted for 82% of the variance in the bilingual task-switching reaction time advantage. These results suggest that lifelong bilingualism offsets age-related declines in the neural efficiency for cognitive control processes.

Do reading and spelling share a lexicon?

Science.gov (United States)

Jones, Angela C; Rawson, Katherine A

2016-05-01

In the reading and spelling literature, an ongoing debate concerns whether reading and spelling share a single orthographic lexicon or rely upon independent lexica. Available evidence tends to support a single lexicon account over an independent lexica account, but evidence is mixed and open to alternative explanation. In the current work, we propose another, largely ignored account--separate-but-shared lexica--according to which reading and spelling have separate orthographic lexica, but information can be shared between them. We report three experiments designed to competitively evaluate these three theoretical accounts. In each experiment, participants learned new words via reading training and/or spelling training. The key manipulation concerned the amount of reading versus spelling practice a given item received. Following training, we assessed both response time and accuracy on final outcome measures of reading and spelling. According to the independent lexica account, final performance in one modality will not be influenced by the level of practice in the other modality. According to the single lexicon account, final performance will depend on the overall amount of practice regardless of modality. According to the separate-but-shared account, final performance will be influenced by the level of practice in both modalities but will benefit more from same-modality practice. Results support the separate-but-shared account, indicating that reading and spelling rely upon separate lexica, but information can be shared between them. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cognitive advantage in bilingualism: an example of publication bias?

Science.gov (United States)

de Bruin, Angela; Treccani, Barbara; Della Sala, Sergio

2015-01-01

It is a widely held belief that bilinguals have an advantage over monolinguals in executive-control tasks, but is this what all studies actually demonstrate? The idea of a bilingual advantage may result from a publication bias favoring studies with positive results over studies with null or negative effects. To test this hypothesis, we looked at conference abstracts from 1999 to 2012 on the topic of bilingualism and executive control. We then determined which of the studies they reported were subsequently published. Studies with results fully supporting the bilingual-advantage theory were most likely to be published, followed by studies with mixed results. Studies challenging the bilingual advantage were published the least. This discrepancy was not due to differences in sample size, tests used, or statistical power. A test for funnel-plot asymmetry provided further evidence for the existence of a publication bias. © The Author(s) 2014.

Reaction Time in Semantic Priming Experiments with Persian (L1) vs. English (L2) Primes

Science.gov (United States)

Ansarin, Ali Akbar; Manesh, Solmaz Saeeidi

2015-01-01

Representation of languages in a bilingual mind in general and the way bilinguals restore words from their mental lexicon, and the way they retrieve words have been explored by many researchers resulting in varied findings. The more information regarding bilingual memory is obtained, the better image would be constructed about this knowledge…

Compositions in English: Comparing the Works of Monolinguals, Passive Bilinguals, and Active Bilinguals

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Julia Eka Rini

2010-01-01

Full Text Available This study tries to see whether the subjects’ “monolingualism” and “bilingualism” (monolinguals learning an L2 and bilinguals learning an L3 influence their study on English, especially writing. The term “bilinguals” also means “multilinguals” in this study. Bilinguals in this paper are classified into two; first, passive bilinguals who are only exposed to another local language, besides speaking Bahasa Indonesia at home, and second, active bilinguals who are exposed to and also speak other language(s and Bahasa Indonesia at home. The findings show that the monolingual and the active bilingual are better than the passive one; the active bilingual is better than the monolingual. However, if the passive and the active bilingual are combined, the monolingual is better than the bilinguals.

Cross-Linguistic Influence in French-English Bilingual Children's Possessive Constructions

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Nicoladis, Elena

2012-01-01

The purpose of this article was to test the predictions of a speech production model of cross-linguistic influence in French-English bilingual children. A speech production model predicts bidirectional influence (i.e., bilinguals' greater use of periphrastic constructions like the hat of the dog relative to monolinguals in English and reversed…

Differential bilingual laterality: mythical monster found in Wales.

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Evans, Judith; Workman, Lance; Mayer, Peter; Crowley, Kevin

2002-11-01

Paradis (1992) likens studies of bilingual laterality to reported sightings of the Loch Ness Monster, in that although some studies claim differential laterality much conflicting research evidence does not-and like the mythical Scottish monster, what reason have we to suspect that any such phenomenon might exist? This study reexamines differential bilingual laterality using four groups of English-Welsh bilinguals which differ in their age of acquisition and in their environment of acquisition. Using a split visual field paradigm we present evidence which, supports the notion of greater right hemisphere processing in a later learned language. Our findings also suggest the pattern of lateralization in bilinguals is strongly affected by the specific language environment during development such that the shift toward greater right hemisphere involvement for the later learned language will be more pronounced in individuals which are brought up in areas where that language is not regularly heard.

Arabic Feature-Based Level Sentiment Analysis Using Lexicon ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

pc

2018-03-05

Mar 5, 2018 ... structured reviews being prior knowledge for mining unstructured reviews. ... FDSO has been introduced, which defines a space of product features ... polarity of a review using feature ontology and sentiment lexicons.

The Generator of the Event Structure Lexicon (GESL): Automatic Annotation of Event Structure for Textual Inference Tasks

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Im, Seohyun

2013-01-01

This dissertation aims to develop the Generator of the Event Structure Lexicon (GESL) which is a tool to automate annotating the event structure of verbs in text to support textual inference tasks related to lexically entailed subevents. The output of the GESL is the Event Structure Lexicon (ESL), which is a lexicon of verbs in text which includes…

Syntactic mixing across generations in an environment of community-wide bilingualism

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Sabine eStoll

2015-02-01

Full Text Available A quantitative analysis of a trans-generational, conversational corpus of Chintang (Tibeto-Burman speakers with community-wide bilingualism in Nepali (Indo-European reveals that children show more code-switching into Nepali than older speakers. This confirms earlier proposals in the literature that code-switching in bilingual children decreases when they gain proficiency in their dominant language, especially in vocabulary. Contradicting expectations from other studies, our corpus data also reveal that for adults, multi-word insertions of Nepali into Chintang are just as likely to undergo full syntactic integration as single-word insertions. Speakers of younger generations show less syntactic integration. We propose that this reflects a change between generations, from strongly asymmetrical, Chintang-dominated bilingualism in older generations to more balanced bilingualism where Chintang and Nepali operate as clearly separate systems in younger generations. This change is likely to have been triggered by the increase of Nepali presence over the past few decades.

Novel word retention in bilingual and monolingual speakers.

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Kan, Pui Fong; Sadagopan, Neeraja

2014-01-01

The goal of this research was to examine word retention in bilinguals and monolinguals. Long-term word retention is an essential part of vocabulary learning. Previous studies have documented that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in terms of retrieving newly-exposed words. Yet, little is known about whether or to what extent bilinguals are different from monolinguals in word retention. Participants were 30 English-speaking monolingual adults and 30 bilingual adults who speak Spanish as a home language and learned English as a second language during childhood. In a previous study (Kan et al., 2014), the participants were exposed to the target novel words in English, Spanish, and Cantonese. In this current study, word retention was measured a week after the fast mapping task. No exposures were given during the one-week interval. Results showed that bilinguals and monolinguals retain a similar number of words. However, participants produced more words in English than in either Spanish or Cantonese. Correlation analyses revealed that language knowledge plays a role in the relationships between fast mapping and word retention. Specifically, within- and across-language relationships between bilinguals' fast mapping and word retention were found in Spanish and English, by contrast, within-language relationships between monolinguals' fast mapping and word retention were found in English and across-language relationships between their fast mapping and word retention performance in English and Cantonese. Similarly, bilinguals differed from monolinguals in the relationships among the word retention scores in three languages. Significant correlations were found among bilinguals' retention scores. However, no such correlations were found among monolinguals' retention scores. The overall findings suggest that bilinguals' language experience and language knowledge most likely contribute to how they learn and retain new words.

Bilingualism and cognition

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Groot, A.M.B.; Chapelle, C.A.

2013-01-01

Scientific interest in the effects of (individual) bilingualism on cognition dates back to at least the first quarter of the 20th century, as illustrated by two articles that were published in 1923 on the relation between bilingualism and mental development (Smith, 1923) and between bilingualism and

Bilingualism changes children's beliefs about what is innate.

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Byers-Heinlein, Krista; Garcia, Bianca

2015-03-01

Young children engage in essentialist reasoning about natural kinds, believing that many traits are innately determined. This study investigated whether personal experience with second language acquisition could alter children's essentialist biases. In a switched-at-birth paradigm, 5- and 6-year-old monolingual and simultaneous bilingual children expected that a baby's native language, an animal's vocalizations, and an animal's physical traits would match those of a birth rather than of an adoptive parent. We predicted that sequential bilingual children, who had been exposed to a new language after age 3, would show greater understanding that languages are learned. Surprisingly, sequential bilinguals showed reduced essentialist beliefs about all traits: they were significantly more likely than other children to believe that human language, animal vocalizations, and animal physical traits would be learned through experience rather than innately endowed. These findings suggest that bilingualism in the preschool years can profoundly change children's essentialist biases. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Food Service Technical Terms. English-Spanish Lexicon.

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Shin, Masako T.

This English-Spanish lexicon presents food service technical terms. The terms are divided into seven categories: basic food items, common baking terms, food cutting terms, general cooking terms, non-English culinary terms, and tools and equipment. Each English word or term is followed by its Spanish equivalent(s). (YLB)

Self-emergence of Lexicon Consensus in a Population of Autonomous Agents by Means of Evolutionary Strategies

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Maravall, Darío; de Lope, Javier; Domínguez, Raúl

In Multi-agent systems, the study of language and communication is an active field of research. In this paper we present the application of evolutionary strategies to the self-emergence of a common lexicon in a population of agents. By modeling the vocabulary or lexicon of each agent as an association matrix or look-up table that maps the meanings (i.e. the objects encountered by the agents or the states of the environment itself) into symbols or signals we check whether it is possible for the population to converge in an autonomous, decentralized way to a common lexicon, so that the communication efficiency of the entire population is optimal. We have conducted several experiments, from the simplest case of a 2×2 association matrix (i.e. two meanings and two symbols) to a 3×3 lexicon case and in both cases we have attained convergence to the optimal communication system by means of evolutionary strategies. To analyze the convergence of the population of agents we have defined the population's consensus when all the agents (i.e. the 100% of the population) share the same association matrix or lexicon. As a general conclusion we have shown that evolutionary strategies are powerful enough optimizers to guarantee the convergence to lexicon consensus in a population of autonomous agents.

“The Language of Gods”: The Pragmatics of Bilingual Parallelism in Ritual Ch’orti’ Maya Discourse

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Kerry Hull

2017-10-01

Full Text Available In this study I investigate the discursive function of parallelism in the ritual speech of Ch’orti’ Maya. Specifically, I examine the exploitation of the dual lexicons of Ch’orti’ Mayan and Spanish in the production of parallel structures. Ch’orti’ ritual speech is almost universally constructed in parallelistic fashion, accomplishing at once a near hypnotic cadence when performed, while also serving various pragmatic functions. I detail the dynamic breadth of what I refer to as bilingual parallelism, i.e., parallelism that involves the pairing of synonymous terms from different languages in a distich. The effective use of parallelistic speech is said by the Ch’orti’ to be an imitation of the speech patterns of the gods themselves, thereby further explaining its importance in ceremonial contexts when speaking to gods and otherworld beings.

Towards a Unified Sentiment Lexicon Based on Graphics Processing Units

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Liliana Ibeth Barbosa-Santillán

2014-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents an approach to create what we have called a Unified Sentiment Lexicon (USL. This approach aims at aligning, unifying, and expanding the set of sentiment lexicons which are available on the web in order to increase their robustness of coverage. One problem related to the task of the automatic unification of different scores of sentiment lexicons is that there are multiple lexical entries for which the classification of positive, negative, or neutral {P,N,Z} depends on the unit of measurement used in the annotation methodology of the source sentiment lexicon. Our USL approach computes the unified strength of polarity of each lexical entry based on the Pearson correlation coefficient which measures how correlated lexical entries are with a value between 1 and −1, where 1 indicates that the lexical entries are perfectly correlated, 0 indicates no correlation, and −1 means they are perfectly inversely correlated and so is the UnifiedMetrics procedure for CPU and GPU, respectively. Another problem is the high processing time required for computing all the lexical entries in the unification task. Thus, the USL approach computes a subset of lexical entries in each of the 1344 GPU cores and uses parallel processing in order to unify 155802 lexical entries. The results of the analysis conducted using the USL approach show that the USL has 95.430 lexical entries, out of which there are 35.201 considered to be positive, 22.029 negative, and 38.200 neutral. Finally, the runtime was 10 minutes for 95.430 lexical entries; this allows a reduction of the time computing for the UnifiedMetrics by 3 times.

BILINGUAL EDUCATION: LINGUO-DIDACTIC ASPECTS

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Natalia Zakordonets

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The article presents the research of linguo-didactic aspects and models of bilingual education. On the basis of the study of scientific literature the definition analysis of the notions «bilingualism» «bilingual teaching» and «bilingual education» has been carried out. Didactic-methodological bases and approaches to the content of bilingual teaching at higher educational institutions have been determined. This article considers theoretical and methodological foundations of the concept of bilingual teaching. There have been outlined the peculiarities and problems of the designing and implementing bilingual programs and curriculum materials development. It has been stated that characteristics of the latest stage of elaboration of theory and practice of bilingual education have been framed in terms of the transition to a multi-perspectival paradigm of polycultural education. This paper deals with the common didactic fundamentals of personality-oriented philosophy of higher education. The distinctions that require the formulation of specific principles of bilingual teaching have been considered.

General principles of researching the lexicon of traditional material culture

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Nedeljkov Ljiljana

2009-01-01

Full Text Available The paper discusses a linguistic research of terminological systems connected with basic fields of human life and work which, in modern conditions, are either transformed into contemporary modern forms or gradually disappear due to changes in the way of life and work. The lexicon of material culture of native inhabitants of Vojvodina is examined, resulting in monographs on the terminologies of fishing, cartwrighting, shepherding and houses and furniture, all of which have in common the fact that the starting point was the research of the lexicon in question by semantic fields. The paper shows the lexicological and lexicographical procedures used while researching these terminological systems.

Current Conditions of Bilingual Teacher Preparation Programs in Public Universities in USA

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Johannessen, B. Gloria Guzman; Thorsos, Nilsa; Dickinson, Gail

2016-01-01

This study addresses public universities' policies and practices in the USA (United States of America) with a focus on public bilingual teacher preparation in Spanish-English programs (initial credential licensure and Masters of Education programs with, or without, endorsements). We questioned: "What do bilingual programs look like in public…

Bilingualism and Musicianship Enhance Cognitive Control

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Scott R. Schroeder

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Learning how to speak a second language (i.e., becoming a bilingual and learning how to play a musical instrument (i.e., becoming a musician are both thought to increase executive control through experience-dependent plasticity. However, evidence supporting this effect is mixed for bilingualism and limited for musicianship. In addition, the combined effects of bilingualism and musicianship on executive control are unknown. To determine whether bilingualism, musicianship, and combined bilingualism and musicianship improve executive control, we tested 219 young adults belonging to one of four groups (bilinguals, musicians, bilingual musicians, and controls on a nonlinguistic, nonmusical, visual-spatial Simon task that measured the ability to ignore an irrelevant and misinformative cue. Results revealed that bilinguals, musicians, and bilingual musicians showed an enhanced ability to ignore a distracting cue relative to controls, with similar levels of superior performance among bilinguals, musicians, and bilingual musicians. These results indicate that bilingualism and musicianship improve executive control and have implications for educational and rehabilitation programs that use music and foreign language instruction to boost cognitive performance.

Bilingualism and Musicianship Enhance Cognitive Control.

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Schroeder, Scott R; Marian, Viorica; Shook, Anthony; Bartolotti, James

2016-01-01

Learning how to speak a second language (i.e., becoming a bilingual) and learning how to play a musical instrument (i.e., becoming a musician) are both thought to increase executive control through experience-dependent plasticity. However, evidence supporting this effect is mixed for bilingualism and limited for musicianship. In addition, the combined effects of bilingualism and musicianship on executive control are unknown. To determine whether bilingualism, musicianship, and combined bilingualism and musicianship improve executive control, we tested 219 young adults belonging to one of four groups (bilinguals, musicians, bilingual musicians, and controls) on a nonlinguistic, nonmusical, visual-spatial Simon task that measured the ability to ignore an irrelevant and misinformative cue. Results revealed that bilinguals, musicians, and bilingual musicians showed an enhanced ability to ignore a distracting cue relative to controls, with similar levels of superior performance among bilinguals, musicians, and bilingual musicians. These results indicate that bilingualism and musicianship improve executive control and have implications for educational and rehabilitation programs that use music and foreign language instruction to boost cognitive performance.

Bilingual infants control their languages as they listen.

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Byers-Heinlein, Krista; Morin-Lessard, Elizabeth; Lew-Williams, Casey

2017-08-22

Infants growing up in bilingual homes learn two languages simultaneously without apparent confusion or delay. However, the mechanisms that support this remarkable achievement remain unclear. Here, we demonstrate that infants use language-control mechanisms to preferentially activate the currently heard language during listening. In a naturalistic eye-tracking procedure, bilingual infants were more accurate at recognizing objects labeled in same-language sentences ("Find the dog!") than in switched-language sentences ("Find the chien !"). Measurements of infants' pupil size over time indicated that this resulted from increased cognitive load during language switches. However, language switches did not always engender processing difficulties: the switch cost was reduced or eliminated when the switch was from the nondominant to the dominant language, and when it crossed a sentence boundary. Adults showed the same patterns of performance as infants, even though target words were simple and highly familiar. Our results provide striking evidence from infancy to adulthood that bilinguals monitor their languages for efficient comprehension. Everyday practice controlling two languages during listening is likely to explain previously observed bilingual cognitive advantages across the lifespan.

Perception and Lexicon Labeling Ability on a Child with Language Delay Diagnosed As Autistic Spectrum Disorder: A Psycholinguistic Study

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Rohmani Nur Indah

2016-07-01

listeners to do or not to do something, and protesting something as shown in the contexts. Further, he is likely to label objects by the lexicons got from the immediate exposure.

The Disfluent Speech of Bilingual Spanish–English Children: Considerations for Differential Diagnosis of Stuttering

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Bedore, Lisa M.; Ramos, Daniel

2015-01-01

Purpose The primary purpose of this study was to describe the frequency and types of speech disfluencies that are produced by bilingual Spanish–English (SE) speaking children who do not stutter. The secondary purpose was to determine whether their disfluent speech is mediated by language dominance and/or language produced. Method Spanish and English narratives (a retell and a tell in each language) were elicited and analyzed relative to the frequency and types of speech disfluencies produced. These data were compared with the monolingual English-speaking guidelines for differential diagnosis of stuttering. Results The mean frequency of stuttering-like speech behaviors in the bilingual SE participants ranged from 3% to 22%, exceeding the monolingual English standard of 3 per 100 words. There was no significant frequency difference in stuttering-like or non-stuttering-like speech disfluency produced relative to the child's language dominance. There was a significant difference relative to the language the child was speaking; all children produced significantly more stuttering-like speech disfluencies in Spanish than in English. Conclusion Results demonstrate that the disfluent speech of bilingual SE children should be carefully considered relative to the complex nature of bilingualism. PMID:25215876

Psychologist in a Pocket: Lexicon Development and Content Validation of a Mobile-Based App for Depression Screening.

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Cheng, Paula Glenda Ferrer; Ramos, Roann Munoz; Bitsch, Jó Ágila; Jonas, Stephan Michael; Ix, Tim; See, Portia Lynn Quetulio; Wehrle, Klaus

2016-07-20

PiaP, we were able to gather 1762 main keywords and 9655 derivatives of main keywords. In addition, we compiled 823,869 spelling variations. Keywords included negatively-valenced words like "sad", "unworthy", or "tired" which are almost always accompanied by personal pronouns, such as "I", "I'm" or "my" and in Filipino, "ako" or "ko". For the content validation, only keywords with CVR equal to or more than 0.75 were included in the depression lexicon test-run version. The mean of all CVRs yielded a high overall CVI of 0.90. A total of 1498 main keywords, 8911 derivatives of main keywords, and 783,140 spelling variations, with a total of 793, 553 keywords now comprise the test-run version. The generation of the depression lexicon is relatively exhaustive. The breadth of keywords used in text analysis incorporates the characteristic expressions of depression and its related constructs by a particular culture and age group. A content-validated mobile health app, PiaP may help augment a more effective and early detection of depressive symptoms.

From Business Corpus to Business Lexicon | Lan | Lexikos

African Journals Online (AJOL)

... shows local characteristics; and (3) it focuses on a specific area (financial services, including banking, accounting, auditing, insurance and investment). The paper discusses various issues of setting up a tricorpus, and how to make full use of the data to generate a trilingual lexicon. Keywords: multilingual, special purpose, ...

Bilingualism: Research and Policy

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McCardle, Peggy

2015-01-01

Bilingualism, commonplace throughout the world, is not well accepted or supported in many parts of the United States. Education policies and practices regarding bilingualism are often based on myths and attitudes rather than facts, despite scientific evidence on both the disadvantages and advantages of bilingualism. Based on a brief overview of…

Incidental Lexicon Acquisition through Playful Interaction

OpenAIRE

Lukas Wilhelm Ansteeg

2015-01-01

This paper presents an educational game which aids learners with foreign lexicon acquisition while entertaining them at the same time. An overview over existing language learning tools is given, and a general platform for educational games for second language acquisition (SLA) is described. It introduces a specific prototype video game which teaches Italian vocabulary to the user. The application puts learning at the core of its game mechanics and combines it with a narrative and role-playing...

Use of Monolingual and Bilingual Dictionaries among Students of English

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Monika Kavalir

2010-12-01

Full Text Available The study of dictionary use in 32 firstyear students of English at the University of Ljubljana in the academic year 2009/2010 shows that students use a variety of dictionaries with a slight preponderance of monolingual dictionaries over bilingual ones. The bilingual dictionaries listed do not include some of the most recent and most comprehensive dictionaries while some of the most frequently used resources are quite modest sized. The students are already predominantly users of electronic and online dictionaries with a lower frequency of printed resources – a trend which is only likely to accelerate with the advent of new bilingual online dictionaries. These results have practical relevance for teachers in all sectors, from primary and secondary schools to universities, as they point towards a need for additional training in the use of bilingual dictionaries. The transition from printed to electronic and online resources can also be expected to induce changes in EFL methodology at all levels.

Planning Abilities in Bilingual and Monolingual Children: Role of Verbal Mediation

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Gangopadhyay, Ishanti; McDonald, Margarethe; Ellis Weismer, Susan; Kaushanskaya, Margarita

2018-01-01

We examined the role of verbal mediation in planning performance of English–Spanish-speaking bilingual children and monolingual English-speaking children, between the ages of 9 and 12 years. To measure planning, children were administered the Tower of London (ToL) task. In a dual-task paradigm, children completed ToL problems under three conditions: with no secondary task (baseline), with articulatory suppression, and with non-verbal motor suppression. Analyses revealed generally shorter planning times for bilinguals than monolinguals but both groups performed similarly on number of moves and execution times. Additionally, bilingual children were more efficient at planning throughout the duration of the task while monolingual children showed significant gains with more practice. Children’s planning times under articulatory suppression were significantly shorter than under motor suppression as well as the baseline condition, and there was no difference in planning times between monolingual and bilingual children during articulatory suppression. These results demonstrate that bilingualism influences performance on a complex EF measure like planning, and that these effects are not related to verbal mediation. PMID:29593620

Planning Abilities in Bilingual and Monolingual Children: Role of Verbal Mediation.

Science.gov (United States)

Gangopadhyay, Ishanti; McDonald, Margarethe; Ellis Weismer, Susan; Kaushanskaya, Margarita

2018-01-01

We examined the role of verbal mediation in planning performance of English-Spanish-speaking bilingual children and monolingual English-speaking children, between the ages of 9 and 12 years. To measure planning, children were administered the Tower of London (ToL) task. In a dual-task paradigm, children completed ToL problems under three conditions: with no secondary task (baseline), with articulatory suppression, and with non-verbal motor suppression. Analyses revealed generally shorter planning times for bilinguals than monolinguals but both groups performed similarly on number of moves and execution times. Additionally, bilingual children were more efficient at planning throughout the duration of the task while monolingual children showed significant gains with more practice. Children's planning times under articulatory suppression were significantly shorter than under motor suppression as well as the baseline condition, and there was no difference in planning times between monolingual and bilingual children during articulatory suppression. These results demonstrate that bilingualism influences performance on a complex EF measure like planning, and that these effects are not related to verbal mediation.

Bilingualism with and without CLIL, a Double-Edged Sword: Comparing Bilingual and Non Bilingual Young Learners' Beliefs about EFL and Science Learning

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Sandoval Brotons, Alfonso Victor

2015-01-01

Bilingualism and its reference methodology: CLIL are spreading at a very fast pace all through educative systems from some years on. The young status of bilingual programmes leads to little research about how bilingualism is influencing real learning contexts and which factors play important roles in that influence. In this way, this study aims to…

Balanced bilingualism and early age of second language acquisition as the underlying mechanisms of a bilingual executive control advantage: why variations in bilingual experiences matter.

Science.gov (United States)

Yow, W Quin; Li, Xiaoqian

2015-01-01

Recent studies revealed inconsistent evidences of a bilingual advantage in executive processing. One potential source of explanation is the multifaceted experience of the bilinguals in these studies. This study seeks to test whether bilinguals who engage in language selection more frequently would perform better in executive control tasks than those bilinguals who engage in language selection less frequently. We examined the influence of the degree of bilingualism (i.e., language proficiency, frequency of use of two languages, and age of second language acquisition) on executive functioning in bilingual young adults using a comprehensive battery of executive control tasks. Seventy-two 18- to 25-years-old English-Mandarin bilinguals performed four computerized executive function (EF) tasks (Stroop, Eriksen flanker, number-letter switching, and n-back task) that measure the EF components: inhibition, mental-set shifting, and information updating and monitoring. Results from multiple regression analyses, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping supported the positive association between age of second language acquisition and the interference cost in the Stroop task. Most importantly, we found a significant effect of balanced bilingualism (balanced usage of and balanced proficiency in two languages) on the Stroop and number-letter task (mixing cost only), indicating that a more balanced use and a more balanced level of proficiency in two languages resulted in better executive control skills in the adult bilinguals. We did not find any significant effect of bilingualism on flanker or n-back task. These findings provided important insights to the underlying mechanisms of the bilingual cognitive advantage hypothesis, demonstrating that regular experience with extensive practice in controlling attention to their two language systems results in better performance in related EFs such as inhibiting prepotent responses and global set-shifting.

Balanced bilingualism and early age of second language acquisition as the underlying mechanisms of a bilingual executive control advantage: why variations in bilingual experiences matter

Science.gov (United States)

Yow, W. Quin; Li, Xiaoqian

2015-01-01

Recent studies revealed inconsistent evidences of a bilingual advantage in executive processing. One potential source of explanation is the multifaceted experience of the bilinguals in these studies. This study seeks to test whether bilinguals who engage in language selection more frequently would perform better in executive control tasks than those bilinguals who engage in language selection less frequently. We examined the influence of the degree of bilingualism (i.e., language proficiency, frequency of use of two languages, and age of second language acquisition) on executive functioning in bilingual young adults using a comprehensive battery of executive control tasks. Seventy-two 18- to 25-years-old English–Mandarin bilinguals performed four computerized executive function (EF) tasks (Stroop, Eriksen flanker, number–letter switching, and n-back task) that measure the EF components: inhibition, mental-set shifting, and information updating and monitoring. Results from multiple regression analyses, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping supported the positive association between age of second language acquisition and the interference cost in the Stroop task. Most importantly, we found a significant effect of balanced bilingualism (balanced usage of and balanced proficiency in two languages) on the Stroop and number–letter task (mixing cost only), indicating that a more balanced use and a more balanced level of proficiency in two languages resulted in better executive control skills in the adult bilinguals. We did not find any significant effect of bilingualism on flanker or n-back task. These findings provided important insights to the underlying mechanisms of the bilingual cognitive advantage hypothesis, demonstrating that regular experience with extensive practice in controlling attention to their two language systems results in better performance in related EFs such as inhibiting prepotent responses and global set-shifting. PMID:25767451

Balanced bilingualism and early age of second language acquisition as the underlying mechanisms of a bilingual executive control advantage: Why variations in bilingual experiences matter.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

W. Quin eYow

2015-02-01

Full Text Available Recent studies revealed inconsistent evidences of a bilingual advantage in executive processing. One potential source of explanation is the multifaceted experience of the bilinguals in these studies. This study seeks to test whether bilinguals who engage in language selection more frequently would perform better in executive control tasks than those bilinguals who engage in language selection less frequently. We examined the influence of the degree of bilingualism (i.e., language proficiency, frequency of use of two languages, and age of second language acquisition on executive functioning in bilingual young adults using a comprehensive battery of executive control tasks. Seventy-two 18- to 25-year-old English-Mandarin bilinguals performed four computerized executive function tasks (Stroop, Eriksen flanker, number-letter switching and n-back task that measure the executive function components: inhibition, mental-set shifting, and information updating and monitoring. Results from multiple regression analyses, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping supported the positive association between age of second language acquisition and the interference cost in the Stroop task. Most importantly, we found a significant effect of balanced bilingualism (balanced usage of and balanced proficiency in two languages on the Stroop and number-letter task (mixing cost only, indicating that a more balanced use and a more balanced level of proficiency in two languages resulted in better executive control skills in the adult bilinguals. We did not find any significant effect of bilingualism on flanker or n-back task. These findings provided important insights to the underlying mechanisms of the bilingual cognitive advantage hypothesis, demonstrating that regular experience with extensive practice in controlling attention to their two language systems results in better performance in related executive functions such as inhibiting prepotent responses and global

Repetition and masked form priming within and between languages using word and nonword neighbors

OpenAIRE

Dijkstra, A.F.J.; Hilberink-Schulpen, B.J.H.; Heuven, W.J.B. van

2010-01-01

If access to the bilingual lexicon takes place in a language independent way, monolingual repetition and masked form, priming accounts should be directly applicable to bilinguals. We tested such an account (Grainger and Jacobs, 1999) and extended it to explain bilingual ejects from L2 to L1. Dutch English bilinguals made a lexical decision on a Dutch target word preceded by a briefly presented word or nonword prime from Dutch (L1; Exp. I) or English (L2; Exp. 2). The prime was an orthographic...

Does Bilingualism Influence Cognitive Aging?

Science.gov (United States)

Bak, Thomas H; Nissan, Jack J; Allerhand, Michael M; Deary, Ian J

2014-01-01

Recent evidence suggests a positive impact of bilingualism on cognition, including later onset of dementia. However, monolinguals and bilinguals might have different baseline cognitive ability. We present the first study examining the effect of bilingualism on later-life cognition controlling for childhood intelligence. We studied 853 participants, first tested in 1947 (age = 11 years), and retested in 2008–2010. Bilinguals performed significantly better than predicted from their baseline cognitive abilities, with strongest effects on general intelligence and reading. Our results suggest a positive effect of bilingualism on later-life cognition, including in those who acquired their second language in adulthood. PMID:24890334

Language Control Abilities of Late Bilinguals

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Festman, Julia

2012-01-01

Although all bilinguals encounter cross-language interference (CLI), some bilinguals are more susceptible to interference than others. Here, we report on language performance of late bilinguals (Russian/German) on two bilingual tasks (interview, verbal fluency), their language use and switching habits. The only between-group difference was CLI:…

Bilingual Identity Negotiation in Practice: Teacher Pedagogy and Classroom Interaction in a Bilingual Programme

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Fielding, Ruth

2016-01-01

This paper discusses how teachers in a bilingual education programme see their pedagogies and interactions influencing student connection to the languages of the bilingual programme. The teacher perception of the classroom is explored because the classroom is one of the principal settings in which the students negotiate their bilingual identities.…

Development of a lexicon for caviar and its usefulness for determining consumer preference.

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Baker, Allison K; Vixie, Beata; Rasco, Barbara A; Ovissipour, Mahmoudreza; Ross, Carolyn F

2014-12-01

Although caviar is a premium product which offers nutritional benefits, few studies have characterized its sensory properties. As such, this study sought to develop a lexicon for sensory evaluation of caviar appearance, texture, aroma, and flavor/taste and to relate these attributes to consumer acceptance. A trained panel identified 16 sensory attributes for evaluation along a 15-cm scale and used CATA (check all that apply) methodology to indicate the less frequently encountered off-aromas, appearance traits, and persistent flavors. Using this lexicon, the trained panel described differences among caviar samples harvested from sturgeon fed varying diets. Acceptance of the caviar was also evaluated by a consumer panel. As evaluated by the trained panelists, analysis of variance (ANOVA) results indicated differences among caviar in the sensory attributes of tactile firmness, mustard color, egg size, in-mouth firmness, seafood fresh flavor, fresh butter flavor, earthy flavor, yeasty flavor, and bitterness (P consumer and trained panel data, overall consumer acceptance of caviar was driven by tactile firmness, sea fresh flavor, fresh butter flavor, and black color. This overall acceptance was highly correlated with acceptance of texture (r = 0.867) and flavor/taste (r = 0.999). Overall, this lexicon allows for standardized sensory evaluation of caviar using a common set of descriptors. This lexicon and information regarding the drivers of caviar acceptance can be used by industry professionals to ensure optimal caviar quality. © 2014 Institute of Food Technologists®

Bilingualism and National Development in Malaysia.

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Ozog, A. Conrad K.

1993-01-01

Malaysia's long tradition of English medium instruction and bilingualism officially ended in 1970. This paper reviews the role of bilingualism in the development of the country, including the role of a bilingual population in national development and the possible effects of the abandonment of bilingual education. (Contains 38 references.)…

Identifying language impairment in bilingual children in France and in Germany.

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Tuller, Laurice; Hamann, Cornelia; Chilla, Solveig; Ferré, Sandrine; Morin, Eléonore; Prevost, Philippe; Dos Santos, Christophe; Abed Ibrahim, Lina; Zebib, Racha

2018-05-23

The detection of specific language impairment (SLI) in children growing up bilingually presents particular challenges for clinicians. Non-word repetition (NWR) and sentence repetition (SR) tasks have proven to be the most accurate diagnostic tools for monolingual populations, raising the question of the extent of their usefulness in different bilingual populations. To determine the diagnostic accuracy of NWR and SR tasks that incorporate phonological/syntactic complexity as discussed in recent linguistic theory. The tasks were developed as part of the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) toolkit, in two different national settings, France and Germany, and investigated children with three different home languages: Arabic, Portuguese and Turkish. NWR and SR tasks developed in parallel were administered to 151 bilingual children, aged 5;6-8;11, in France and in Germany, to 64 children in speech-language therapy (SLT) and to 87 children not in SLT, whose first language (L1) was Arabic, Portuguese or Turkish. Children were also administered standardized language tests in each of their languages to determine likely clinical status (typical development (TD) or SLI), and parents responded to a questionnaire including questions about early and current language use (bilingualism factors) and early language development (risk factors for SLI). Monolingual controls included 47 TD children and 29 children with SLI. Results were subjected to inter-group comparisons, to diagnostic accuracy calculation, and to correlation and multiple regression analyses. In accordance with previous studies, NWR and SR identified SLI in the monolingual children, yielding good to excellent diagnostic accuracy. Diagnostic accuracy in bilingual children was fair to good, generally distinguishing children likely to have SLI from children likely to have TD. Accuracy was necessarily linked to the determination of clinical status, which was based on standardized assessment in each

Un Bosquejo del Proyecto Bilingue (Outline of a Bilingual Project).

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Compton City Schools, CA.

Bilingual education in English and Spanish is intended to give native speakers of both languages insights into two cultures, a broader background, and greater life opportunities. Spanish-speaking students in bilingual programs can retain their language ties and the ability to communicate with their families and older relatives. The directors of…

Interdisciplinary Approach to the Mental Lexicon: Neural Network and Text Extraction From Long-term Memory

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Vardan G. Arutyunyan

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The paper touches upon the principles of mental lexicon organization in the light of recent research in psycho- and neurolinguistics. As a focal point of discussion two main approaches to mental lexicon functioning are considered: modular or dual-system approach, developed within generativism and opposite single-system approach, representatives of which are the connectionists and supporters of network models. The paper is an endeavor towards advocating the viewpoint that mental lexicon is complex psychological organization based upon specific composition of neural network. In this regard, the paper further elaborates on the matter of storing text in human mental space and introduces a model of text extraction from long-term memory. Based upon data available, the author develops a methodology of modeling structures of knowledge representation in the systems of artificial intelligence.

The BioLexicon: a large-scale terminological resource for biomedical text mining

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Thompson Paul

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Due to the rapidly expanding body of biomedical literature, biologists require increasingly sophisticated and efficient systems to help them to search for relevant information. Such systems should account for the multiple written variants used to represent biomedical concepts, and allow the user to search for specific pieces of knowledge (or events involving these concepts, e.g., protein-protein interactions. Such functionality requires access to detailed information about words used in the biomedical literature. Existing databases and ontologies often have a specific focus and are oriented towards human use. Consequently, biological knowledge is dispersed amongst many resources, which often do not attempt to account for the large and frequently changing set of variants that appear in the literature. Additionally, such resources typically do not provide information about how terms relate to each other in texts to describe events. Results This article provides an overview of the design, construction and evaluation of a large-scale lexical and conceptual resource for the biomedical domain, the BioLexicon. The resource can be exploited by text mining tools at several levels, e.g., part-of-speech tagging, recognition of biomedical entities, and the extraction of events in which they are involved. As such, the BioLexicon must account for real usage of words in biomedical texts. In particular, the BioLexicon gathers together different types of terms from several existing data resources into a single, unified repository, and augments them with new term variants automatically extracted from biomedical literature. Extraction of events is facilitated through the inclusion of biologically pertinent verbs (around which events are typically organized together with information about typical patterns of grammatical and semantic behaviour, which are acquired from domain-specific texts. In order to foster interoperability, the BioLexicon is

The BioLexicon: a large-scale terminological resource for biomedical text mining

Science.gov (United States)

2011-01-01

Background Due to the rapidly expanding body of biomedical literature, biologists require increasingly sophisticated and efficient systems to help them to search for relevant information. Such systems should account for the multiple written variants used to represent biomedical concepts, and allow the user to search for specific pieces of knowledge (or events) involving these concepts, e.g., protein-protein interactions. Such functionality requires access to detailed information about words used in the biomedical literature. Existing databases and ontologies often have a specific focus and are oriented towards human use. Consequently, biological knowledge is dispersed amongst many resources, which often do not attempt to account for the large and frequently changing set of variants that appear in the literature. Additionally, such resources typically do not provide information about how terms relate to each other in texts to describe events. Results This article provides an overview of the design, construction and evaluation of a large-scale lexical and conceptual resource for the biomedical domain, the BioLexicon. The resource can be exploited by text mining tools at several levels, e.g., part-of-speech tagging, recognition of biomedical entities, and the extraction of events in which they are involved. As such, the BioLexicon must account for real usage of words in biomedical texts. In particular, the BioLexicon gathers together different types of terms from several existing data resources into a single, unified repository, and augments them with new term variants automatically extracted from biomedical literature. Extraction of events is facilitated through the inclusion of biologically pertinent verbs (around which events are typically organized) together with information about typical patterns of grammatical and semantic behaviour, which are acquired from domain-specific texts. In order to foster interoperability, the BioLexicon is modelled using the Lexical

La literatura infantil en espanol en la clase bilingue (Children's Literature in Spanish in the Bilingual Class).

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Centurion, Henry

Techniques for using children's rhymes, games, tongue twisters, and fables in Spanish to teach bilingual education classes are described. It is argued that these abundant materials serve as natural sources for authentic Spanish from a variety of Hispanic cultures. With the appeal of rhythm, rhyme, and game-like feeling, they can be used to teach…

Dual Coding and Bilingual Memory.

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Paivio, Allan; Lambert, Wallace

1981-01-01

Describes study which tested a dual coding approach to bilingual memory using tasks that permit comparison of the effects of bilingual encoding with verbal-nonverbal dual encoding items. Results provide strong support for a version of the independent or separate stories view of bilingual memory. (Author/BK)

Novel word retention in bilingual and monolingual speakers

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Pui Fong eKan

2014-09-01

Full Text Available The goal of this research was to examine word retention in bilinguals and monolinguals. Long-term word retention is an essential part of vocabulary learning. Previous studies have documented that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in terms of retrieving newly-exposed words. Yet, little is known about whether or to what extent bilinguals are different from monolinguals in word retention. Participants were 30 English-speaking monolingual adults and 30 bilingual adults who speak Spanish as a home language and learned English as a second language during childhood. In a previous study (Kan, Sadagopan, Janich, & Andrade, 2014, the participants were exposed to the target novel words in English, Spanish, and Cantonese. In this current study, word retention was measured a week after the fast mapping task. No exposures were given during the one-week interval. Results showed that bilinguals and monolinguals retain a similar number of words. However, participants produced more words in English than in either Spanish or Cantonese. Correlation analyses revealed that language knowledge plays a role in the relationships between fast mapping and word retention. Specifically, within- and across-language relationships between bilinguals’ fast mapping and word retention were found in Spanish and English, by contrast, within-language relationships between monolinguals’ fast mapping and word retention were found in English and across-language relationships between their fast mapping and word retention performance in English and Cantonese. Similarly, bilinguals differed from monolinguals in the relationships among the word retention scores in three languages. Significant correlations were found among bilinguals’ retention scores. However, no such correlations were found among monolinguals’ retention scores. The overall findings suggest that bilinguals’ language experience and language knowledge most likely contribute to how they learn and retain new words.

Comparative Language Development in Bilingual and Monolingual Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review

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Lund, Emily M.; Kohlmeier, Theresa L.; Durán, Lillian K.

2017-01-01

The prevalence of both bilingual children and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is growing rapidly, and early childhood educators may be increasingly likely to encounter bilingual children with ASD in their classrooms. Because ASD significantly affects communication, many parents and professionals may have questions or concerns about…

Bilingual Advertising in Melbourne Chinatown

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Chen, Sherry Yong

2014-01-01

This paper explores the function of bilingual advertising by analyzing a case study of bilingual advertising in the Chinatown of Melbourne, Australia. The use of bilingual advertising in an immigrant setting differentiates itself from those in Asian settings where English is not used by dominant proportion of speakers in the society, and this…

Differences in the Association between Segment and Language: Early Bilinguals Pattern with Monolinguals and Are Less Accurate than Late Bilinguals

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Blanco, Cynthia P.; Bannard, Colin; Smiljanic, Rajka

2016-01-01

Early bilinguals often show as much sensitivity to L2-specific contrasts as monolingual speakers of the L2, but most work on cross-language speech perception has focused on isolated segments, and typically only on neighboring vowels or stop contrasts. In tasks that include sounds in context, listeners’ success is more variable, so segment discrimination in isolation may not adequately represent the phonetic detail in stored representations. The current study explores the relationship between language experience and sensitivity to segmental cues in context by comparing the categorization patterns of monolingual English listeners and early and late Spanish–English bilinguals. Participants categorized nonce words containing different classes of English- and Spanish-specific sounds as being more English-like or more Spanish-like; target segments included phonemic cues, cues for which there is no analogous sound in the other language, or phonetic cues, cues for which English and Spanish share the category but for which each language varies in its phonetic implementation. Listeners’ language categorization accuracy and reaction times were analyzed. Our results reveal a largely uniform categorization pattern across listener groups: Spanish cues were categorized more accurately than English cues, and phonemic cues were easier for listeners to categorize than phonetic cues. There were no differences in the sensitivity of monolinguals and early bilinguals to language-specific cues, suggesting that the early bilinguals’ exposure to Spanish did not fundamentally change their representations of English phonology. However, neither did the early bilinguals show more sensitivity than the monolinguals to Spanish sounds. The late bilinguals however, were significantly more accurate than either of the other groups. These findings indicate that listeners with varying exposure to English and Spanish are able to use language-specific cues in a nonce-word language categorization

The British Geological Survey's Lexicon of Named Rock Units as Online and Linked Data

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McCormick, T.

2012-12-01

The British Geological Survey's Lexicon of Named Rock Units provides freely accessible definitions and supplementary information about geological units of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and their associated continental shelf. It is an online database that can be searched at www.bgs.ac.uk/Lexicon/. It has existed since 1990 (under different names) but the database and user interface have recently been completely redesigned to improve their semantic capabilities and suitability for describing different styles of geology. The data are also now freely available as linked data from data.bgs.ac.uk/. The Lexicon of Named Rock Units serves two purposes. First, it is a dictionary, defining and constraining the geological units that are referenced in the Survey's data sets, workflows, products and services. These can include printed and digital geological maps at a variety of scales, reports, books and memoirs, and 3- and 4-dimensional geological models. All geological units referenced in any of these must first be present and defined, at least to a basic level of completeness, in the Lexicon database. Only then do they become available for use. The second purpose of the Lexicon is as a repository of knowledge about the geology of the UK and its continental shelf, providing authoritative descriptions written and checked by BGS geoscientists. Geological units are assigned to one of four themes: bedrock, superficial, mass movement and artificial. They are further assigned to one of nine classes: lithostratigraphical, lithodemic intrusive, lithodemic tectono-metamorphic, lithodemic mixed, litho-morpho-genetic, man-made, age-based, composite, and miscellaneous. The combination of theme and class controls the fields that are available to describe each geological unit, so that appropriate fields are offered for each, whether it is a Precambrian tectono-metamorphic complex, a Devonian sandstone formation, or a Devensian river terrace deposit. Information that may be recorded

Learning homophones in context: Easy cases are favored in the lexicon of natural languages.

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Dautriche, Isabelle; Fibla, Laia; Fievet, Anne-Caroline; Christophe, Anne

2018-08-01

Even though ambiguous words are common in languages, children find it hard to learn homophones, where a single label applies to several distinct meanings (e.g., Mazzocco, 1997). The present work addresses this apparent discrepancy between learning abilities and typological pattern, with respect to homophony in the lexicon. In a series of five experiments, 20-month-old French children easily learnt a pair of homophones if the two meanings associated with the phonological form belonged to different syntactic categories, or to different semantic categories. However, toddlers failed to learn homophones when the two meanings were distinguished only by different grammatical genders. In parallel, we analyzed the lexicon of four languages, Dutch, English, French and German, and observed that homophones are distributed non-arbitrarily in the lexicon, such that easily learnable homophones are more frequent than hard-to-learn ones: pairs of homophones are preferentially distributed across syntactic and semantic categories, but not across grammatical gender. We show that learning homophones is easier than previously thought, at least when the meanings of the same phonological form are made sufficiently distinct by their syntactic or semantic context. Following this, we propose that this learnability advantage translates into the overall structure of the lexicon, i.e., the kinds of homophones present in languages exhibit the properties that make them learnable by toddlers, thus allowing them to remain in languages. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Morphology-based Enhancement of a French SIMPLE Lexicon

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Namer , Fiammetta; Bouillon , Pierrette; Jacquey , Evelyne; Ruimy , Nilda

2009-01-01

International audience; In this paper, we propose a semi-automatic methodology for acquiring a French SIMPLE lexicon based on the morphological properties of complex words. This method combines the results of the French morphological analyzer DériF with infor-mation from general lexical resources and corpora, when available. It is evaluated on a set of neolo-gisms extracted from Le Monde newspaper cor-pora.

Bilingual education in Slovakia: A Case Study

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Silvia Pokrivčáková

2013-06-01

Full Text Available Bilingual education is one of the areas in contemporary education that brings out some important controversies (philosophical, conceptual, sociological, political, economical, etc. and thus calls for extensive and intensive debate. Bilingual education in Europe (and here the European Union countries are meant has gained a very different status, due to the general European policy of developing language diversity and promoting “European plurilingualism and multilingualism”. In Slovakia, one of the younger members of the EU, bilingual education became an extraordinarily popular instrument for the fulfilment of this task.  Since the specifically defined topic of bilingual education and its current status in Slovakia has not been studied and systematically reviewed yet, the research presented in this paper was designed as a single-phenomenon revelatory case study investigating seven research areas: reflection of bilingual education in school legislation and state pedagogical documents, purposes of bilingual education in Slovakia, its organization (levels and types of schools, foreign languages incorporated, teachers, structure of bilingual schools curricula, types of bilingual education applied at Slovak bilingual schools, and how bilingual education is both reflected in and saturated by the latest research findings. The conclusions presented in the paper were collected from multiple sources: state curriculum, statistical data published by the Slovak Ministry of Education or its partner institutions, international treaties on establishing and supporting bilingual sections of schools, bilingual schools curricula, interviews with school directors, teachers, and learners, direct observations at bilingual schools, research studies and research reports, etc. In the conclusion, bilingual education in Slovakia is identified as a unique, dynamically developing system which is both significantly shaped by the foreign language education policy promoted by

Does morphology play a role in L2 processing? Evidence from inflectional and derivational priming with Greek speakers of English

OpenAIRE

Voga , Madeleine; Anastasiadis-Symeonidis , Anna; Giraudo , Hélène

2013-01-01

International audience; In the domain of bilingual/second language processing, the existence and exact role of linking representations in the organisation of the lexicon summarizes the questioning of a large body of psycholinguistic research over the last years. According to Bybee (1985; 1988), morphology is the factor that clusters the (monolingual) lexicon and this organisation transcends languages. Such an organisation would have deep implications for second language acquisition and would ...

From Business Corpus to Business Lexicon*

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Li Lan

2011-10-01

Full Text Available

Abstract: Language corpora are now indispensable to dictionary compilation. They help broaden the role of the dictionary from standardizing the vocabulary to recording a language. The trilingual corpus generated by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University gives a record of business languages used in Hong Kong. It differs from other corpora in that (1 it includes English, Chinese and Japanese; (2 it shows local characteristics; and (3 it focuses on a specific area (financial services, including banking, accounting, auditing, insurance and investment. The paper discusses various issues of setting up a tricorpus, and how to make full use of the data to generate a trilingual lexicon.

Keywords: MULTILINGUAL, SPECIAL PURPOSE, CORPUS, LEXICON

Opsomming: Van sakekorpus tot sakeleksikon. Taalkorpora is tans onontbeerlik virdie samestelling van woordeboeke. Hulle help om die rol van die woordeboek uit te brei vanaf diestandaardisering van die woordeskat tot die optekening van ‘n taal. Die drietalige korpus wat deurdie Hongkongse Politegniese Universiteit ontwikkel is, verskaf ‘n opgawe van die saketale wat inHongkong gebruik word. Dit verskil van ander korpora deurdat (1 dit Engels, Chinees and Japaneesinsluit; (2 dit plaaslike eienskappe vertoon; en (3 dit op 'n spesifieke gebied (finansiële dienste,insluitende bankwese, rekeningkunde, ouditering, versekering en belegging fokus. Die artikelbespreek verskillende aspekte van die totstandbrenging van 'n drietalige korpus, en hoe om vollegebruik te maak van die data om 'n drietalige leksikon te genereer.

Sleutelwoorde: MEERTALIG, SPESIALE DOEL, KORPUS, LEKSIKON

Does bilingualism influence cognitive aging?

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Bak, Thomas H; Nissan, Jack J; Allerhand, Michael M; Deary, Ian J

2014-06-01

Recent evidence suggests a positive impact of bilingualism on cognition, including later onset of dementia. However, monolinguals and bilinguals might have different baseline cognitive ability. We present the first study examining the effect of bilingualism on later-life cognition controlling for childhood intelligence. We studied 853 participants, first tested in 1947 (age = 11 years), and retested in 2008-2010. Bilinguals performed significantly better than predicted from their baseline cognitive abilities, with strongest effects on general intelligence and reading. Our results suggest a positive effect of bilingualism on later-life cognition, including in those who acquired their second language in adulthood. © 2014 The Authors Annals of Neurology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Neurological Association. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Non-Selective Lexical Access in Late Arabic-English Bilinguals: Evidence from Gating.

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Boudelaa, Sami

2018-02-07

Previous research suggests that late bilinguals who speak typologically distant languages are the least likely to show evidence of non-selective lexical access processes. This study puts this claim to test by using the gating task to determine whether words beginning with speech sounds that are phonetically similar in Arabic and English (e.g., [b,d,m,n]) give rise to selective or non-selective lexical access processes in late Arabic-English bilinguals. The results show that an acoustic-phonetic input (e.g., [bæ]) that is consistent with words in Arabic (e.g., [bædrun] "moon") and English (e.g., [bæd] "bad") activates lexical representations in both languages of the bilingual. This non-selective activation holds equally well for mixed lists with words from both Arabic and English and blocked lists consisting only of Arabic or English words. These results suggest that non-selective lexical access processes are the default mechanism even in late bilinguals of typologically distant languages.

Speech and language intervention in bilinguals

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Eliane Ramos

2011-12-01

Full Text Available Increasingly, speech and language pathologists (SLPs around the world are faced with the unique set of issues presented by their bilingual clients. Some professional associations in different countries have presented recommendations when assessing and treating bilingual populations. In children, most of the studies have focused on intervention for language and phonology/ articulation impairments and very few focus on stuttering. In general, studies of language intervention tend to agree that intervention in the first language (L1 either increase performance on L2 or does not hinder it. In bilingual adults, monolingual versus bilingual intervention is especially relevant in cases of aphasia; dysarthria in bilinguals has been barely approached. Most studies of cross-linguistic effects in bilingual aphasics have focused on lexical retrieval training. It has been noted that even though a majority of studies have disclosed a cross-linguistic generalization from one language to the other, some methodological weaknesses are evident. It is concluded that even though speech and language intervention in bilinguals represents a most important clinical area in speech language pathology, much more research using larger samples and controlling for potentially confounding variables is evidently required.

Translanguaging in Bilingual Teacher Preparation: Exploring Pre-Service Bilingual Teachers' Academic Writing

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Musanti, Sandra I.; Rodríguez, Alma D.

2017-01-01

Translanguaging, or the complex, dynamic, and integrated linguistic practices of bilinguals have been recently identified as a pedagogical strategy to facilitate learning in bilingual classrooms. Given its potential implications for teacher preparation, a qualitative case study was conducted at a university on the Texas-Mexico border to explore…

Proyecto Bilingüe: Constructing a Figured World of Bilingual Education for Latina/o Bilingual Teachers

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Ek, Lucila D.; Chávez, Guadalupe Domínguez

2015-01-01

Using theories of figured worlds, we demonstrate how Proyecto Bilingüe, a Master of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction program, constructs a figured world of bilingual education for Latina/o bilingual teachers. We drew from a larger qualitative study to conduct a thematic analysis of interviews with Latina/o bilingual teachers, their written…

Normal and abnormal aging in bilinguals

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Alfredo Ardila

Full Text Available Abstract Bilinguals use two different language systems to mediate not only social communication, but also cognitive processes. Potential differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in task-solving strategies and patterns of cognitive decline during normal and abnormal aging have been suggested. Main contribution: A research review of the area suggests that normal aging is associated with increased interference between the two languages and tendency to retreat to a single language. General cognitive functioning has been found to be higher in demented bilingual patients if communication is carried out in L1 rather than in L2. Recent research has reported that bilingualism can have a protective effect during aging, attenuating the normal cognitive decline associated with aging, and delaying the onset of dementia. Conclusions: Regardless of the significant heterogeneity of bilingualism and the diversity of patterns in language use during life-span, current research suggests that bilingualism is associated with preserved cognitive test performance during aging, and potentially can have some protective effect in dementia.

The Emotional Lexicon of Individuals Diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder

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Gawda, Barbara

2013-01-01

This study investigated the specific emotional lexicons in narratives created by persons diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) to test the hypothesis that individuals with ASPD exhibit deficiencies in emotional language. Study participants consisted of 60 prison inmates with ASPD, 40 prison inmates without ASPD, and 60 men without…

Early bilingualism, language attainment, and brain development.

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Berken, Jonathan A; Gracco, Vincent L; Klein, Denise

2017-04-01

The brain demonstrates a remarkable capacity to undergo structural and functional change in response to experience throughout the lifespan. Evidence suggests that, in many domains of skill acquisition, the manifestation of this neuroplasticity depends on the age at which learning begins. The fact that most skills are acquired late in childhood or in adulthood has proven to be a limitation in studies aimed at determining the relationship between age of acquisition and brain plasticity. Bilingualism, however, provides an optimal model for discerning differences in how the brain wires when a skill is acquired from birth, when the brain circuitry for language is being constructed, versus later in life, when the pathways subserving the first language are already well developed. This review examines some of the existing knowledge about optimal periods in language development, with particular attention to the attainment of native-like phonology. It focuses on the differences in brain structure and function between simultaneous and sequential bilinguals and the compensatory mechanisms employed when bilingualism is achieved later in life, based on evidence from studies using a variety of neuroimaging modalities, including positron emission tomography (PET), task-based and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and structural MRI. The discussion concludes with the presentation of recent neuroimaging studies that explore the concept of nested optimal periods in language development and the different neural paths to language proficiency taken by simultaneous and sequential bilinguals, with extrapolation to general notions of the relationship between age of acquisition and ultimate skill performance. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Information Architecture for Bilingual Web Sites.

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Cunliffe, Daniel; Jones, Helen; Jarvis, Melanie; Egan, Kevin; Huws, Rhian; Munro, Sian

2002-01-01

Discusses creating an information architecture for a bilingual Web site and reports work in progress on the development of a content-based bilingual Web site to facilitate shared resources between speech and language therapists. Considers a structural analysis of existing bilingual Web designs and explains a card-sorting activity conducted with…

Semantic facilitation in bilingual first language acquisition.

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Bilson, Samuel; Yoshida, Hanako; Tran, Crystal D; Woods, Elizabeth A; Hills, Thomas T

2015-07-01

Bilingual first language learners face unique challenges that may influence the rate and order of early word learning relative to monolinguals. A comparison of the productive vocabularies of 435 children between the ages of 6 months and 7 years-181 of which were bilingual English learners-found that monolinguals learned both English words and all-language concepts faster than bilinguals. However, bilinguals showed an enhancement of an effect previously found in monolinguals-the preference for learning words with more associative cues. Though both monolinguals and bilinguals were best fit by a similar model of word learning, semantic network structure and growth indicated that the two groups were learning English words in a different order. Further, in comparison with a model of two-monolinguals-in-one-mind, bilinguals overproduced translational equivalents. Our results support an emergent account of bilingual first language acquisition, where learning a word in one language facilitates its acquisition in a second language. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Bilingualism and Creativity in Early Childhood

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Leikin, Mark; Tovli, Esther

2014-01-01

This study examined the possible effect of bilingualism on creativity in nonmathematical and mathematical problem solving among bilingual and monolingual preschoolers. Two groups of children (M age = 71.9 months, SD = 3.6) from the same monolingual kindergartens participated in this study: 15 Russian/Hebrew balanced bilinguals and 16 native…

Deaf Children's Bimodal Bilingualism and Education

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Swanwick, Ruth

2016-01-01

This paper provides an overview of the research into deaf children's bilingualism and bilingual education through a synthesis of studies published over the last 15 years. This review brings together the linguistic and pedagogical work on bimodal bilingualism to inform educational practice. The first section of the review provides a synthesis of…

Cognitive advantages and disadvantages in early and late bilinguals.

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Pelham, Sabra D; Abrams, Lise

2014-03-01

Previous research has documented advantages and disadvantages of early bilinguals, defined as learning a 2nd language by school age and using both languages since that time. Relative to monolinguals, early bilinguals manifest deficits in lexical access but benefits in executive function. We investigated whether becoming bilingual after childhood (late bilinguals) can produce the cognitive advantages and disadvantages typical of early bilinguals. Participants were 30 monolingual English speakers, 30 late English-Spanish bilinguals, and 30 early Spanish-English bilinguals who completed a picture naming task (lexical access) and an attentional network task (executive function). Late and early bilinguals manifested equivalent cognitive effects in both tasks, demonstrating lexical access deficits and executive function benefits. These findings provide support for the hypothesis that cognitive effects associated with bilingualism arise as the result of proficient, habitual use of 2 languages and not of developmental changes associated with becoming bilingual during childhood.

Bilingualism: consequences for mind and brain.

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Bialystok, Ellen; Craik, Fergus I M; Luk, Gigi

2012-04-01

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. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Simultaneous vs. Successive Bilingualism among Preschool-Aged Children: A Study of Four-Year-Old Korean-English Bilinguals in the USA

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Kim, Ah-Young; Park, Anne; Lust, Barbara

2018-01-01

The current study compares simultaneous vs. successive bilingualism through a mixed-method research design with four four-year-old Korean-English bilingual children who were born and raised in the USA. Two simultaneous bilinguals were exposed to Korean and English from birth, whereas two successive bilinguals were exposed to Korean from birth, but…

Age of dementia diagnosis in community dwelling bilingual and monolingual Hispanic Americans.

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Lawton, Deborah M; Gasquoine, Philip G; Weimer, Amy A

2015-05-01

Bilingualism has been reported to delay the age of retrospective report of first symptom in dementia. This study determined if the age of clinically diagnosed Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia occurred later for bilingual than monolingual, immigrant and U.S. born, Hispanic Americans. It involved a secondary analysis of the subset of 81 bi/monolingual dementia cases identified at yearly follow-up (1998 through 2008) using neuropsychological test results and objective diagnostic criteria from the Sacramento Area Latino Study on Aging that involved a random sampling of community dwelling Hispanic Americans (N = 1789). Age of dementia diagnosis was analyzed in a 2 × 2 (bi/monolingualism × immigrant/U.S. born) ANOVA that space revealed both main effects and the interaction were non-significant. Mean age of dementia diagnosis was descriptively (but not significantly) higher in the monolingual (M = 81.10 years) than the bilingual (M = 79.31) group. Overall, bilingual dementia cases were significantly better educated than monolinguals, but U.S. born bilinguals and monolinguals did not differ significantly in education. Delays in dementia symptomatology pertaining to bilingualism are less likely to be found in studies: (a) that use age of clinical diagnosis vs. retrospective report of first dementia symptom as the dependent variable; and (b) involve clinical cases derived from community samples rather than referrals to specialist memory clinics. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Bilingualism, social cognition and executive functions: A tale of chickens and eggs.

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Cox, Simon R; Bak, Thomas H; Allerhand, Michael; Redmond, Paul; Starr, John M; Deary, Ian J; MacPherson, Sarah E

2016-10-01

The influence of bilingualism on cognitive functioning is currently a topic of intense scientific debate. The strongest evidence for a cognitive benefit of bilingualism has been demonstrated in executive functions. However, the causal direction of the relationship remains unclear: does learning other languages improve executive functions or are people with better executive abilities more likely to become bilingual? To address this, we examined 90 male participants of the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936; 26 were bilingual, 64 monolingual. All participants underwent an intelligence test at age 11 years and were assessed on a wide range of executive and social cognition tasks at age 74. The only notable differences between both groups were found for the Simon Effect (which indexes stimulus-response conflict resolution; β=-.518, p=0.025) and a trend effect for the Faux Pas task (a measure of complex theory of mind; ToM, β=0.432, p=0.060). Controlling for the influence of childhood intelligence, parental and own social class significantly attenuated the bilingual advantage on the Faux Pas test (β=0.058, p=0.816), whereas the Simon task advantage remained (β=-.589, p=0.049). We find some weak evidence that the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive functions may be selective and bi-directional. Pre-existing cognitive and social class differences from childhood may influence both ToM ability in older age and the likelihood of learning another language; yet, bilingualism does not appear to independently contribute to Faux Pas score. Conversely, learning a second language is related to better conflict processing, irrespective of initial childhood ability or social class. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Interobserver variability of ultrasound elastography and the ultrasound BI-RADS lexicon of breast lesions.

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Park, Chang Suk; Kim, Sung Hun; Jung, Na Young; Choi, Jae Jung; Kang, Bong Joo; Jung, Hyun Seouk

2015-03-01

Elastographpy is a newly developed noninvasive imaging technique that uses ultrasound (US) to evaluate tissue stiffness. The interpretation of the same elastographic images may be variable according to reviewers. Because breast lesions are usually reported according to American College of Radiology Breast Imaging and Data System (ACR BI-RADS) lexicons and final category, we tried to compare observer variability between lexicons and final categorization of US BI-RADS and the elasticity score of US elastography. From April 2009 to February 2010, 1356 breast lesions in 1330 patients underwent ultrasound-guided core biopsy. Among them, 63 breast lesions in 55 patients (mean age, 45.7 years; range, 21-79 years) underwent both conventional ultrasound and elastography and were included in this study. Two radiologists independently performed conventional ultrasound and elastography, and another three observers reviewed conventional ultrasound images and elastography videos. Observers independently recorded the elasticity score for a 5-point scoring system proposed by Itoh et al., BI-RADS lexicons and final category using ultrasound BI-RADS. The histopathologic results were obtained and used as the reference standard. Interobserver variability was evaluated. Of the 63 lesions, 42 (66.7 %) were benign, and 21 (33.3 %) were malignant. The highest value of concordance among all variables was achieved for the elasticity score (k = 0.59), followed by shape (k = 0.54), final category (k = 0.48), posterior acoustic features (k = 0.44), echogenecity and orientation (k = 0.43). The least concordances were margin (k = 0.26), lesion boundary (k = 0.29) and calcification (k = 0.3). Elasticity score showed a higher level of interobserver agreement for the diagnosis of breast lesions than BI-RADS lexicons and final category.

Impact of Bilingualism on Cognitive Outcome After Stroke.

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Alladi, Suvarna; Bak, Thomas H; Mekala, Shailaja; Rajan, Amulya; Chaudhuri, Jaydip Ray; Mioshi, Eneida; Krovvidi, Rajesh; Surampudi, Bapiraju; Duggirala, Vasanta; Kaul, Subhash

2016-01-01

Bilingualism has been associated with slower cognitive aging and a later onset of dementia. In this study, we aimed to determine whether bilingualism also influences cognitive outcome after stroke. We examined 608 patients with ischemic stroke from a large stroke registry and studied the role of bilingualism in predicting poststroke cognitive impairment in the absence of dementia. A larger proportion of bilinguals had normal cognition compared with monolinguals (40.5% versus 19.6%; Pdementia and vascular mild cognitive impairment (monolinguals 77.7% versus bilinguals 49.0%; Pbilinguals 10.5%; P=0.354). Bilingualism was found to be an independent predictor of poststroke cognitive impairment. Our results suggest that bilingualism leads to a better cognitive outcome after stroke, possibly by enhancing cognitive reserve. © 2015 American Heart Association, Inc.

Being Bilingual: Issues for Cross-Language Research

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Bogusia Temple

2006-01-01

Full Text Available The current political debates in England highlight the role of language in citizenship, social exclusion, and discrimination. Similar debates can also be found around the world. Correspondingly, research addressing different language communities is burgeoning. Service providers and academics are increasingly employing bilingual community researchers or interpreters to carry out research. However, there is very little written about the effect of working with bilingual researchers. What it means to be bilingual is often essentialised and rarely problematised. Bilingual researchers are seen as unproblematically acting as bridges between communities just because they are bilingual. Their ties to communities, their use of language, and their perspectives on the research are rarely investigated. Language is tied in an unproblematic way to meaning, values, and beliefs. In this article, I use examples from my own research to question what it means to be bilingual and to do cross-language research. I argue that there is no straightforward way in which meanings can be read off from researchers’ ties to language and that being bilingual is not the same for everyone.

Does Bilingualism Delay the Development of Dementia?

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Amy L Atkinson

2016-08-01

Full Text Available It has been suggested that bilingualism (where individuals speak two languages may delay the development of dementia. However, much of the research is inconclusive. Some researchers have reported that bilingualism delays the onset and diagnosis of dementia, whilst other studies have found weak or even detrimental effects. This paper reviews a series of nine empirical studies, published up until March 2016, which investigated whether bilingualism significantly delays the onset of dementia. The article also explores whether the inconsistent findings can be attributed to differences in study designs or the definitions of bilingualism used between studies. Based on current evidence, it appears that lifelong bilingualism, where individuals frequently use both languages, may be protective against dementia. However, becoming bilingual in adulthood or using the second language infrequently is unlikely to substantially delay onset of the disease.

Bilingual language control and general purpose cognitive control among individuals with bilingual aphasia: evidence based on negative priming and flanker tasks.

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Dash, Tanya; Kar, Bhoomika R

2014-01-01

Bilingualism results in an added advantage with respect to cognitive control. The interaction between bilingual language control and general purpose cognitive control systems can also be understood by studying executive control among individuals with bilingual aphasia. objectives: The current study examined the subcomponents of cognitive control in bilingual aphasia. A case study approach was used to investigate whether cognitive control and language control are two separate systems and how factors related to bilingualism interact with control processes. Four individuals with bilingual aphasia performed a language background questionnaire, picture description task, and two experimental tasks (nonlinguistic negative priming task and linguistic and nonlinguistic versions of flanker task). A descriptive approach was used to analyse the data using reaction time and accuracy measures. The cumulative distribution function plots were used to visualize the variations in performance across conditions. The results highlight the distinction between general purpose cognitive control and bilingual language control mechanisms. All participants showed predominant use of the reactive control mechanism to compensate for the limited resources system. Independent yet interactive systems for bilingual language control and general purpose cognitive control were postulated based on the experimental data derived from individuals with bilingual aphasia.

BILINGUALISM AMONG STUDENTS OF THE FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, SALATIGA, INDONESIA: A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS

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Anne Indrayanti Timotius

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Although bilingualism is an interesting phenomenon these days, not many researchers explore bilingualism in Asia. Most research in a similar field, like that done by Yip and Matthews (2007, and Harding-Esch and Riley (2003, show that children become bilingual because their parents are from countries with different mother tongues. This is not necessarily true in Asian countries like Indonesia. In Indonesia, most of its citizens are bilingual, even though both parents are Indonesian. This happens because children are not only exposed to and taught one language from a young age. Many of them are exposed to at least two languages, which are Indonesian (the national language and lingua franca of Indonesia and their local language – which is different depending on which area of Indonesia they were born or grew up. In addition, it is highly possible that exposure to other languages, such as English, may add to their capability to speak more than just two languages and thus, they become multilingual. This phenomenon has piqued the interest of the writers to conduct a study on bilingualism in Indonesia. The aim of the study is to describe bilingualism/multilingualism among a group of students in Indonesia. The data is collected by distributing questionnaires to 240 participants who are students in the Faculty of Language and Literature (FLL, Satya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga. The study reveals that there are three languages mostly spoken or used by the participants. They are Indonesian, English, and a regional language (mostly Javanese. Also, most of the students‘ first language is Indonesian. As for the second language, it is quite varied, including regional languages and English.

Discourses on Bilingualism in Canadian French Immersion Programs

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Roy, Sylvie; Galiev, Albert

2011-01-01

The present article examines discourses on bilingualism in French immersion schools and connects local ideologies of bilingualism to a more global view of what it means to be bilingual in Canada. Bilingualism is usually regarded as two isolated monolingualisms (or monolingual systems) in which there is no place for code-switching, uneven language…

Cognitive Advantages of Bilingual Children in Different Sociolinguistic Contexts

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Blom, Elma; Boerma, Tessel; Bosma, Evelyn; Cornips, Leonie; Everaert, Emma

2017-01-01

Many studies have shown that bilingual children outperform monolinguals on tasks testing executive functioning, but other studies have not revealed any effect of bilingualism. In this study we compared three groups of bilingual children in the Netherlands, aged 6–7 years, with a monolingual control group. We were specifically interested in testing whether the bilingual cognitive advantage is modulated by the sociolinguistic context of language use. All three bilingual groups were exposed to a minority language besides the nation’s dominant language (Dutch). Two bilingual groups were exposed to a regional language (Frisian, Limburgish), and a third bilingual group was exposed to a migrant language (Polish). All children participated in two working memory tasks (verbal, visuospatial) and two attention tasks (selective attention, interference suppression). Bilingual children outperformed monolinguals on selective attention. The cognitive effect of bilingualism was most clearly present in the Frisian-Dutch group and in a subgroup of migrant children who were relatively proficient in Polish. The effect was less robust in the Limburgish-Dutch sample. Investigation of the response patterns of the flanker test, testing interference suppression, suggested that bilingual children more often show an effect of response competition than the monolingual children, demonstrating that bilingual children attend to different aspects of the task than monolingual children. No bilingualism effects emerged for verbal and visuospatial working memory. PMID:28484403

Cognitive Advantages of Bilingual Children in Different Sociolinguistic Contexts.

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Blom, Elma; Boerma, Tessel; Bosma, Evelyn; Cornips, Leonie; Everaert, Emma

2017-01-01

Many studies have shown that bilingual children outperform monolinguals on tasks testing executive functioning, but other studies have not revealed any effect of bilingualism. In this study we compared three groups of bilingual children in the Netherlands, aged 6-7 years, with a monolingual control group. We were specifically interested in testing whether the bilingual cognitive advantage is modulated by the sociolinguistic context of language use. All three bilingual groups were exposed to a minority language besides the nation's dominant language (Dutch). Two bilingual groups were exposed to a regional language (Frisian, Limburgish), and a third bilingual group was exposed to a migrant language (Polish). All children participated in two working memory tasks (verbal, visuospatial) and two attention tasks (selective attention, interference suppression). Bilingual children outperformed monolinguals on selective attention. The cognitive effect of bilingualism was most clearly present in the Frisian-Dutch group and in a subgroup of migrant children who were relatively proficient in Polish. The effect was less robust in the Limburgish-Dutch sample. Investigation of the response patterns of the flanker test, testing interference suppression, suggested that bilingual children more often show an effect of response competition than the monolingual children, demonstrating that bilingual children attend to different aspects of the task than monolingual children. No bilingualism effects emerged for verbal and visuospatial working memory.

Bilingualism accentuates children's conversational understanding.

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Michael Siegal

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Although bilingualism is prevalent throughout the world, little is known about the extent to which it influences children's conversational understanding. Our investigation involved children aged 3-6 years exposed to one or more of four major languages: English, German, Italian, and Japanese. In two experiments, we examined the children's ability to identify responses to questions as violations of conversational maxims (to be informative and avoid redundancy, to speak the truth, be relevant, and be polite. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In Experiment 1, with increasing age, children showed greater sensitivity to maxim violations. Children in Italy who were bilingual in German and Italian (with German as the dominant language L1 significantly outperformed Italian monolinguals. In Experiment 2, children in England who were bilingual in English and Japanese (with English as L1 significantly outperformed Japanese monolinguals in Japan with vocabulary age partialled out. CONCLUSIONS: As the monolingual and bilingual groups had a similar family SES background (Experiment 1 and similar family cultural identity (Experiment 2, these results point to a specific role for early bilingualism in accentuating children's developing ability to appreciate effective communicative responses.

Effects of Marathi-Hindi Bilingualism on Neuropsychological Performance

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Kamat, Rujvi; Ghate, Manisha; Gollan, Tamar H.; Meyer, Rachel; Vaida, Florin; Heaton, Robert K.; Letendre, Scott; Franklin, Donald; Alexander, Terry; Grant, Igor; Mehendale, Sanjay; Marcotte, Thomas D.

2013-01-01

The present study aimed to examine if bilingualism affects executive functions and verbal fluency in Marathi and Hindi, two major languages in India, with a considerable cognate (e.g., activity is actividad in Spanish) overlap. A total of 174 native Marathi speakers from Pune, India, with varying levels of Hindi proficiency were administered tests of executive functioning and verbal performance in Marathi. A bilingualism index was generated using self-reported Hindi and Marathi proficiency. After controlling for demographic variables, the association between bilingualism and cognitive performance was examined. Degree of bilingualism predicted better performance on the switching (Color Trails-2) and inhibition (Stroop Color-Word) components of executive functioning; but not for the abstraction component (Halstead Category Test). In the verbal domain, bilingualism was more closely associated with noun generation (where the languages share many cognates) than verb generation (which are more disparate across these languages), as predicted. However, contrary to our hypothesis that the bilingualism “disadvantage” would be attenuated on noun generation, bilingualism was associated with an advantage on these measures. These findings suggest distinct patterns of bilingualism effects on cognition for this previously unexamined language pair, and that the rate of cognates may modulate the association between bilingualism and verbal performance on neuropsychological tests. PMID:22206622

Effects of Marathi-Hindi bilingualism on neuropsychological performance.

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Kamat, Rujvi; Ghate, Manisha; Gollan, Tamar H; Meyer, Rachel; Vaida, Florin; Heaton, Robert K; Letendre, Scott; Franklin, Donald; Alexander, Terry; Grant, Igor; Mehendale, Sanjay; Marcotte, Thomas D

2012-03-01

The present study aimed to examine if bilingualism affects executive functions and verbal fluency in Marathi and Hindi, two major languages in India, with a considerable cognate (e.g., activity is actividad in Spanish) overlap. A total of 174 native Marathi speakers from Pune, India, with varying levels of Hindi proficiency were administered tests of executive functioning and verbal performance in Marathi. A bilingualism index was generated using self-reported Hindi and Marathi proficiency. After controlling for demographic variables, the association between bilingualism and cognitive performance was examined. Degree of bilingualism predicted better performance on the switching (Color Trails-2) and inhibition (Stroop Color-Word) components of executive functioning; but not for the abstraction component (Halstead Category Test). In the verbal domain, bilingualism was more closely associated with noun generation (where the languages share many cognates) than verb generation (which are more disparate across these languages), as predicted. However, contrary to our hypothesis that the bilingualism "disadvantage" would be attenuated on noun generation, bilingualism was associated with an advantage on these measures. These findings suggest distinct patterns of bilingualism effects on cognition for this previously unexamined language pair, and that the rate of cognates may modulate the association between bilingualism and verbal performance on neuropsychological tests.

"Context and Spoken Word Recognition in a Novel Lexicon": Correction

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Revill, Kathleen Pirog; Tanenhaus, Michael K.; Aslin, Richard N.

2009-01-01

Reports an error in "Context and spoken word recognition in a novel lexicon" by Kathleen Pirog Revill, Michael K. Tanenhaus and Richard N. Aslin ("Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition," 2008[Sep], Vol 34[5], 1207-1223). Figure 9 was inadvertently duplicated as Figure 10. Figure 9 in the original article was correct.…

Bilingualism alters brain functional connectivity between "control" regions and "language" regions: Evidence from bimodal bilinguals.

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Li, Le; Abutalebi, Jubin; Zou, Lijuan; Yan, Xin; Liu, Lanfang; Feng, Xiaoxia; Wang, Ruiming; Guo, Taomei; Ding, Guosheng

2015-05-01

Previous neuroimaging studies have revealed that bilingualism induces both structural and functional neuroplasticity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the left caudate nucleus (LCN), both of which are associated with cognitive control. Since these "control" regions should work together with other language regions during language processing, we hypothesized that bilingualism may also alter the functional interaction between the dACC/LCN and language regions. Here we tested this hypothesis by exploring the functional connectivity (FC) in bimodal bilinguals and monolinguals using functional MRI when they either performed a picture naming task with spoken language or were in resting state. We found that for bimodal bilinguals who use spoken and sign languages, the FC of the dACC with regions involved in spoken language (e.g. the left superior temporal gyrus) was stronger in performing the task, but weaker in the resting state as compared to monolinguals. For the LCN, its intrinsic FC with sign language regions including the left inferior temporo-occipital part and right inferior and superior parietal lobules was increased in the bilinguals. These results demonstrate that bilingual experience may alter the brain functional interaction between "control" regions and "language" regions. For different control regions, the FC alters in different ways. The findings also deepen our understanding of the functional roles of the dACC and LCN in language processing. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Bilingual Language Control and General Purpose Cognitive Control among Individuals with Bilingual Aphasia: Evidence Based on Negative Priming and Flanker Tasks

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Dash, Tanya; Kar, Bhoomika R.

2014-01-01

Background. Bilingualism results in an added advantage with respect to cognitive control. The interaction between bilingual language control and general purpose cognitive control systems can also be understood by studying executive control among individuals with bilingual aphasia. Objectives. The current study examined the subcomponents of cognitive control in bilingual aphasia. A case study approach was used to investigate whether cognitive control and language control are two separate systems and how factors related to bilingualism interact with control processes. Methods. Four individuals with bilingual aphasia performed a language background questionnaire, picture description task, and two experimental tasks (nonlinguistic negative priming task and linguistic and nonlinguistic versions of flanker task). Results. A descriptive approach was used to analyse the data using reaction time and accuracy measures. The cumulative distribution function plots were used to visualize the variations in performance across conditions. The results highlight the distinction between general purpose cognitive control and bilingual language control mechanisms. Conclusion. All participants showed predominant use of the reactive control mechanism to compensate for the limited resources system. Independent yet interactive systems for bilingual language control and general purpose cognitive control were postulated based on the experimental data derived from individuals with bilingual aphasia. PMID:24982591

The Loch Ness Monster approach to bilingual language lateralization: a response to Berquier and Ashton.

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Paradis, M

1992-10-01

To continue to search for a difference in language lateralization between bilinguals and unilinguals is at best a futile task in the face of all the clinical evidence to the contrary and inconsistent experimental findings. No amount of refining of dichotic, tachistoscopic, or concurrent task procedures, or statistical sophistication, is likely to tap the differential reliance on pragmatic cues that might very well exist in some nonbalanced bilinguals.

Are there mental lexicons? The role of semantics in lexical decision.

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Dilkina, Katia; McClelland, James L; Plaut, David C

2010-12-13

What is the underlying representation of lexical knowledge? How do we know whether a given string of letters is a word, whereas another string of letters is not? There are two competing models of lexical processing in the literature. The first proposes that we rely on mental lexicons. The second claims there are no mental lexicons; we identify certain items as words based on semantic knowledge. Thus, the former approach - the multiple-systems view - posits that lexical and semantic processing are subserved by separate systems, whereas the latter approach - the single-system view - holds that the two are interdependent. Semantic dementia patients, who have a cross-modal semantic impairment, show an accompanying and related lexical deficit. These findings support the single-system approach. However, a report of an SD patient whose impairment on lexical decision was not related to his semantic deficits in item-specific ways has presented a challenge to this view. If the two types of processing rely on a common system, then shouldn't damage impair the same items on all tasks? We present a single-system model of lexical and semantic processing, where there are no lexicons, and performance on lexical decision involves the activation of semantic representations. We show how, when these representations are damaged, accuracy on semantic and lexical tasks falls off together, but not necessarily on the same set of items. These findings are congruent with the patient data. We provide an explicit explanation of this pattern of results in our model, by defining and measuring the effects of two orthogonal factors - spelling consistency and concept consistency. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Survey of Bilingualism in Autism Spectrum Disorders

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Kay-Raining Bird, Elizabeth; Lamond, Erin; Holden, Jeanette

2012-01-01

This survey study investigates issues related to bilingualism and autism. Bilingualism is common around the world but there is little published information to guide professionals and parents in making decisions about bilingualism for children with autism. Participants were 49 parents or guardians of children with autism who were members of a…

Designing Science Learning Environments That Support Emerging Bilingual Students to Problematize Electrical Phenomena

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Suarez, Enrique A.

This dissertation investigates how emerging bilingual students make sense of natural phenomena through engaging in certain epistemic practices of science, and the elements of the learning environment that created those opportunities. Specifically, the dissertation focuses on how emerging bilingual students problematized electrical phenomena, like electric flow and electrical resistance, and how the design features of the environment (e.g., sequencing of activities, linguistic practices) may have supported students as they made sense of phenomena. The first study describes how for students presented and evaluated mechanistic models of electric flow, focusing specifically on how students identified and negotiated a disagreement between their explanatory models. The results from this study highlight the complexity of students' disagreements, not only because of the epistemological aspects related to presenting and evaluating knowledge, but also due to interpersonal dynamics and the discomfort associated with disagreeing with another person. The second study focuses on the design features of the learning environment that supported emerging bilingual students' investigations of electrical phenomena. The findings from this study highlight how a carefully designed set of activities, with the appropriate material resources (e.g., experimental tools), could support students to problematize electrical resistance. The third study describes how emerging bilingual students engaged in translanguaging practices and the contextual features of the learning environment that created and hindered opportunities for translanguaging. The findings from this study identify and articulate how emerging bilingual students engaged in translanguaging practices when problematizing electrical resistance, and strengthen the perspective that, in order to be equitable for emerging bilingual students, science learning environments need to act as translanguaging spaces. This dissertation makes three

Bilingualism: Consequences for Mind and Brain

OpenAIRE

Bialystok, Ellen; Craik, Fergus I. M.; Luk, Gigi

2012-01-01

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...

The Effect of Script Similarity on Executive Control in Bilinguals

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Emily L Coderre

2014-09-01

Full Text Available The need for executive control (EC during bilingual language processing is thought to enhance these abilities, conferring a ‘bilingual advantage’ on EC tasks. Recently, the reliability and robustness of the bilingual advantage has been questioned, with many variables reportedly affecting the size and presence of the bilingual advantage. This study investigates one further variable that may affect bilingual EC abilities: the similarity of a bilingual’s two languages. We hypothesize that bilinguals whose two languages have a larger degree of orthographic overlap will require greater EC to manage their languages compared to bilinguals who use two languages with less overlap. We tested three groups of bilinguals with language pairs ranging from high- to low-similarity (German-English (GE, Polish-English (PE, and Arabic-English (AE, respectively and a group of English monolinguals on a Stroop and Simon task. Two components of the bilingual advantage were investigated: an interference advantage, such that bilinguals have smaller interference effects than monolinguals; and a global RT advantage, such that bilinguals are faster overall than monolinguals. Between bilingual groups, these effects were expected to be modulated by script similarity. AE bilinguals showed the smallest Stroop interference effects, but the longest overall RTs in both tasks. These seemingly contradictory results are explained by the presence of cross-linguistic interference in the Stroop task. We conclude that similar-script bilinguals demonstrated more effective domain-general EC than different-script bilinguals, since high orthographic overlap creates more cross-linguistic activation and increases the daily demands on cognitive control. The role of individual variation is also discussed. These results suggest that script similarity is an important variable to consider in investigations of bilingual executive control abilities.

Metalinguistic Aspects of Bilingual Processing.

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Bialystok, Ellen

2001-01-01

Examines differences in metalinguistic development between monolingual and bilingual children in terms of three subcategories: word awareness, syntactic awareness, and phonological awareness. In each case, some studies have reported advantages for bilingual children, while others have found either no difference between the groups or monolingual…

Bilingual Language Switching: Production vs. Recognition

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Mosca, Michela; de Bot, Kees

2017-01-01

This study aims at assessing how bilinguals select words in the appropriate language in production and recognition while minimizing interference from the non-appropriate language. Two prominent models are considered which assume that when one language is in use, the other is suppressed. The Inhibitory Control (IC) model suggests that, in both production and recognition, the amount of inhibition on the non-target language is greater for the stronger compared to the weaker language. In contrast, the Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA) model proposes that, in language recognition, the amount of inhibition on the weaker language is stronger than otherwise. To investigate whether bilingual language production and recognition can be accounted for by a single model of bilingual processing, we tested a group of native speakers of Dutch (L1), advanced speakers of English (L2) in a bilingual recognition and production task. Specifically, language switching costs were measured while participants performed a lexical decision (recognition) and a picture naming (production) task involving language switching. Results suggest that while in language recognition the amount of inhibition applied to the non-appropriate language increases along with its dominance as predicted by the IC model, in production the amount of inhibition applied to the non-relevant language is not related to language dominance, but rather it may be modulated by speakers' unconscious strategies to foster the weaker language. This difference indicates that bilingual language recognition and production might rely on different processing mechanisms and cannot be accounted within one of the existing models of bilingual language processing. PMID:28638361

Presentacio?n. Experiencias y propuestas de educacio?n intercultural bilingu?e en los cantones Cayambe y Pedro Moncayo (Ecuador)

OpenAIRE

Granda Mercha?n, Sebastia?n

2014-01-01

En el 2004, luego de 10 an?os de experiencia en los pa?ramos andinos de la Provincia de Cotopaxi, la Universidad Polite?cnica Salesiana oferta la Carrera de Educacio?n Intercultural Bilingu?e en la ciudad de Cayambe con el objetivo de atender las demandas de formacio?n de los docentes de las escuelas y colegios de la Jurisdiccio?n de Educacio?n Intercultural Bilingu?e de la zona. Para ese entonces, habi?an transcurrido ya 15 an?os desde que se institucionalizo? la Educacio?n Intercultural Bil...

Longitudinal effects of bilingualism on dual-tasking.

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Sörman, Daniel Eriksson; Josefsson, Maria; Marsh, John E; Hansson, Patrik; Ljungberg, Jessica K

2017-01-01

An ongoing debate surrounds whether bilinguals outperform monolinguals in tests of executive processing. The aim of this study was to investigate if there are long-term (10 year) bilingual advantages in executive processing, as indexed by dual-task performance, in a sample that were 40-65 years at baseline. The bilingual (n = 24) and monolingual (n = 24) participants were matched on age, sex, education, fluid intelligence, and study sample. Participants performed free-recall for a 12-item list in three dual-task settings wherein they sorted cards either during encoding, retrieval, or during both encoding and retrieval of the word-list. Free recall without card sorting was used as a reference to compute dual-task costs. The results showed that bilinguals significantly outperformed monolinguals when they performed card-sorting during both encoding and retrieval of the word-list, the condition that presumably placed the highest demands on executive functioning. However, dual-task costs increased over time for bilinguals relative to monolinguals, a finding that is possibly influenced by retirement age and limited use of second language in the bilingual group.

Materiales en Marcha Para El Esfuerzo Bilingue--Bicultural (Materials on the March for the Promotion of Bilingualism/Biculturalism), February 1973.

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San Diego City Schools, CA.

This newsletter is intended to promote the cause of bilingual-bicultural education. It contains a poem celebrating the birthday of Abraham Lincoln and articles on "Exploring Modern Bilingual Biology,""New Covers on the ESL Scene,""Bilingual-Bicultural Education: Background and Foreground," and "Field-Testing…

Does simultaneous bilingualism aggravate children's specific language problems?

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Korkman, Marit; Stenroos, Maria; Mickos, Annika; Westman, Martin; Ekholm, Pia; Byring, Roger

2012-09-01

There is little data on whether or not a bilingual upbringing may aggravate specific language problems in children. This study analysed whether there was an interaction of such problems and simultaneous bilingualism. Participants were 5- to 7-year-old children with specific language problems (LANG group, N = 56) or who were typically developing (CONTR group, N = 60). Seventy-three children were Swedish-Finnish bilingual and 43 were Swedish-speaking monolingual. Assessments (in Swedish) included tests of expressive language, comprehension, repetition and verbal memory. Per definition, the LANG group had lower scores than the CONTR group on all language tests. The bilingual group had lower scores than the monolingual group only on a test of body part naming. Importantly, the interaction of group (LANG or CONTR) and bilingualism was not significant on any of the language scores. Simultaneous bilingualism does not aggravate specific language problems but may result in a slower development of vocabulary both in children with and without specific language problems. Considering also advantages, a bilingual upbringing is an option also for children with specific language problems. In assessment, tests of vocabulary may be sensitive to bilingualism, instead tests assessing comprehension, syntax and nonword repetition may provide less biased methods. © 2012 The Author(s)/Acta Paediatrica © 2012 Foundation Acta Paediatrica.

Bilingual and Monolingual Children Prefer Native-Accented Speakers

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Andre L. eSouza

2013-12-01

Full Text Available Adults and young children prefer to affiliate with some individuals rather than others. Studies have shown that monolingual children show in-group biases for individuals who speak their native language without a foreign accent (Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, 2007. Some studies have suggested that bilingual children are less influenced than monolinguals by language variety when attributing personality traits to different speakers (Anisfeld & Lambert, 1964, which could indicate that bilinguals have fewer in-group biases and perhaps greater social flexibility. However, no previous studies have compared monolingual and bilingual children’s reactions to speakers with unfamiliar foreign accents. In the present study, we investigated the social preferences of 5-year-old English and French monolinguals and English-French bilinguals. Contrary to our predictions, both monolingual and bilingual preschoolers preferred to be friends with native-accented speakers over speakers who spoke their dominant language with an unfamiliar foreign accent. This result suggests that both monolingual and bilingual children have strong preferences for in-group members who use a familiar language variety, and that bilingualism does not lead to generalized social flexibility.

Bilingual and monolingual children prefer native-accented speakers.

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Souza, André L; Byers-Heinlein, Krista; Poulin-Dubois, Diane

2013-01-01

Adults and young children prefer to affiliate with some individuals rather than others. Studies have shown that monolingual children show in-group biases for individuals who speak their native language without a foreign accent (Kinzler et al., 2007). Some studies have suggested that bilingual children are less influenced than monolinguals by language variety when attributing personality traits to different speakers (Anisfeld and Lambert, 1964), which could indicate that bilinguals have fewer in-group biases and perhaps greater social flexibility. However, no previous studies have compared monolingual and bilingual children's reactions to speakers with unfamiliar foreign accents. In the present study, we investigated the social preferences of 5-year-old English and French monolinguals and English-French bilinguals. Contrary to our predictions, both monolingual and bilingual preschoolers preferred to be friends with native-accented speakers over speakers who spoke their dominant language with an unfamiliar foreign accent. This result suggests that both monolingual and bilingual children have strong preferences for in-group members who use a familiar language variety, and that bilingualism does not lead to generalized social flexibility.

How bilingualism shapes the functional architecture of the brain: A study on executive control in early bilinguals and monolinguals.

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Costumero, Víctor; Rodríguez-Pujadas, Aina; Fuentes-Claramonte, Paola; Ávila, César

2015-12-01

The existence of a behavioral advantage of bilinguals over monolinguals during executive tasks is controversial. A new approach to this issue is to investigate the effect of bilingualism on neural control when performing these tasks as a window to understand when behavioral differences are produced. Here, we tested if early bilinguals use more language-related networks than monolinguals while performing a go/no-go task that includes infrequent no-go and go trials. The RTs and accuracy in both groups did not differ. An independent component analyses (ICA) revealed, however, that bilinguals used the left fronto-parietal network and the salience network more than monolinguals while processing go infrequent cues and no-go cues, respectively. It was noteworthy that the modulation of these networks had opposite correlates with performance in bilinguals and monolinguals, which suggests that between-group differences were more qualitative than quantitative. Our results suggest that bilinguals may differently develop the involvement of the executive control networks that comprise the left inferior frontal gyrus during cognitive control tasks than monolinguals. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Language and mathematical problem solving among bilinguals.

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Bernardo, Allan B I

2002-05-01

Does using a bilingual's 1st or 2nd language have an effect on problem solving in semantically rich domains like school mathematics? The author conducted a study to determine whether Filipino-English bilingual students' understanding and solving of word problems in arithmetic differed when the problems were in the students' 1st and 2nd languages. Two groups participated-students whose 1st language was Filipino and students whose 1st language was English-and easy and difficult arithmetic problems were used. The author used a recall paradigm to assess how students understood the word problems and coded the solution accuracy to assess problem solving. The results indicated a 1st-language advantage; that is, the students were better able to understand and solve problems in their 1st language, whether the 1st language was English or Filipino. Moreover, the advantage was more marked with the easy problems. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.

The long-term effects of bilingualism on children of immigration: student bilingualism and future earnings

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Agirdag, O.

2014-01-01

In this study, we examine the largely neglected long-term effects of bilingualism for students with roots in immigration. Our central research question is whether students' bilingual proficiencies have an impact on their future earnings in the USA. For this purpose, we used two different data-sets,

Neuroanatomical profiles of bilingual children.

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Archila-Suerte, Pilar; Woods, Elizabeth A; Chiarello, Christine; Hernandez, Arturo E

2018-02-26

The goal of the present study was to examine differences in cortical thickness, cortical surface area, and subcortical volume between bilingual children who are highly proficient in two languages (i.e., English and Spanish) and bilingual children who are mainly proficient in one of the languages (i.e., Spanish). All children (N = 49) learned Spanish as a native language (L1) at home and English as a second language (L2) at school. Proficiency of both languages was assessed using the standardized Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery. Five-minute high-resolution anatomical scans were acquired with a 3-Tesla scanner. The degree of discrepancy between L1 and L2 proficiency was used to classify the children into two groups: children with balanced proficiency and children with unbalanced proficiency. The groups were comparable on language history, parental education, and other variables except English proficiency. Values of cortical thickness and surface area of the transverse STG, IFG-pars opercularis, and MFG, as well as subcortical volume of the caudate and putamen, were extracted from FreeSurfer. Results showed that children with balanced bilingualism had thinner cortices of the left STG, left IFG, left MFG and a larger bilateral putamen, whereas unbalanced bilinguals showed thicker cortices of the same regions and a smaller putamen. Additionally, unbalanced bilinguals with stronger foreign accents in the L2 showed reduced surface areas of the MFG and STS bilaterally. The results suggest that balanced/unbalanced bilingualism is reflected in different neuroanatomical characteristics that arise from biological and/or environmental factors. Published 2018. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

On the concept of “variant” in lexicon studies from a historic-variational perspective

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Américo Venâncio Lopes Machado Filho

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Even though the concept of linguistic variant has been fully established in contemporary sociolinguistic studies, it demands a theoretical review when it is considered from the perspective of lexicon studies, especially when related to historical and variational biases. In this paper, we present limits on identification and characterization of lexical variation, considering formal changes that may occur at other levels of analysis, especially at the morphological or phonetic ones. To support the reflections on the topic, we discuss the process of lexicon constitution in Portuguese and the results of etymological convergence and divergence present in the history of the language. Based on the analysis presented, it is proposed that research on lexical variation should incorporate to this notion any significant formal or content changes.

Assessing multilingual children: disentangling bilingualism from language impairment

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Armon-Lotem, S.; de Jong, J.; Meir, N.

2015-01-01

This book presents a comprehensive set of tools for assessing the linguistic abilities of bilingual children. It aims to disentangle effects of bilingualism from those of Specific Language Impairment (SLI), making use of both models of bilingualism and models of language impairment.

A longitudinal study of memory advantages in bilinguals.

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Jessica K Ljungberg

Full Text Available Typically, studies of cognitive advantages in bilinguals have been conducted previously by using executive and inhibitory tasks (e.g. Simon task and applying cross-sectional designs. This study longitudinally investigated bilingual advantages on episodic memory recall, verbal letter and categorical fluency during the trajectory of life. Monolingual and bilingual participants (n=178 between 35-70 years at baseline were drawn from the Betula Prospective Cohort Study of aging, memory, and health. Results showed that bilinguals outperformed monolinguals at the first testing session and across time both in episodic memory recall and in letter fluency. No interaction with age was found indicating that the rate of change across ages was similar for bilinguals and monolinguals. As predicted and in line with studies applying cross-sectional designs, no advantages associated with bilingualism were found in the categorical fluency task. The results are discussed in the light of successful aging.

Input and language development in bilingually developing children.

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Hoff, Erika; Core, Cynthia

2013-11-01

Language skills in young bilingual children are highly varied as a result of the variability in their language experiences, making it difficult for speech-language pathologists to differentiate language disorder from language difference in bilingual children. Understanding the sources of variability in bilingual contexts and the resulting variability in children's skills will help improve language assessment practices by speech-language pathologists. In this article, we review literature on bilingual first language development for children under 5 years of age. We describe the rate of development in single and total language growth, we describe effects of quantity of input and quality of input on growth, and we describe effects of family composition on language input and language growth in bilingual children. We provide recommendations for language assessment of young bilingual children and consider implications for optimizing children's dual language development. Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.

Take control the Mac OS X lexicon

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Zardetto, Sharon

2009-01-01

This ebook explains a little bit of everything; in fact, it's The Mac OS X (and then some) Lexicon because it's never just you and your Mac. It's you and your Mac and the Web, and your email, and that article you just read that threw 17 new acronyms at you or assumed that you knew all sorts of networking terms. Or it's you and your Mac and Finder features you've never touched, such as burn folders, smart folders, or proxy icons, and that mysterious Services submenu. This book is a great guide for Macintosh users everywhere who have trouble keeping up with the latest jargon, fo

Psycholinguistics in Applied Linguistics: Trends and Perspectives.

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de Bot, Kees

2000-01-01

Discusses the relationship between the terms psycholinguistics and applied linguistics, and in the process explores key issues in multilingual processing, such as the structure of the bilingual lexicon, language choice in production and perception, and the language mode. (Author/VWL)

[The early expressive vocabulary size in simultaneous bilingual growing-up infants - a diagnostic relevant criterion?].

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Kiese-Himmel, C; Sellner, L; Bockmann, A-K

2013-08-01

Bilingual young children's early expressive vocabulary size and its composition (as one domain of the language development) should be examined to find out whether children with a risk for delayed language development may be identified in this way. 30 bilingual kindergarten infants from Berlin (with simultaneous language acquisition; second language German) and 30 monolingual German infants from the greater areas of Stuttgart and Heidelberg were pair matched (mean chronological age 22.5 [SD 3.1] months; min 16; max 26). The German expressive vocabulary checklist Elternfragebogen zur Wort-schatzentwicklung im frühen Kindesalter (ELAN; Bockmann & Kiese-Himmel, 2006) was filled out by all parents. In addition, parents of bilingual infants completed the adaption of the German vocabulary checklist Sprachbeurteilung durch Eltern (SBE-2-KT; v. Suchodoletz & Sachse, 2008) for the second mother tongue. The monolinguals' word sum in the ELAN (145.7; SD 75.8) differed significantly (p=0.001) from the bilinguals' word sum (78.3; SD 78.9 words). In contrast, bilinguals did not significantly differ in their overall expressive vocabulary size (ELAN+SBE-2-KT: 101.2; SD 77.0 words) from their monolingual counterparts (ELAN). Because bilinguals had a similar sized overall early vocabulary (both languages) like monolingual German-learning infants, the diagnostic criterion to identify late talkers with 24 months of age (less than 50 German words and no word combinations) should not be applied to bilingually infants with simultaneously double language acquisition. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

Bilingual experience and executive functioning in young children.

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Carlson, Stephanie M; Meltzoff, Andrew N

2008-03-01

Advanced inhibitory control skills have been found in bilingual speakers as compared to monolingual controls (Bialystok, 1999). We examined whether this effect is generalized to an unstudied language group (Spanish-English bilingual) and multiple measures of executive function by administering a battery of tasks to 50 kindergarten children drawn from three language groups: native bilinguals, monolinguals (English), and English speakers enrolled in second-language immersion kindergarten. Despite having significantly lower verbal scores and parent education/income level, Spanish-English bilingual children's raw scores did not differ from their peers. After statistically controlling for these factors and age, native bilingual children performed significantly better on the executive function battery than both other groups. Importantly, the relative advantage was significant for tasks that appear to call for managing conflicting attentional demands (Conflict tasks); there was no advantage on impulse-control (Delay tasks). These results advance our understanding of both the generalizability and specificity of the compensatory effects of bilingual experience for children's cognitive development.

The concept of a bilingual dictionary

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Tarp, Sven

2005-01-01

The term bilingual dictionary is widely used, not only by librarians and dictionary users en general but also by professional lexicographers dedicated to the theory and practice of dictionary making. For this reason it should be expected that there were a common and well-established definition...... of the concept of a bilingual dictionary. It is evident that most people has an intuitive idea of what is meant by «bilingual dictionary». But science-based lexicographic theory - at least if it wants to be considered as such - must go beyond intuition and furnish precise definitions of the concepts used...... chapters, various definitions will be discussed and related to dictionary practice and, subsequently, the very concept of a bilingual dictionary will be examined in the light of a dictionary typology based upon the modern theory of lexicographic functions....

Bilingualism and Cognition: Informing Research, Pedagogy, and Policy

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Garcia, Eugene E.; Nanez, Jose E., Sr.

2011-01-01

In the United States, approximately 7% to 10% of children are raised in bilingual households. Despite inherent advantages to bilingualism, some bilingual children experience a significant lag in academic success relative to other groups. Bridging the fields of cognitive psychology and education, this volume presents research-based knowledge on…

The effects of bilingualism on children's perception of speech sounds

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Brasileiro, I.

2009-01-01

The general topic addressed by this dissertation is that of bilingualism, and more specifically, the topic of bilingual acquisition of speech sounds. The central question in this study is the following: does bilingualism affect children’s perceptual development of speech sounds? The term bilingual

Immersive bilingualism reshapes the core of the brain.

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Pliatsikas, Christos; DeLuca, Vincent; Moschopoulou, Elisavet; Saddy, James Douglas

2017-05-01

Bilingualism has been shown to affect the structure of the brain, including cortical regions related to language. Less is known about subcortical structures, such as the basal ganglia, which underlie speech monitoring and language selection, processes that are crucial for bilinguals, as well as other linguistic functions, such as grammatical and phonological acquisition and processing. Simultaneous bilinguals have demonstrated significant reshaping of the basal ganglia and the thalamus compared to monolinguals. However, it is not clear whether these effects are due to learning of the second language (L2) at a very young age or simply due to continuous usage of two languages. Here, we show that bilingualism-induced subcortical effects are directly related to the amount of continuous L2 usage, or L2 immersion. We found significant subcortical reshaping in non-simultaneous (or sequential) bilinguals with extensive immersion in a bilingual environment, closely mirroring the recent findings in simultaneous bilinguals. Importantly, some of these effects were positively correlated to the amount of L2 immersion. Conversely, sequential bilinguals with comparable proficiency and age of acquisition (AoA) but limited immersion did not show similar effects. Our results provide structural evidence to suggestions that L2 acquisition continuously occurs in an immersive environment, and is expressed as dynamic reshaping of the core of the brain. These findings propose that second language learning in the brain is a dynamic procedure which depends on active and continuous L2 usage.

Incidental Lexicon Acquisition through Playful Interaction

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Lukas Wilhelm Ansteeg

2015-02-01

Full Text Available This paper presents an educational game which aids learners with foreign lexicon acquisition while entertaining them at the same time. An overview over existing language learning tools is given, and a general platform for educational games for second language acquisition (SLA is described. It introduces a specific prototype video game which teaches Italian vocabulary to the user. The application puts learning at the core of its game mechanics and combines it with a narrative and role-playing elements. In a user study, the game is compared to two other learning methods with focus on long term retention of vocabulary and enjoyment of the exercise. The game is found to perform within 10% of the efficiency of pure vocabulary learning exercises, while being considerably more enjoyable to the user.

Bilingualism as a kind of therapy?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hulk, A.; Unsworth, S.

2010-01-01

In her very interesting Keynote Article, Johanne Paradis gives a clear overview of recent research at the interface of bilingual development and child language disorders, and highlights its theoretical and clinical implications. She raises the challenging question of "whether bilingualism can be

Main Trands and Prospects of Bilingual Education Development

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Y. Solntseva-Nakova

2015-02-01

Full Text Available The paper deals with the system of bilingual education, its development history, causes and effects of transformation of multi-ethnical education into polycultural one. The correlation between the bilingual and polycultural teaching is emphasized, its intensification resulting from the historical and socio-cultural background, as well as the global trends in philosophy, pedagogy and psychology. The author specifies the term of bilingual teaching; examines its various models emphasizing that their preferences depend on the particular socio-lingual backgrounds; demonstrates the relevance of bilingual teaching resulted from the general trend of economic, cultural and political integration. The advantages of bilingual education are enumerated: the access to information in various spheres and in a broader scale, continuing educational growth and competitiveness in the European and world labor markets. 

Main Trands and Prospects of Bilingual Education Development

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Y. Solntseva-Nakova

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The paper deals with the system of bilingual education, its development history, causes and effects of transformation of multi-ethnical education into polycultural one. The correlation between the bilingual and polycultural teaching is emphasized, its intensification resulting from the historical and socio-cultural background, as well as the global trends in philosophy, pedagogy and psychology. The author specifies the term of bilingual teaching; examines its various models emphasizing that their preferences depend on the particular socio-lingual backgrounds; demonstrates the relevance of bilingual teaching resulted from the general trend of economic, cultural and political integration. The advantages of bilingual education are enumerated: the access to information in various spheres and in a broader scale, continuing educational growth and competitiveness in the European and world labor markets. 

Does Bilingualism Delay the Development of Dementia?

OpenAIRE

Amy L Atkinson

2016-01-01

It has been suggested that bilingualism (where individuals speak two languages) may delay the development of dementia. However, much of the research is inconclusive. Some researchers have reported that bilingualism delays the onset and diagnosis of dementia, whilst other studies have found weak or even detrimental effects. This paper reviews a series of nine empirical studies, published up until March 2016, which investigated whether bilingualism significantly delays the onset of dementia. Th...

A CLOSE LOOK AT BILINGUALISM RESEARCH IN ASIA

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Evynurul Laily Zen

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Asia is a ‘homeland’ for bilingualism research in regards to its diversity. It is considered as a vivid research site where there is significant growth of academic areas of exploration. Yet, there are very few scientific attempts to map bilingualism research in an Asian context so far. Thus, I bring the idea of mapping previous works through this literature study by specifically scrutinizing (a bilingualism research in Southeast Asia, (b bilingualism research in other parts of Asia, and (c lessons to learn as a stepping stone to define the future of Indonesian bilingualism. The general data mapping I have explored includes Southeast Asian countries (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam and other parts of Asia (China, India, Israel, and Kazakhstan. The findings from the 33 previous works can be considered as empirical evidence that I will use to portray the research trends in Asia’s bilingualism. The trends show that 19 (55% works have approached bilingual data from sociolinguistics perspective, whereas the other 14 (45% have framed their analysis under psycholinguistic approach. Based on the methodological concerns from these works, I propose two major areas of exploration: Family Language Policy (FLP and trilingual acquisition. FLP in Indonesian is a promising ground, as it brings together issues in language maintenance and shift that instigate a wider aspect of investigation; these aspects include bilingual language dominance, cross language influence, and so forth. Trilingual acquisition, the situation most Indonesian children are growing with, has a potentially significant impact on education, especially where a language curriculum is carefully planned and implemented. In conclusion, this mapping will hopefully shed a light on how bilingualism has academically been very appealing and will continue to fascinate more researchers.

Influence of Bilinguism on Socio-Cognitive Personality Development

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I. V. Sokolova

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The paper gives an overeview of foreign studies devoted to bilinguism and its influence on socio-cognitive personality development. Experimental research conducted in the recent years has broken the myth of negative influence of childhood bilinguism. Moreover, based on the comparative analysis, the present research shows the advantages of children and adults grown up in the bilingual environment. Their advantages compared with the monolingual peers include the well-developed meta-lingual abilities and executive functions - executive control, attention, planning, concentration, rejection of inessential information - necessary for fulfilling verbal tasks and activity control. The paper emphasizes the influence of bilinguism on cognitive decentration, ability to learn foreign languages and develop higher social sensitivity regarding both verbal and non-verbal communication (i.e. interpretation of mimics, gestures, intonations, and more adequate reaction to communicative behavior of surrounding people.The author concludes that bilinguism stimulates creativity, facilitates divergent thinking necessary for observing a variety of possible solutions and creative ideas development. Bilingual skills broaden children’s mental horizons leaving them more prepared for adult life compared to their monolingual peers. 

Bilingualism provides a neural reserve for aging populations.

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Abutalebi, Jubin; Guidi, Lucia; Borsa, Virginia; Canini, Matteo; Della Rosa, Pasquale A; Parris, Ben A; Weekes, Brendan S

2015-03-01

It has been postulated that bilingualism may act as a cognitive reserve and recent behavioral evidence shows that bilinguals are diagnosed with dementia about 4-5 years later compared to monolinguals. In the present study, we investigated the neural basis of these putative protective effects in a group of aging bilinguals as compared to a matched monolingual control group. For this purpose, participants completed the Erikson Flanker task and their performance was correlated to gray matter (GM) volume in order to investigate if cognitive performance predicts GM volume specifically in areas affected by aging. We performed an ex-Gaussian analysis on the resulting RTs and report that aging bilinguals performed better than aging monolinguals on the Flanker task. Bilingualism was overall associated with increased GM in the ACC. Likewise, aging induced effects upon performance correlated only for monolinguals to decreased gray matter in the DLPFC. Taken together, these neural regions might underlie the benefits of bilingualism and act as a neural reserve that protects against the cognitive decline that occurs during aging. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The influence of bilingualism on statistical word learning.

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Poepsel, Timothy J; Weiss, Daniel J

2016-07-01

Statistical learning is a fundamental component of language acquisition, yet to date, relatively few studies have examined whether these abilities differ in bilinguals. In the present study, we examine this issue by comparing English monolinguals with Chinese-English and English-Spanish bilinguals in a cross-situational statistical learning (CSSL) task. In Experiment 1, we assessed the ability of both monolinguals and bilinguals on a basic CSSL task that contained only one-to-one mappings. In Experiment 2, learners were asked to form both one-to-one and two-to-one mappings, and were tested at three points during familiarization. Overall, monolinguals and bilinguals did not differ in their learning of one-to-one mappings. However, bilinguals more quickly acquired two-to-one mappings, while also exhibiting greater proficiency than monolinguals. We conclude that the fundamental SL mechanism may not be affected by language experience, in accord with previous studies. However, when the input contains greater variability, bilinguals may be more prone to detecting the presence of multiple structures. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Interference Control In Elderly Bilinguals: Appearances Can Be Misleading.

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Ansaldo, Ana Inés; Ghazi-Saidi, Ladan; Adrover-Roig, Daniel

2015-01-01

Bilingualism has been associated with successful aging. In particular, research on the cognitive advantages of bilingualism suggests that it can enhance control over interference and help delay the onset of dementia signs. However, the evidence on the so-called cognitive advantage is not unanimous; furthermore, little is known about the neural basis of this supposed cognitive advantage in bilingual as opposed to monolingual elderly populations. In this study, elderly bilingual and monolingual participants performed a visuospatial interference control task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. Response times and accuracy rates were calculated for congruent and incongruent conditions of the Simon task, and the neurofunctional correlates of performance on the Simon task were examined. The results showed equivalent performance on the Simon task across groups but different underlying neural substrates in the two groups. With incongruent trials, monolinguals activated the right middle frontal gyrus, whereas bilinguals relied upon the left inferior parietal lobule. These results show that elderly bilinguals and monolinguals have equivalent interference control abilities, but relay on different neural substrates. Thus, while monolinguals show a classical PASA (posterior-anterior shift in aging) effect, recruiting frontal areas, bilinguals activate visuospatial processing alone and thus do not show this posterior-anterior shift. Moreover, a modulation of frontal activity with task-dynamic control of interference, observed in the elderly bilingual group alone, suggests that elderly bilinguals deal with interference control without recruiting a circuit that is particularly vulnerable to aging.

Beneficial effect of bilingualism on Alzheimer's disease CSF biomarkers and cognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Estanga, Ainara; Ecay-Torres, Mirian; Ibañez, Almudena; Izagirre, Andrea; Villanua, Jorge; Garcia-Sebastian, Maite; Iglesias Gaspar, M Teresa; Otaegui-Arrazola, Ane; Iriondo, Ane; Clerigue, Monserrat; Martinez-Lage, Pablo

2017-02-01

Bilingualism as a component of cognitive reserve has been claimed to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, its effect on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) AD-biomarkers has not been investigated. We assessed cognitive performance and CSF AD-biomarkers, and potential moderation effect of bilingualism on the association between age, CSF AD-biomarkers, and cognition. Cognitively healthy middle-aged participants classified as monolinguals (n = 100, n CSF  = 59), early (n = 81, n CSF  = 55) and late bilinguals (n = 97, n CSF  = 52) were evaluated. Models adjusted for confounders showed that bilinguals performed better than monolinguals on digits backwards (early-bilinguals p = 0.003), Judgment of Line Orientation (JLO) (early-bilinguals p = 0.018; late-bilinguals p = 0.004), and Trail Making Test-B (late-bilinguals p = 0.047). Early bilingualism was associated with lower CSF total-tau (p = 0.019) and lower prevalence of preclinical AD (NIA-AA classification) (p = 0.02). Bilingualism showed a moderation effect on the relationship between age and CSF AD-biomarkers and the relationship between age and executive function. We conclude that bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve enhancing executive and visual-spatial functions. For the first time, this study reveals that early bilingualism is associated with more favorable CSF AD-biomarker profile. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The effects of bilingual growth on toddlers' executive function.

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Crivello, Cristina; Kuzyk, Olivia; Rodrigues, Monyka; Friend, Margaret; Zesiger, Pascal; Poulin-Dubois, Diane

2016-01-01

The mastery of two languages provides bilingual speakers with cognitive benefits over monolinguals, particularly on cognitive flexibility and selective attention. However, extant research is limited to comparisons between monolinguals and bilinguals at a single point in time. This study investigated whether growth in bilingual proficiency, as shown by an increased number of translation equivalents (TEs) over a 7-month period, improves executive function. We hypothesized that bilingual toddlers with a larger increase of TEs would have more practice in switching across lexical systems, boosting executive function abilities. Expressive vocabulary and TEs were assessed at 24 and 31 months of age. A battery of tasks, including conflict, delay, and working memory tasks, was administered at 31 months. As expected, we observed a task-specific advantage in inhibitory control in bilinguals. More important, within the bilingual group, larger increases in the number of TEs predicted better performance on conflict tasks but not on delay tasks. This unique longitudinal design confirms the relation between executive function and early bilingualism. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Bilingualism, dementia, cognitive and neural reserve.

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Perani, Daniela; Abutalebi, Jubin

2015-12-01

We discuss the role of bilingualism as a source of cognitive reserve and we propose the putative neural mechanisms through which lifelong bilingualism leads to a neural reserve that delays the onset of dementia. Recent findings highlight that the use of more than one language affects the human brain in terms of anatomo-structural changes. It is noteworthy that recent evidence from different places and cultures throughout the world points to a significant delay of dementia onset in bilingual/multilingual individuals. This delay has been reported not only for Alzheimer's dementia and its prodromal mild cognitive impairment phase, but also for other dementias such as vascular and fronto-temporal dementia, and was found to be independent of literacy, education and immigrant status. Lifelong bilingualism represents a powerful cognitive reserve delaying the onset of dementia by approximately 4 years. As to the causal mechanism, because speaking more than one language heavily relies upon executive control and attention, brain systems handling these functions are more developed in bilinguals resulting in increases of gray and white matter densities that may help protect from dementia onset. These neurocognitive benefits are even more prominent when second language proficiency and exposure are kept high throughout life.

Guia para padres y maestros de ninos bilingues (A Parents' and Teachers' Guide to Bilingualism). Parents' and Teachers' Guides Number 5.

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Ada, Alma Flor; Baker, Colin

This book provides a practical introduction to questions about bilingualism. It is for parents and teachers who are themselves bilingual, for monolinguals who want to know more, for those with some intuitive understanding of bilingual situations and for those who are starting from the very beginning. The book poses questions that people often ask…

An Arabic-English-French Lexicon of the Dialects Spoken in the Chad-Sudan Area, 1. [Lexique des parlers arabes tchado-soudanais, 1.

Science.gov (United States)

Roth-Laly, Arlette, Comp.

This lexicon, a preliminary publication of a project dealing with Arabic dialects in the Chad-Sudan area, has been compiled from four earlier lexicons: G. Trenga, "Le bura-maband du Ouadai"; H. Carbou, "Methode pratique pour l'etude de l'arabe parle au Ouaday et a l'Est du Tchad"; G.L. Lethem, "Colloquial Arabic, Shua…

A Case for Multidimensional Bilingual Assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Sanchez, Serafin V.; Rodriguez, Billie Jo; Soto-Huerta, Mary Esther; Villarreal, Felicia Castro; Guerra, Norma Susan; Flores, Belinda Bustos

2013-01-01

Current assessment practices in the United States are not able to accurately capture the total linguistic, cognitive, and achievement abilities of bilingual learners. There are psychometric complexities involved when assessing and interpreting test results of bilingual students, which impact the validity of this practice. Further, the compromise…

Performance on Auditory and Visual Tasks of Inhibition in English Monolingual and Spanish-English Bilingual Adults: Do Bilinguals Have a Cognitive Advantage?

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Desjardins, Jamie L.; Fernandez, Francisco

2018-01-01

Purpose: Bilingual individuals have been shown to be more proficient on visual tasks of inhibition compared with their monolingual counterparts. However, the bilingual advantage has not been evidenced in all studies, and very little is known regarding how bilingualism influences inhibitory control in the perception of auditory information. The…

Enhanced music sensitivity in 9-month-old bilingual infants

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Liu, L.; Kager, R.W.J.

This study explores the influence of bilingualism on the cognitive processing of language and music. Specifically, we investigate how infants learning a non-tone language perceive linguistic and musical pitch and how bilingualism affects cross-domain pitch perception. Dutch monolingual and bilingual

Becoming Bilingual: A View Towards Communicative Competence

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Lilla Musyahda

2003-01-01

Full Text Available The phenomenon of foreign language mastery shall always be the main issue in the pedagogy since it has numerous advantages in human life, especially in terms of economic value. The definition of bilingualism is connected with the speaking of two languages or expression in two languages and it can be used to describe societies or individuals (Lyon, 1995. The way that a bilingual adapts to a certain condition leads to a certain phenomenon, which is quite interesting to analyze. The texture of the bilingual's creativity is essentially the result of the process of translation and transcreation, and insightful approaches to stylistics-its theory and methodology must be take into consideration. When people speak more than one languages, they may have different levels of proficiency in each of the languages, and use them for very different social purposes and in different situations. The languages that a bilingual speaks affect each other in various ways, so much that there is a regular study of what happens when one language comes into contact with another. In educational setting, it is important to know how a bilingual's first language may affect the function of other languages. The paper will discuss the phenomenon of bilingual and the implication towards communicative competence which would consists, minimally, of four areas of knowledge and skills; grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence.

Becoming Bilingual: A View Towards Communicative Competence

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lilla Musyanda

2002-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract: The phenomenon of foreign language mastery shall always be the main issue in the pedagogy since it has numerous advantages in human life, especially in terms of economic value. The definition of bilingualism is connected with the speaking of two languages or expression in two languages and it can be used to describe societies or individuals (Lyon, 1995. The way that a bilingual adapts to a certain condition leads to a certain phenomenon, which is quite interesting to analyze. The texture of the bilingual's creativity is essentially the result of the process of translation and transcreation, and insightful approaches to stylistics-its theory and methodology must be take into consideration. When people speak more than one languages, they may have different levels of proficiency in each of the languages, and use them for very different social purposes and in different situations. The languages that a bilingual speaks affect each other in various ways, so much that there is a regular study of what happens when one language comes into contact with another. In educational setting, it is important to know how a bilingual's first language may affect the function of other languages. The paper will discuss the phenomenon of bilingual and the implication towards communicative competence which would consists, minimally, of four areas of knowledge and skills; grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence.

Bilingualism and age are continuous variables that influence executive function.

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Incera, Sara; McLennan, Conor T

2018-05-01

We analyzed the effects of bilingualism and age on executive function. We examined these variables along a continuum, as opposed to dichotomizing them. We investigated the impact that bilingualism and age have on two measures of executive control (Stroop and Flanker). The mouse-tracking paradigm allowed us to examine the continuous dynamics of the responses as participants completed each trial. First, we found that the Stroop effect was reduced with younger age and higher levels of bilingualism; however, no Bilingualism by Age interaction emerged. Second, after controlling for baseline, the Flanker effect was not influenced by bilingualism or age. These results support the notion that bilingualism is one way of enhancing some aspects of executive function - specifically those related to the Stroop task - across the adult life span. In sum, different levels of bilingualism, and different ages, result in varying degrees of executive function as measured by the Stroop task.

Bilingual Enhancements Have No Socioeconomic Boundaries

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Krizman, Jennifer; Skoe, Erika; Kraus, Nina

2016-01-01

To understand how socioeconomic status (SES) and bilingualism simultaneously operate on cognitive and sensory function, we examined executive control, language skills, and neural processing of sound in adolescents who differed in language experience (i.e. English monolingual or Spanish-English bilingual) and level of maternal education (a proxy…

Bilingual education as a way to decolonization

OpenAIRE

Cocco, Elisa; Prip, Kasper; Arenas, Marisol; Todorova, Natalyia; Pedersen, Stefan

2014-01-01

This paper concerns the link between a post-colonial nation and a bilingual education and more specifically how bilingual education methods can be used as a means towards decolonization and a decolonized identity . The scope of our work is purposely focused on Peru in order to solve our problem formulation, which sounds: ‘‘Is it possible to create a conscious decolonized identity through a bilingual education program?’’ Comparative analyses of different relevant non-fiction literature as well...

Cognitive advantages of bilingual children in different sociolinguistic contexts

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Blom, E.; Boerma, T.; Bosma, E.; Cornips, L.M.E.A.; Everaert, E.

2017-01-01

Many studies have shown that bilingual children outperform monolinguals on tasks testing executive functioning, but other studies have not revealed any effect of bilingualism. In this study we compared three groups of bilingual children in the Netherlands, aged 6–7 years, with a monolingual control

Working with Bilingual Learners: An Introduction

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Willenberg, Ingrid

2015-01-01

This article seeks to provide a theoretical overview of bilingualism and discuss the key concepts and theories that inform classroom pedagogy with bilingual learners. Although some specific classroom strategies are introduced, the primary purpose is not to offer strategies, but rather to offer guiding principles based on theory and research to…

Gender differentiation in the lexicon of the serbian language

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Дарія Володимирівна Девлиш

2015-03-01

Full Text Available The article focuses its attention on the concepts "gender", "gender stereotype" and linguistic picture of the world. The lexicon of the Serbian language was researched through the prism of the analysis of synonymic rows which are used to represent character traits of men and women. In the structure of these concepts the following terms were pointed out: external characteristics, physical characteristics, internal characteristics, intellectual characteristics. Within the framework of the microcomponent “internal characteristics” two different negative features of both genders were analyzed: indecisive man, rude man; talkative woman, angry woman. 

Creating a Translanguaging Space for High School Emergent Bilinguals

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Li, Shuzhan; Luo, Wenjing

2017-01-01

Translanguaging is a rapidly developing concept in bilingual education. Working from the theoretical background of dynamic bilingualism, a translanguaging lens posits that bilingual learners draw on a holistic linguistic repertoire to make sense of the world and to communicate effectively with texts. What is relatively underdeveloped is the…

Cognitive Advantages and Disadvantages in Early and Late Bilinguals

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Pelham, Sabra D.; Abrams, Lise

2014-01-01

Previous research has documented advantages and disadvantages of early bilinguals, defined as learning a 2nd language by school age and using both languages since that time. Relative to monolinguals, early bilinguals manifest deficits in lexical access but benefits in executive function. We investigated whether becoming bilingual "after"…

Language, Culture and Identity: A Sociolinguistic Study of Bilingual ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

This paper explores the dynamics of bilingual speech in the Lagos Island speech community in Central Lagos. Against the background of the unique social motivations for bilingual behaviour in this cosmopolitan community, this study explores the various sociolinguistic acts utilized by the Yoruba-English bilinguals in the ...

Language preference and development of dementia among bilingual individuals.

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McMurtray, Aaron; Saito, Erin; Nakamoto, Beau

2009-10-01

In bilingual individuals, regression to a primary language may be associated with development of cognitive impairment and increased risk for development of dementia. This report describes two bilingual patients who presented with early symptoms of dementia after regression to their primary language. The results of this study may help clinicians identify aging bilingual patients who are beginning to develop cognitive impairment or dementia and suggest that further studies on the long term cognitive effects of bilingualism and interactions with the aging process are indicated.

RELATION OF DEAF PERSONS TOWARDS BILINGUALISM AS COMMUNICATION MODE

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Naim Salkić

2013-02-01

Full Text Available Bilingualism of a deaf child implies concurrent cognition and usage of sign language, as community language and oral-voice language as language of greater community in which deaf persons live. Today, most authors consider that deaf persons should know both of these languages and that deaf persons need to be educated in both languages, because of their general communication and complete psycho-social development. Through research on sample of 80 deaf examinees, we affirmed the kind of relation that deaf persons have towards bilingualism, bilingual way of education and communication. The research results have shown that bilingualism and bilingual way of education and communication is acceptable to deaf persons and that there is no statistically significant difference between the sub-samples of examinees.

RadLex - German version: a radiological lexicon for indexing image and report information

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Marwede, D.; Lobsien, D.; Kahn, T.; Daumke, P.; Marko, K.; Schulz, S.

2009-01-01

Purpose: Since 2003 the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) has been developing a lexicon of standardized radiological terms (RadLex) intended to support the structured reporting of imaging observations and the indexing of teaching cases. The aim of this study was to translate the first version of the lexicon (1 - 2007) into German and to implement a language-independent online term browser. Materials and Methods: RadLex version 1 - 2007 contains 6303 terms in nine main categories. Two radiologists independently translated the lexicon using medical dictionaries. Terms translated differently were revised and translated by consensus. For the development of an online term browser, a text processing algorithm called morphosemantic indexing was used which splits up words into small semantic units and compares those units to language-specific subword thesauri. Results: In total 6240 of 6303 terms (99 %) were translated. Of those terms 3965 were German, 1893 were Latin, 359 were multilingual, and 23 were English terms that are also used in German and were therefore maintained. The online term browser supports a language-independent term search in RadLex (German/English) and other common medical terminology (e.g., ICD 10). The term browser displays term hierarchies and translations in different frames and the complexity of the result lists can be adapted by the user. Conclusion: RadLex version 1 - 2007 developed by the RSNA is now available in German and can be accessed online through a term browser with an efficient search function. This is an important precondition for the future comparison of national and international indexed radiological examination results and the interoperability between digital teaching resources. (orig.)

An Interaction Between the Effects of Bilingualism and Cross-linguistic Similarity in Balanced and Unbalanced Bilingual Adults' L2 Mandarin Word-Reading Production.

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Hsu, Hsiu-Ling

2017-08-01

We conducted three experiments investigating in more detail the interaction between the two effects of bilingualism and L1-L2 similarity in the speech performance of balanced and unbalanced bilinguals. In Experiment 1, L1 Mandarin monolinguals and two groups of Hakka and Minnan balanced bilinguals (Hakka: more similar to Mandarin) performed a non-contextual single-character reading task in Mandarin, which required more inhibitory control. The two bilingual groups outperformed the monolinguals, regardless of their L1 background. However, the bilingual advantage was not found in a contextual multi-word task (Experiment 2), but instead the effect of cross-linguistic similarity emerged. Furthermore, in Experiment 3, the Hakka unbalanced bilinguals showed an advantage in the non-contextual task, while their Minnan counterparts did not, and the impact of L1-L2 similarity emerged in both tasks. These results unveiled the way the two effects dynamically interplayed depending on the task contexts and the relative degrees of using L1 and L2.

Training Bilingual Educators at a PBI

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Montes, Amanda Lira Gordenstein; Valenciano, Cynthia Kay; Fernandez, Miguel

2018-01-01

While Bilingual Education has traditionally been associated with linguistic diversity, the rise of the number of African-American teacher candidates in a Bilingual Education program at a mid-west Predominantly Black Institution (PBI) is causing the authors to reevaluate the input of this program's curriculum and the output of the candidates'…

Contribution of Bilingualism in Language Teaching

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Sipra, Muhammad Aslam

2013-01-01

This study is an investigation into the contribution of the use of bilingualism as an aid in learning/teaching English as a foreign language and bilingualism in EFL classroom does not reduce students' communicative abilities but in effect can assist in teaching and learning process. The study employed a qualitative, interpretive research design…

Cognitive control, cognitive reserve, and memory in the aging bilingual brain

OpenAIRE

Grant, Angela; Dennis, Nancy A.; Li, Ping

2014-01-01

In recent years bilingualism has been linked to both advantages in executive control and positive impacts on aging. Such positive cognitive effects of bilingualism have been attributed to the increased need for language control during bilingual processing and increased cognitive reserve, respectively. However, a mechanistic explanation of how bilingual experience contributes to cognitive reserve is still lacking. The current paper proposes a new focus on bilingual memory as an avenue to explo...

How age of bilingual exposure can change the neural systems for language in the developing brain: a functional near infrared spectroscopy investigation of syntactic processing in monolingual and bilingual children.

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Jasinska, K K; Petitto, L A

2013-10-01

Is the developing bilingual brain fundamentally similar to the monolingual brain (e.g., neural resources supporting language and cognition)? Or, does early-life bilingual language experience change the brain? If so, how does age of first bilingual exposure impact neural activation for language? We compared how typically-developing bilingual and monolingual children (ages 7-10) and adults recruit brain areas during sentence processing using functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) brain imaging. Bilingual participants included early-exposed (bilingual exposure from birth) and later-exposed individuals (bilingual exposure between ages 4-6). Both bilingual children and adults showed greater neural activation in left-hemisphere classic language areas, and additionally, right-hemisphere homologues (Right Superior Temporal Gyrus, Right Inferior Frontal Gyrus). However, important differences were observed between early-exposed and later-exposed bilinguals in their earliest-exposed language. Early bilingual exposure imparts fundamental changes to classic language areas instead of alterations to brain regions governing higher cognitive executive functions. However, age of first bilingual exposure does matter. Later-exposed bilinguals showed greater recruitment of the prefrontal cortex relative to early-exposed bilinguals and monolinguals. The findings provide fascinating insight into the neural resources that facilitate bilingual language use and are discussed in terms of how early-life language experiences can modify the neural systems underlying human language processing. Copyright © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Bilingual teaching in nursing education in China: evolution, status, and future directions.

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He, Wei; Xu, Yu; Zhu, Jianhua

2011-09-01

Based on Chinese published literature and personal observations, this article reviews the history of bilingual teaching in nursing education in China, describes its current status and challenges, and predicts its future directions. Bilingual teaching in nursing education enjoys increasing popularity in China. The major factors that affect bilingual teaching are bilingual educators, students' English-language levels, bilingual teaching materials, and teaching models. Based on surveys of nursing schools, the English-language proficiency of the nursing educators varies greatly. The main issues with the teaching methods lie in over-translation, cramming, and limited interaction between the students and the teachers. Despite relatively inadequate English-language proficiency among Chinese nursing students, their interest can be strengthened greatly if international exchanges are available and promoted. Bilingual textbooks are more suitable in China's national context because of pricing and relevance. Although immersive bilingual teaching is the ideal, it is more feasible to begin with infiltrative bilingual teaching and move progressively towards increased English-language penetration. Future directions for improving bilingual teaching include training teaching faculty members, strengthening international exchanges, providing better bilingual study atmospheres, and gradually implementing bilingual textbooks. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

Bilingual First Language Acquisition: Exploring the Limits of the Language Faculty.

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Genesee, Fred

2001-01-01

Reviews current research in three domains of bilingual acquisition: pragmatic features of bilingual code mixing, grammatical constraints on child bilingual code mixing, and bilingual syntactic development. Examines implications from these domains for the understanding of the limits of the mental faculty to acquire language. (Author/VWL)

GRADIENCE, PHONOTACTICS, AND THE LEXICON IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY

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Michael Hammond

2004-12-01

Full Text Available Experimental work has established that when subjects judge the phonological wellformedness of nonsense forms, they are strongly affected by the frequency of the phonological elements of the form and by the number of actual words that such a form is similar to. These results challenge phonological theory by suggesting a central role for frequency and the lexicon. In this paper, I review these results and show how they can be easily modelled with Probabilistic Optimality Theory. The payoff is that from very few phonological assumptions we can derive virtually the whole panoply of experimental effects. We can also derive various Local Conjunction effects as well.

Using Bilingual Dictionaries.

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Thompson, Geoff

1987-01-01

Monolingual dictionaries have serious disadvantages in many language teaching situations; bilingual dictionaries are potentially more efficient and more motivating sources of information for language learners. (Author/CB)

Is bilingualism losing its advantage? A bibliometric approach.

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Sanchez-Azanza, Victor A; López-Penadés, Raúl; Buil-Legaz, Lucía; Aguilar-Mediavilla, Eva; Adrover-Roig, Daniel

2017-01-01

This study uses several bibliometric indices to explore the temporal course of publication trends regarding the bilingual advantage in executive control over a ten-year window. These indices include the number of published papers, numbers of citations, and the journal impact factor. According to the information available in their abstracts, studies were classified into one of four categories: supporting, ambiguous towards, not mentioning, or challenging the bilingual advantage. Results show that the number of papers challenging the bilingual advantage increased notably in 2014 and 2015. Both the average impact factor and the accumulated citations as of June 2016 were equivalent between categories. However, of the studies published in 2014, those that challenge the bilingual advantage accumulated more citations in June 2016 than those supporting it. Our findings offer evidence-based bibliometric information about the current state of the literature and suggest a change in publication trends regarding the literature on the bilingual advantage.

Language choice in bimodal bilingual development

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Diane eLillo-Martin

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Bilingual children develop sensitivity to the language used by their interlocutors at an early age, reflected in differential use of each language by the child depending on their interlocutor. Factors such as discourse context and relative language dominance in the community may mediate the degree of language differentiation in preschool age children.Bimodal bilingual children, acquiring both a sign language and a spoken language, have an even more complex situation. Their Deaf parents vary considerably in access to the spoken language. Furthermore, in addition to code-mixing and code-switching, they use code-blending – expressions in both speech and sign simultaneously – an option uniquely available to bimodal bilinguals. Code-blending is analogous to code-switching sociolinguistically, but is also a way to communicate without suppressing one language. For adult bimodal bilinguals, complete suppression of the non-selected language is cognitively demanding. We expect that bimodal bilingual children also find suppression difficult, and use blending rather than suppression in some contexts. We also expect relative community language dominance to be a factor in children’s language choices.This study analyzes longitudinal spontaneous production data from four bimodal bilingual children and their Deaf and hearing interlocutors. Even at the earliest observations, the children produced more signed utterances with Deaf interlocutors and more speech with hearing interlocutors. However, while three of the four children produced >75% speech alone in speech target sessions, they produced <25% sign alone in sign target sessions. All four produced bimodal utterances in both, but more frequently in the sign sessions, potentially because they find suppression of the dominant language more difficult.Our results indicate that these children are sensitive to the language used by their interlocutors, while showing considerable influence from the dominant

Acquisition of stress and pitch accent in English-Spanish bilingual children

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Kim, Sahyang; Andruski, Jean; Nathan, Geoffrey S.; Casielles, Eugenia; Work, Richard

2005-09-01

Although understanding of prosodic development is considered crucial for understanding of language acquisition in general, few studies have focused on how children develop native-like prosody in their speech production. This study will examine the acquisition of lexical stress and postlexical pitch accent in two English-Spanish bilingual children. Prosodic characteristics of English and Spanish are different in terms of frequent stress patterns (trochaic versus penultimate), phonetic realization of stress (reduced unstressed vowel versus full unstressed vowel), and frequent pitch accent types (H* versus L*+H), among others. Thus, English-Spanish bilingual children's prosodic development may provide evidence of their awareness of language differences relatively early during language development, and illustrate the influence of markedness or input frequency in prosodic acquisition. For this study, recordings from the children's one-word stage are used. Durations of stressed and unstressed syllables and F0 peak alignment are measured, and pitch accent types in different accentual positions (nuclear versus prenuclear) are transcribed using American English ToBI and Spanish ToBI. Prosodic development is compared across ages within each language and across languages at each age. Furthermore, the bilingual children's productions are compared with monolingual English and Spanish parents' productions.

How does the bilingual experience sculpt the brain?

Science.gov (United States)

Costa, Albert; Sebastián-Gallés, Núria

2014-05-01

The ability to speak two languages often marvels monolinguals, although bilinguals report no difficulties in achieving this feat. Here, we examine how learning and using two languages affect language acquisition and processing as well as various aspects of cognition. We do so by addressing three main questions. First, how do infants who are exposed to two languages acquire them without apparent difficulty? Second, how does language processing differ between monolingual and bilingual adults? Last, what are the collateral effects of bilingualism on the executive control system across the lifespan? Research in all three areas has not only provided some fascinating insights into bilingualism but also revealed new issues related to brain plasticity and language learning.

Breast imaging reports for malignant lesions: are we maintaining recommended BI-RADS® lexicon standards?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Masroor, Imrana; Azeemuddin, Muhammad; Sakhawat, Saima; Beg, Madiha; Sohail, Saba; Ahmed, Rashid; Irfan-Ul-Haq; Mehboob, Javed

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to evaluate mammography reports for diagnosed breast cancer cases in major government and private centers in Karachi, Pakistan, with respect to concordance with the Breast Imaging Reports And Data System (BI-RADS ® ) lexicon. A prospective, descriptive, multicenter study was conducted in the radiology sections of the Aga Khan University Hospital, Pakistan Naval Station Shifa Hospital, Advanced Radiology Clinic, Karachi Institute of Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine, and Civil Hospital Karachi between May and October 2010 after approval from the ethical review committee of Aga Khan University. Mammograms reported as BI-RADS category 4 and 5 were included in the study. Mammograms reported as BI-RADS category 0, 1, 2 and 3 were excluded. Fifty reports were collected from each center. Data were collected about the clinical indication, breast density, location and description of the lesion, calcification, and comments on axillary lymph nodes. This description was compared with the BI-RADS lexicon. The mean age of the patients was 50 ± 12 years. The clinical indication, breast parenchymal density, lesion location, and presence of calcification were better described by the private centers, while description of lymph node status was better stated by the government centers. This difference was statistically significant, except for lesion description. The description of masses by the two reporting groups was comparable. Mammographic reporting of malignant breast lesions in the private sector is more in line with the BI-RADS lexicon, as compared with government sector hospitals in Karachi, Pakistan. Lymph node documentation was better in government sector reports

Bilingualism--A Sanguine Step in ELT

Science.gov (United States)

Anil, Beena

2014-01-01

Bilingualism can be used as a teaching aid in teaching and learning English language in an Indian classroom and to improve the language accuracy, fluency, and clarity of learners. Bilingualism can aid the teaching and learning process productively in the classroom. In India, most of the students consider English as a subject rather than a tool of…

Effects of bilingualism on white matter integrity in older adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Anderson, John A E; Grundy, John G; De Frutos, Jaisalmer; Barker, Ryan M; Grady, Cheryl; Bialystok, Ellen

2018-02-15

Bilingualism can delay the onset of dementia symptoms and has thus been characterized as a mechanism for cognitive or brain reserve, although the origin of this reserve is unknown. Studies with young adults generally show that bilingualism is associated with a strengthening of white matter, but there is conflicting evidence for how bilingualism affects white matter in older age. Given that bilingualism has been shown to help stave off the symptoms of dementia by up to four years, it is crucial that we clarify the mechanism underlying this reserve. The current study uses diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to compare monolinguals and bilinguals while carefully controlling for potential confounds (e.g., I.Q., MMSE, and demographic variables). We show that group differences in Fractional Anisotropy (FA) and Radial Diffusivity (RD) arise from multivariable interactions not adequately controlled for by sequential bivariate testing. After matching and statistically controlling for confounds, bilinguals still had greater axial diffusivity (AD) in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus than monolingual peers, supporting a neural reserve account for healthy older bilinguals. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The impact of bilingualism on working memory in pediatric epilepsy

Science.gov (United States)

Veenstra, Amy L.; Riley, Jeffrey D.; Barrett, Lauren E.; Muhonen, Michael G.; Zupanc, Mary; Romain, Jonathan E.; Lin, Jack J.; Mucci, Grace

2016-01-01

Impairments in executive skills broadly span across multiple childhood epilepsy syndromes and can adversely affect quality of life. Bilingualism has been previously shown to correlate with enhanced executive functioning in healthy individuals. This study seeks to determine whether the bilingual advantage in executive functioning exists in the context of pediatric epilepsy. We retrospectively analyzed neuropsychological data in 52 children with epilepsy and compared executive function scores in monolingual versus bilingual children with epilepsy, while controlling for socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Bilingual children performed significantly better on the Working Memory scale than did monolingual children. There were no significant differences on the remaining executive function variables. The bilingual advantage appears to persist for working memory in children with epilepsy. These findings suggest that bilingualism is potentially a protective variable in the face of epilepsy-related working memory dysfunction. PMID:26720703

Cognitive flexibility in drawings of bilingual children.

Science.gov (United States)

Adi-Japha, Esther; Berberich-Artzi, Jennie; Libnawi, Afaf

2010-01-01

A. Karmiloff-Smith's (1990) task of drawing a nonexistent object is considered to be a measure of cognitive flexibility. The notion of earlier emergence of cognitive flexibility in bilingual children motivated the current researchers to request 4- and 5-year-old English-Hebrew and Arabic-Hebrew bilingual children and their monolingual peers to draw a flower and a house that do not exist (N=80). Bilinguals exhibited a significantly higher rate of interrepresentational flexibility in their drawings (e.g., "a giraffe flower,"a chair-house," found in 28 of 54 drawings), whereas the level of complex intrarepresentational change was similar across groups. Interrepresentational drawings were previously reported only for children older than 7 years. The specific mechanisms by which bilinguals' language experience may lead to interrepresentational flexibility are discussed. © 2010 The Authors. Child Development © 2010 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Can bilingual two-year-olds code-switch?

Science.gov (United States)

Lanza, E

1992-10-01

Sociolinguists have investigated language mixing as code-switching in the speech of bilingual children three years old and older. Language mixing by bilingual two-year-olds, however, has generally been interpreted in the child language literature as a sign of the child's lack of language differentiation. The present study applies perspectives from sociolinguistics to investigate the language mixing of a bilingual two-year-old acquiring Norwegian and English simultaneously in Norway. Monthly recordings of the child's spontaneous speech in interactions with her parents were made from the age of 2;0 to 2;7. An investigation into the formal aspects of the child's mixing and the context of the mixing reveals that she does differentiate her language use in contextually sensitive ways, hence that she can code-switch. This investigation stresses the need to examine more carefully the roles of dominance and context in the language mixing of young bilingual children.

Lithuanian speaking childrens' bilingualism. language situation and policy

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Paškauskaitė, Ieva

2017-01-01

Lithuanian Speaking Childrens' Bilingualism. Language Situation and Policy The purpose of this study is to investigate the language situation of Lithuanian speaking children in Sweden and its causes. This study is specifically concerned with the subjects of bilingualism and family language policy: language strategies and methods. The concept of bilingualism is complex and can be defined in different ways, therefore this study is based on a table which was introduced by T. Skutnabb-Kangas in 1...

The impact of bilingualism on working memory in pediatric epilepsy.

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Veenstra, Amy L; Riley, Jeffrey D; Barrett, Lauren E; Muhonen, Michael G; Zupanc, Mary; Romain, Jonathan E; Lin, Jack J; Mucci, Grace

2016-02-01

Impairments in executive skills broadly span across multiple childhood epilepsy syndromes and can adversely affect quality of life. Bilingualism has been previously shown to correlate with enhanced executive functioning in healthy individuals. This study sought to determine whether the bilingual advantage in executive functioning exists in the context of pediatric epilepsy. We retrospectively analyzed neuropsychological data in 52 children with epilepsy and compared executive function scores in monolingual versus bilingual children with epilepsy while controlling for socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Bilingual children performed significantly better on the Working Memory Index than did monolingual children. There were no significant differences on the remaining executive function variables. The bilingual advantage appears to persist for working memory in children with epilepsy. These findings suggest that bilingualism is potentially a protective variable in the face of epilepsy-related working memory dysfunction. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Beyond Panglossian Optimism: Larger N2 Amplitudes Probably Signal a Bilingual Disadvantage in Conflict Monitoring

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Kenneth R. Paap

2015-01-01

Full Text Available In this special issue on the brain mechanisms that lead to cognitive benefits of bilingualism we discussed six reasons why it will be very difficult to discover those mechanisms. Many of these problems apply to the article by Fernandez, Acosta, Douglass, Doshi, and Tartar that also appears in the special issue. These concerns include the following: 1 an overly optimistic assessment of the replicability of bilingual advantages in behavioral studies, 2 reliance on risky small samples sizes, 3 failures to match the samples on demographic characteristics such as immigrant status, and 4 language group differences that occur in neural measures (i.e., N2 amplitude, but not in the behavioral data. Furthermore the N2 amplitude measure in general suffers from valence ambiguity: larger N2 amplitudes reported for bilinguals are more likely to reflect poorer conflict resolution rather than enhanced inhibitory control.

L1 and L2 Picture Naming in Mandarin-English Bilinguals: A Test of Bilingual Dual Coding Theory

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Jared, Debra; Poh, Rebecca Pei Yun; Paivio, Allan

2013-01-01

This study examined the nature of bilinguals' conceptual representations and the links from these representations to words in L1 and L2. Specifically, we tested an assumption of the Bilingual Dual Coding Theory that conceptual representations include image representations, and that learning two languages in separate contexts can result in…

Enhanced music sensitivity in 9-month-old bilingual infants.

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Liu, Liquan; Kager, René

2017-02-01

This study explores the influence of bilingualism on the cognitive processing of language and music. Specifically, we investigate how infants learning a non-tone language perceive linguistic and musical pitch and how bilingualism affects cross-domain pitch perception. Dutch monolingual and bilingual infants of 8-9 months participated in the study. All infants had Dutch as one of the first languages. The other first languages, varying among bilingual families, were not tone or pitch accent languages. In two experiments, infants were tested on the discrimination of a lexical (N = 42) or a violin (N = 48) pitch contrast via a visual habituation paradigm. The two contrasts shared identical pitch contours but differed in timbre. Non-tone language learning infants did not discriminate the lexical contrast regardless of their ambient language environment. When perceiving the violin contrast, bilingual but not monolingual infants demonstrated robust discrimination. We attribute bilingual infants' heightened sensitivity in the musical domain to the enhanced acoustic sensitivity stemming from a bilingual environment. The distinct perceptual patterns between language and music and the influence of acoustic salience on perception suggest processing diversion and association in the first year of life. Results indicate that the perception of music may entail both shared neural network with language processing, and unique neural network that is distinct from other cognitive functions.

Metaphoric Reference: An Eye Movement Analysis of Spanish-English and English-Spanish Bilingual Readers

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Roberto Ramírez Heredia

2016-03-01

Full Text Available This study examines the processing of metaphoric reference by bilingual speakers. English dominant, Spanish dominant, and balanced bilinguals read passages in English biasing either a figurative (e.g., describing a weak and soft fighter that always lost and everyone hated or a literal (e.g., describing a donut and bakery shop that made delicious pastries meaning of a critical metaphoric referential description (e.g., creampuff. We recorded the eye movements (first fixation, gaze duration, go-past duration, and total reading time for the critical region, which was a metaphoric referential description in each passage. The results revealed that literal vs. figurative meaning activation was modulated by language dominance, where Spanish dominant bilinguals were more likely to access the literal meaning, and English dominant and balanced bilinguals had access to both the literal and figurative meanings of the metaphoric referential description. Overall, there was a general tendency for the literal interpretation to be more active, as revealed by shorter reading times for the metaphoric reference used literally, in comparison to when it was used figuratively. Results are interpreted in terms of the Graded Salience Hypothesis (Giora, 2002, 2003 and the Literal Salience Model (Cieślicka, 2006, 2015.

The bilingual brain: Flexibility and control in the human cortex

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Buchweitz, Augusto; Prat, Chantel

2013-12-01

The goal of the present review is to discuss recent cognitive neuroscientific findings concerning bilingualism. Three interrelated questions about the bilingual brain are addressed: How are multiple languages represented in the brain? how are languages controlled in the brain? and what are the real-world implications of experience with multiple languages? The review is based on neuroimaging research findings about the nature of bilingual processing, namely, how the brain adapts to accommodate multiple languages in the bilingual brain and to control which language should be used, and when. We also address how this adaptation results in differences observed in the general cognition of bilingual individuals. General implications for models of human learning, plasticity, and cognitive control are discussed.

Bilingualism at the core of the brain. Structural differences between bilinguals and monolinguals revealed by subcortical shape analysis.

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Burgaleta, Miguel; Sanjuán, Ana; Ventura-Campos, Noelia; Sebastian-Galles, Núria; Ávila, César

2016-01-15

Naturally acquiring a language shapes the human brain through a long-lasting learning and practice process. This is supported by previous studies showing that managing more than one language from early childhood has an impact on brain structure and function. However, to what extent bilingual individuals present neuroanatomical peculiarities at the subcortical level with respect to monolinguals is yet not well understood, despite the key role of subcortical gray matter for a number of language functions, including monitoring of speech production and language control - two processes especially solicited by bilinguals. Here we addressed this issue by performing a subcortical surface-based analysis in a sample of monolinguals and simultaneous bilinguals (N=88) that only differed in their language experience from birth. This analysis allowed us to study with great anatomical precision the potential differences in morphology of key subcortical structures, namely, the caudate, accumbens, putamen, globus pallidus and thalamus. Vertexwise analyses revealed significantly expanded subcortical structures for bilinguals compared to monolinguals, localized in bilateral putamen and thalamus, as well as in the left globus pallidus and right caudate nucleus. A topographical interpretation of our results suggests that a more complex phonological system in bilinguals may lead to a greater development of a subcortical brain network involved in monitoring articulatory processes. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Does bilingualism contribute to cognitive reserve? Cognitive and neural perspectives.

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Guzmán-Vélez, Edmarie; Tranel, Daniel

2015-01-01

Cognitive reserve refers to how individuals actively utilize neural resources to cope with neuropathology to maintain cognitive functioning. The present review aims to critically examine the literature addressing the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive reserve to elucidate whether bilingualism delays the onset of cognitive and behavioral manifestations of dementia. Potential neural mechanisms behind this relationship are discussed. PubMed and PsycINFO databases were searched (through January 2014) for original research articles in English or Spanish languages. The following search strings were used as keywords for study retrieval: "bilingual AND reserve," "reserve AND neural mechanisms," and "reserve AND multilingualism." Growing scientific evidence suggests that lifelong bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve and delays the onset of Alzheimer's disease symptoms, allowing bilingual individuals affected by Alzheimer's disease to live an independent and richer life for a longer time than their monolingual counterparts. Lifelong bilingualism is related to more efficient use of brain resources that help individuals maintain cognitive functioning in the presence of neuropathology. We propose multiple putative neural mechanisms through which lifelong bilinguals cope with neuropathology. The roles of immigration status, education, age of onset, proficiency, and frequency of language use on the relationship between cognitive reserve and bilingualism are considered. Implications of these results for preventive practices and future research are discussed. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.

Does Bilingualism Contribute to Cognitive Reserve? Cognitive and Neural Perspectives

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Guzmán-Vélez, Edmarie; Tranel, Daniel

2015-01-01

Objective Cognitive reserve refers to how individuals actively utilize neural resources to cope with neuropathology in order to maintain cognitive functioning. The present review aims to critically examine the literature addressing the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive reserve in order to elucidate whether bilingualism delays the onset of cognitive and behavioral manifestations of dementia. Potential neural mechanisms behind this relationship are discussed. Method Pubmed and PsychINFO databases were searched (through January 2014) for original research articles in English or Spanish languages. The following search strings were employed as keywords for study retrieval: ‘bilingual AND reserve’, ‘reserve AND neural mechanisms’, and ‘reserve AND multilingualism’. Results Growing scientific evidence suggests that lifelong bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve and delays the onset of Alzheimer's disease symptoms, allowing bilingual individuals affected by Alzheimer's disease to live an independent and richer life for a longer time than their monolingual counterparts. Lifelong bilingualism is related to more efficient use of brain resources that help individuals maintain cognitive functioning in the presence of neuropathology. We propose multiple putative neural mechanisms through which lifelong bilinguals cope with neuropathology. The roles of immigration status, education, age of onset, proficiency and frequency of language use on the relationship between cognitive reserve and bilingualism are considered. Conclusions Implications of these results for preventive practices and future research are discussed. PMID:24933492

The relationship of bilingualism to cognitive decline: The Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing.

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Mukadam, Naaheed; Jichi, Fatima; Green, David; Livingston, Gill

2018-02-01

We wished to clarify the link between bilingualism and cognitive decline, and examine whether improved executive function due to bilingualism may be a factor in preventing cognitive decline. We used the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing which collected data on 2087 participants aged over 65 over 20 years. We compared baseline demographics, health, and social characteristics between bilingual and non-bilingual participants. We used linear mixed models analysis to explore the effect of bilingualism on MMSE score over time and linear regression to explore the effect of bilingualism on baseline MMSE scores, controlling for pre-specified potential confounders. Bilingual participants had lower baseline MMSE scores than the non-bilingual population (mean difference = -2.3 points; 95% confidence intervals = 1.56-2.90). This was fully explained by education and National Adult Reading Test scores (17.4; standard deviation [SD] =7.7 versus 28.1; SD = 8.2) which also partly explained baseline executive function test scores differences. Bilingual and non-bilingual participants did not differ in MMSE decline over time (-0.33 points, P = 0.31) nor on baseline tests of executive function (-0.26, P = 0.051). In this cohort, education rather than bilingualism was a predictor of MMSE score, and being bilingual did not protect from cognitive decline. We conclude that bilingualism is complex, and when it is not the result of greater educational attainment, it does not always protect from cognitive decline. Neuroprotective effects of bilingualism over time may be attributable to the precise patterns of language use but not to bilingualism per se. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Translanguaging and the Writing of Bilingual Learners

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Velasco, Patricia; García, Ofelia

2014-01-01

This article makes the case for using translanguaging in developing the academic writing of bilinguals. It reviews the emerging literature on learning and teaching theories of translanguaging and presents theoretical understandings of biliteracy development and specifically on the teaching of writing to bilingual learners. The article analyzes…

Bilingualism modulates dual mechanisms of cognitive control: Evidence from ERPs.

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Morales, Julia; Yudes, Carolina; Gómez-Ariza, Carlos J; Bajo, M Teresa

2015-01-01

Recent behavioral findings with the AX-Continous Performance Task (AX-CPT; Morales et al., 2013) show that bilinguals only outperform monolinguals under conditions that require the highest adjustment between monitoring (proactive) and inhibitory (reactive) control, which supports the idea that bilingualism modulates the coordination of different control mechanisms. In an ERP experiment we aimed to further investigate the role that bilingualism plays in the dynamic combination of proactive and reactive control in the AX-CPT. Our results strongly indicate that bilingualism facilitates an effective adjustment between both components of cognitive control. First, we replicated previous behavioral results. Second, ERP components indicated that bilingualism influences the conflict monitoring, response inhibition and error monitoring components of control (as indexed by the N2 and P3a elicited by the probe and the error-related negativity following incorrect responses, respectively). Thus, bilinguals exerted higher reactive control than monolinguals but only when they needed to overcome the competing cue-information. These findings join others in suggesting that a better understanding of the cognitive benefits of bilingualism may require consideration of a multi-component perspective. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Self-Repair and Language Selection in Bilingual Speech Processing

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Inga Hennecke

2013-07-01

Full Text Available In psycholinguistic research the exact level of language selection in bilingual lexical access is still controversial and current models of bilingual speech production offer conflicting statements about the mechanisms and location of language selection. This paper aims to provide a corpus analysis of self-repair mechanisms in code-switching contexts of highly fluent bilingual speakers in order to gain further insights into bilingual speech production. The present paper follows the assumptions of the Selection by Proficiency model, which claims that language proficiency and lexical robustness determine the mechanism and level of language selection. In accordance with this hypothesis, highly fluent bilinguals select languages at a prelexical level, which should influence the occurrence of self-repairs in bilingual speech. A corpus of natural speech data of highly fluent and balanced bilingual French-English speakers of the Canadian French variety Franco-Manitoban serves as the basis for a detailed analysis of different self-repair mechanisms in code-switching environments. Although the speech data contain a large amount of code-switching, results reveal that only a few speech errors and self-repairs occur in direct code-switching environments. A detailed analysis of the respective starting point of code-switching and the different repair mechanisms supports the hypothesis that highly proficient bilinguals do not select languages at the lexical level.Le niveau exact de la sélection des langues lors de l’accès lexical chez le bilingue reste une question controversée dans la recherche psycholinguistique. Les modèles actuels de la production verbale bilingue proposent des arguments contradictoires concernant le mécanisme et le lieu de la sélection des langues. La présente recherche vise à fournir une analyse de corpus mettant l’accent sur les mécanismes d’autoréparation dans le contexte d’alternance codique dans la production verbale

Representation of Colour Concepts in Bilingual Cognition: The Case of Japanese Blues

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Athanasopoulos, Panos; Damjanovic, Ljubica; Krajciova, Andrea; Sasaki, Miho

2011-01-01

Previous studies demonstrate that lexical coding of colour influences categorical perception of colour, such that participants are more likely to rate two colours to be more similar if they belong to the same linguistic category (Roberson et al., 2000, 2005). Recent work shows changes in Greek-English bilinguals' perception of within and…

The joint effect of bilingualism and ADHD on executive functions.

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Mor, Billy; Yitzhaki-Amsalem, Sarin; Prior, Anat

2015-06-01

The current study investigated the combined effect of ADHD, previously associated with executive function (EF) deficits, and of bilingualism, previously associated with EF enhancement, on EF. Eighty University students, Hebrew monolinguals and Russian Hebrew bilinguals, with and without ADHD participated. Inhibition tasks were a Numeric Stroop task and a Simon arrows task. Shifting tasks were the Trail Making Test (TMT) and a task-switching paradigm. Participants with ADHD performed worse than controls, but we did not find a bilingual advantage in EF. The negative impact of ADHD was more pronounced for bilinguals than for monolinguals, but only in interference suppression tasks. Bilingual participants with ADHD had the lowest performance. Bilingualism might prove to be an added burden for adults with ADHD, leading to reduced EF abilities. Alternatively, the current findings might be ascribed to over- or under-diagnosis of ADHD due to cultural differences between groups. These issues should be pursued in future research. © 2014 SAGE Publications.

Plasticity, Variability and Age in Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism.

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Birdsong, David

2018-01-01

Much of what is known about the outcome of second language acquisition and bilingualism can be summarized in terms of inter-individual variability, plasticity and age. The present review looks at variability and plasticity with respect to their underlying sources, and at age as a modulating factor in variability and plasticity. In this context we consider critical period effects vs. bilingualism effects, early and late bilingualism, nativelike and non-nativelike L2 attainment, cognitive aging, individual differences in learning, and linguistic dominance in bilingualism. Non-uniformity is an inherent characteristic of both early and late bilingualism. This review shows how plasticity and age connect with biological and experiential sources of variability, and underscores the value of research that reveals and explains variability. In these ways the review suggests how plasticity, variability and age conspire to frame fundamental research issues in L2 acquisition and bilingualism, and provides points of reference for discussion of the present Frontiers in Psychology Research Topic.

Bilingualism Alters Children's Frontal Lobe Functioning for Attentional Control

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Arredondo, Maria M.; Hu, Xiao-Su; Satterfield, Teresa; Kovelman, Ioulia

2017-01-01

Bilingualism is a typical linguistic experience, yet relatively little is known about its impact on children's cognitive and brain development. Theories of bilingualism suggest early dual-language acquisition can improve children's cognitive abilities, specifically those relying on frontal lobe functioning. While behavioral findings present much conflicting evidence, little is known about its effects on children's frontal lobe development. Using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), the findings suggest that Spanish-English bilingual children (n=13, ages 7-13) had greater activation in left prefrontal cortex during a non-verbal attentional control task relative to age-matched English monolinguals. In contrast, monolinguals (n=14) showed greater right prefrontal activation than bilinguals. The present findings suggest early bilingualism yields significant changes to the functional organization of children's prefrontal cortex for attentional control and carry implications for understanding how early life experiences impact cognition and brain development. PMID:26743118

Variation among heritage speakers: Sequential vs. simultaneous bilinguals

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Teresa Lee

2013-08-01

Full Text Available This study examines the differences in the grammatical knowledge of two types of heritage speakers of Korean. Early simultaneous bilinguals are exposed to both English and the heritage language from birth, whereas early sequential bilinguals are exposed to the heritage language first and then to English upon schooling. A listening comprehension task involving relative clauses was conducted with 51 beginning-level Korean heritage speakers. The results showed that the early sequential bilinguals exhibited much more accurate knowledge than the early simultaneous bilinguals, who lacked rudimentary knowledge of Korean relative clauses. Drawing on the findings of adult and child Korean L1 data on the acquisition of relative clauses, the performance of each group is discussed with respect to attrition and incomplete acquisition of the heritage language.

Drafting. A Bilingual Text = Dibujo Mecanico. Un Texto Bilingue.

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Los Angeles Unified School District, CA. Div. of Career and Continuing Education.

This bilingual instructional text, one in a series of six texts covering various vocational and technical topics, provides secondary level English and Spanish instruction in drafting. Addressed in the individual units are the following topics: safety, drafting tools and techniques, sketching, geometric construction, working drawings, sectioning,…

Adults' Self-Directed Learning of an Artificial Lexicon: The Dynamics of Neighborhood Reorganization

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Bardhan, Neil Prodeep

2010-01-01

Artificial lexicons have previously been used to examine the time course of the learning and recognition of spoken words, the role of segment type in word learning, and the integration of context during spoken word recognition. However, in all of these studies the experimenter determined the frequency and order of the words to be learned. In three…

Lexicon Sextant: Modeling a Mnemonic System for Customizable Browser Information Organization and Management

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Shen, Siu-Tsen

2016-01-01

This paper presents an ongoing study of the development of a customizable web browser information organization and management system, which the author has named Lexicon Sextant (LS). LS is a user friendly, graphical web based add-on to the latest generation of web browsers, such as Google Chrome, making it easier and more intuitive to store and…

SALT 2010 Bilingual S/E Version: A Tool for Assessing the Language Production of Bilingual (Spanish/English) Children

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Miller, Jon F.; Iglesias, Aquiles; Rojas, Raul

2010-01-01

Assessing the language development of bilingual children can be a challenge--too often, children in the complex process of learning both Spanish and English are under- or over-diagnosed with language disorders. SLPs can change that with "SALT 2010 Bilingual S/E Version" for grades K-3, the first tool to comprehensively assess children's language…

Portero versus portador: Spanish interpretation of genomic terminology during whole exome sequencing results disclosure.

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Gutierrez, Amanda M; Robinson, Jill O; Statham, Emily E; Scollon, Sarah; Bergstrom, Katie L; Slashinski, Melody J; Parsons, Donald W; Plon, Sharon E; McGuire, Amy L; Street, Richard L

2017-11-01

Describe modifications to technical genomic terminology made by interpreters during disclosure of whole exome sequencing (WES) results. Using discourse analysis, we identified and categorized interpretations of genomic terminology in 42 disclosure sessions where Spanish-speaking parents received their child's WES results either from a clinician using a medical interpreter, or directly from a bilingual physician. Overall, 76% of genomic terms were interpreted accordantly, 11% were misinterpreted and 13% were omitted. Misinterpretations made by interpreters and bilingual physicians included using literal and nonmedical terminology to interpret genomic concepts. Modifications to genomic terminology made during interpretation highlight the need to standardize bilingual genomic lexicons. We recommend Spanish terms that can be used to refer to genomic concepts.

The Value of Bilingualism in Pupils' Understanding of Scientific Language.

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Kearsey, John; Turner, Sheila

1999-01-01

Argues that, although some bilingual pupils may be at a disadvantage in understanding scientific language, there may be some circumstances where being bilingual is an advantage in understanding scientific language. Presents evidence of circumstances where being bilingual was an advantage and circumstances where it was a disadvantage in…

Bilingualism in children with developmental disorders: A narrative review.

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Kay-Raining Bird, Elizabeth; Genesee, Fred; Verhoeven, Ludo

Children with developmental disabilities (DD) often need and sometimes opt to become bilingual. The context for bilingual acquisition varies considerably and can impact outcomes. In this first article of the special issue, we review research on the timing and amount of bilingual exposure and outcomes of either direct language intervention or educational placements in three groups of children with DD: Specific Language Impairment (SLI), Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), and Down syndrome (DS). Children with SLI have been studied more than the other two groups. Findings showed that, on the one hand, the communication skills of simultaneous bilinguals and matched monolinguals with DD were similar for all groups when the stronger language or both languages of the bilingual children were considered. On the other hand, similar to typically developing children, sequential bilinguals and matched monolinguals with SLI (other groups not studied) differed on some but not all second language (L2) measures; even after an extended period of exposure, differences in L2 outcomes were not completely resolved. There is emerging evidence that the typological similarity of the languages being learned influences L2 development in sequential bilinguals, at least in children with SLI. Increasing the frequency of exposure seems to be more related to development of the weaker language in bilinguals with DD than their stronger language. Language intervention studies show the efficacy of interventions but provide little evidence for transfer across languages. In addition, only one (unpublished) study has compared the language and academic outcomes of children with DD in different language education programs. Research on bilingual children with DD in different educational settings/programs is limited, probably as a result of restricted inclusion of these children in some educational settings. We argue for the implementation of full inclusion policies that provide increased access to dual

Bilingualism and increased attention to speech: Evidence from event-related potentials.

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Kuipers, Jan Rouke; Thierry, Guillaume

2015-10-01

A number of studies have shown that from an early age, bilinguals outperform their monolingual peers on executive control tasks. We previously found that bilingual children and adults also display greater attention to unexpected language switches within speech. Here, we investigated the effect of a bilingual upbringing on speech perception in one language. We recorded monolingual and bilingual toddlers' event-related potentials (ERPs) to spoken words preceded by pictures. Words matching the picture prime elicited an early frontal positivity in bilingual participants only, whereas later ERP amplitudes associated with semantic processing did not differ between groups. These results add to the growing body of evidence that bilingualism increases overall attention during speech perception whilst semantic integration is unaffected. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Detection of bilingual plagiarism

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Frank Zamora R.

2016-06-01

Full Text Available In this paper a computational algorithm for text alignment in the task of automatically detecting bilingual plagiarism is proposed. The method of detecting bilingual plagiarism uses machine translation services, in order to have the documents in question a base language, and apply techniques of monolingual plagiarism. The algorithm was tested with The corpus belonging to the International Competition Plagiarism 2013, with the objective of evaluating the step of detecting monolingual plagiarism. Besides it’s experimented with the collection of texts EUROPARL, a collection of documents pertaining to the meeting the European Parliament, specifically it´s to English and Spanish documents.

Executive function and bilingualism in young and older adults

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Shanna eKousaie

2014-07-01

Full Text Available Research suggests that being bilingual results in advantages on executive control processes and disadvantages on language tasks relative to monolinguals. Furthermore, the executive function advantage is thought to be larger in older than younger adults, suggesting that bilingualism may buffer against age-related changes in executive function. However, there are potential confounds in some of the previous research, as well as inconsistencies in the literature. The goal of the current investigation was to examine the presence of a bilingual advantage in executive control and a bilingual disadvantage on language tasks in the same sample of young and older monolingual anglophones, monolingual francophones, and French/English bilinguals. Participants completed a series of executive function tasks, including a Stroop task, a Simon task, a sustained attention to response task (SART, the Wisconsin Card Sort Test (WCST, and the digit span subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, and language tasks, including the Boston Naming Test (BNT, and category and letter fluency. The results do not demonstrate an unequivocal advantage for bilinguals on executive function tasks and raise questions about the reliability, robustness and/or specificity of previous findings. The results also did not demonstrate a disadvantage for bilinguals on language tasks. Rather, they suggest that there may be an influence of the language environment. It is concluded that additional research is required to fully characterize any language group differences in both executive function and language tasks.

Materiales en Marcha Para El Esfuerzo Bilingue--Bicultural (Materials on the March for the Promotion of Bilingualism), January 1973.

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San Diego City Schools, CA.

This newsletter, intended to promote the cause of bilingual-bicultural education, contains articles on "Chicano Federation and Bilingual-Bicultural Education,""Have I Got a Math Series for You!,""Puerto Rican Social Studies Perspective," and "Multilingual Assessment Program Builds Better Testing Mousetrap." The first article appears in Spanish and…

Ontwikkeling van ’n Afrikaanse woordnet: metodologie en integrasie

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G. Kotzé

2008-07-01

Full Text Available Development of an Afrikaans wordnet: methodology and integration The Afrikaans wordnet is a lexical-conceptual network in the form of an electronic lexical database, developed at the North- West University. In this article, a methodology for a semi-automatic construction of the entries – so-called synonym sets – is investigated. Firstly, a background is given on the nature of a wordnet, as well as “WordNet”, on which it is based. Other wordnets, as well as applications of wordnets, are also discussed here. Next, the macrostructure of a wordnet in terms of its integration and compatibility with other wordnets is investigated, after which the proposed methodology is presented with a discussion of the results. Finally, a projection is made to the integration of the Afrikaans wordnet with other resources, which include “WordNet” and an Afrikaans lexical database, called ALEXANDER.

Linguistic Predictors of Cultural Identification in Bilinguals

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Schroeder, Scott R.; Lam, Tuan Q.; Marian, Viorica

2017-01-01

Most of the world's population has knowledge of at least two languages. Many of these bilinguals are also exposed to and identify with at least two cultures. Because language knowledge enables participation in cultural practices and expression of cultural beliefs, bilingual experience and cultural identity are interconnected. However, the specific…

Chinese Translation Errors in English/Chinese Bilingual Children's Picture Books

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Huang, Qiaoya; Chen, Xiaoning

2012-01-01

The aim of this study was to review the Chinese translation errors in 31 English/Chinese bilingual children's picture books. While bilingual children's books make definite contributions to language acquisition, few studies have examined the quality of these books, and even fewer have specifically focused on English/Chinese bilingual books.…

Bilingualism and Creativity: Benefits in Convergent Thinking Come with Losses in Divergent Thinking

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Hommel, Bernhard; Colzato, Lorenza S.; Fischer, Rico; Christoffels, Ingrid K.

2011-01-01

Bilingualism is commonly assumed to improve creativity but the mechanisms underlying creative acts, and the way these mechanisms are affected by bilingualism, are not very well understood. We hypothesize that learning to master multiple languages drives individuals toward a relatively focused cognitive-control state that exerts strong top-down impact on information processing and creates strong local competition for selection between cognitive codes. Considering the control requirements posed by creativity tasks tapping into convergent and divergent thinking, this predicts that high-proficient bilinguals should outperform low-proficient bilinguals in convergent thinking, while low-proficient bilinguals might be better in divergent thinking. Comparing low- and high-proficient bilinguals on convergent-thinking and divergent-thinking tasks indeed showed a high-proficient bilingual advantage for convergent thinking but a low-proficient bilingual advantage for fluency in divergent thinking. These findings suggest that bilingualism should not be related to “creativity” as a unitary concept but, rather, to the specific processes and mechanisms that underlie creativity. PMID:22084634

Bilingualism and creativity: Benefits in convergent thinking come with losses in divergent thinking

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Bernhard eHommel

2011-11-01

Full Text Available Bilingualism is commonly assumed to improve creativity but the mechanisms underlying creative acts, and the way these mechanisms are affected by bilingualism, are not very well understood. We hypothesize that learning to master multiple languages drives individuals towards a strongly focused cognitive-control state that exerts strong top-down impact on information processing and creates strong local competition for selection between cognitive codes. Considering the control requirements posed by creativity tasks tapping into convergent and divergent thinking, this predicts that high-proficient bilinguals should outperform low-proficient bilinguals in convergent thinking, while low-proficient bilinguals might be better in divergent thinking. Comparing low- and high-proficient bilinguals on convergent-thinking and divergent-thinking tasks indeed showed a high-proficient bilingual advantage for convergent thinking but a low-proficient bilingual advantage for fluency in divergent thinking. These findings suggest that bilingualism should not be related to creativity as a unitary concept but, rather, to the specific processes and mechanisms that underlie creativity.

The Development of Bimodal Bilingualism: Implications for Linguistic Theory.

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Lillo-Martin, Diane; de Quadros, Ronice Müller; Pichler, Deborah Chen

2016-01-01

A wide range of linguistic phenomena contribute to our understanding of the architecture of the human linguistic system. In this paper we present a proposal dubbed Language Synthesis to capture bilingual phenomena including code-switching and 'transfer' as automatic consequences of the addition of a second language, using basic concepts of Minimalism and Distributed Morphology. Bimodal bilinguals, who use a sign language and a spoken language, provide a new type of evidence regarding possible bilingual phenomena, namely code-blending, the simultaneous production of (aspects of) a message in both speech and sign. We argue that code-blending also follows naturally once a second articulatory interface is added to the model. Several different types of code-blending are discussed in connection to the predictions of the Synthesis model. Our primary data come from children developing as bimodal bilinguals, but our proposal is intended to capture a wide range of bilingual effects across any language pair.

Specificity of the bilingual advantage for memory: Examining cued recall, generalization, and working memory in monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual toddlers

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Natalie Hiromi Brito

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The specificity of the bilingual advantage in memory was examined by testing groups of monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual 24-month-olds on tasks tapping cued recall, memory generalization and working memory. For the cued recall and memory generalization conditions, there was a 24-hour delay between time of encoding and time of retrieval. In addition to the memory tasks, parent-toddler dyads completed a picture-book reading task, in order to observe emotional responsiveness, and a parental report of productive vocabulary. Results indicated no difference between language groups on cued recall, working memory, emotional responsiveness, or productive vocabulary, but a significant difference was found in the memory generalization condition with only the bilingual group outperforming the baseline control group. These results replicate and extend results from past studies (Brito and Barr, 2012; 2014; Brito et al., in press and suggest a bilingual advantage specific to memory generalization.

Specificity of the bilingual advantage for memory: examining cued recall, generalization, and working memory in monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual toddlers.

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Brito, Natalie H; Grenell, Amanda; Barr, Rachel

2014-01-01

The specificity of the bilingual advantage in memory was examined by testing groups of monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual 24-month-olds on tasks tapping cued recall, memory generalization and working memory. For the cued recall and memory generalization conditions, there was a 24-h delay between time of encoding and time of retrieval. In addition to the memory tasks, parent-toddler dyads completed a picture-book reading task, in order to observe emotional responsiveness, and a parental report of productive vocabulary. Results indicated no difference between language groups on cued recall, working memory, emotional responsiveness, or productive vocabulary, but a significant difference was found in the memory generalization condition with only the bilingual group outperforming the baseline control group. These results replicate and extend results from past studies (Brito and Barr, 2012, 2014; Brito et al., 2014) and suggest a bilingual advantage specific to memory generalization.

Developing a Maori Language Mathematics Lexicon: Challenges for Corpus Planning in Indigenous Language Contexts

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Trinick, Tony; May, Stephen

2013-01-01

Over the last 25 years, there has been significant modernisation and elaboration of the Maori language mathematics lexicon and register to support the teaching of (Western) mathematics as a component of Maori-medium schooling. These developments are situated within the wider Maori language revitalisation movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand, of which…

Bilingualism protects anterior temporal lobe integrity in aging.

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Abutalebi, Jubin; Canini, Matteo; Della Rosa, Pasquale A; Sheung, Lo Ping; Green, David W; Weekes, Brendan S

2014-09-01

Cerebral gray-matter volume (GMV) decreases in normal aging but the extent of the decrease may be experience-dependent. Bilingualism may be one protective factor and in this article we examine its potential protective effect on GMV in a region that shows strong age-related decreases-the left anterior temporal pole. This region is held to function as a conceptual hub and might be expected to be a target of plastic changes in bilingual speakers because of the requirement for these speakers to store and differentiate lexical concepts in 2 languages to guide speech production and comprehension processes. In a whole brain comparison of bilingual speakers (n = 23) and monolingual speakers (n = 23), regressing out confounding factors, we find more extensive age-related decreases in GMV in the monolingual brain and significantly increased GMV in left temporal pole for bilingual speakers. Consistent with a specific neuroprotective effect of bilingualism, region of interest analyses showed a significant positive correlation between naming performance in the second language and GMV in this region. The effect appears to be bilateral though because there was a nonsignificantly different effect of naming performance on GMV in the right temporal pole. Our data emphasize the vulnerability of the temporal pole to normal aging and the value of bilingualism as both a general and specific protective factor to GMV decreases in healthy aging. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Writing and Reading Knowledge of Spanish/English Second-Generation Bilinguals

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Ardila, Alfredo; Garcia, Krystal; Garcia, Melissa; Mejia, Joselyn; Vado, Grace

2017-01-01

Written bilingualism represents a particular type of bilingualism that is not frequently approached. The aim of this study was to investigate the writing and reading abilities of second-generation immigrants, Spanish-English bilinguals in South Florida. 58 participants (36 females, 22 males; 18-39 years of age) were selected. Both parents were…

Cognitive Flexibility in Drawings of Bilingual Children

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Adi-Japha, Esther; Berberich-Artzi, Jennie; Libnawi, Afaf

2010-01-01

A. Karmiloff-Smith's (1990) task of drawing a nonexistent object is considered to be a measure of cognitive flexibility. The notion of earlier emergence of cognitive flexibility in bilingual children motivated the current researchers to request 4- and 5-year-old English-Hebrew and Arabic-Hebrew bilingual children and their monolingual peers to…

New Directions in ASL-English Bilingual Ebooks

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Stone, Adam

2014-01-01

The widespread adoption of smartphones and tablet computers have enabled the rapid creation and distribution of innovative American Sign Language (ASL) and written English bilingual ebooks, aimed primarily at deaf and hard-of-hearing children. These sign-print bilingual ebooks are unique in how they take advantage of digital platforms to display…

Publishing a Quality Context-aware Annotated Corpus and Lexicon for Harassment Research

OpenAIRE

Rezvan, Mohammadreza; Shekarpour, Saeedeh; Balasuriya, Lakshika; Thirunarayan, Krishnaprasad; Shalin, Valerie; Sheth, Amit

2018-01-01

Having a quality annotated corpus is essential especially for applied research. Despite the recent focus of Web science community on researching about cyberbullying, the community dose not still have standard benchmarks. In this paper, we publish first, a quality annotated corpus and second, an offensive words lexicon capturing different types type of harassment as (i) sexual harassment, (ii) racial harassment, (iii) appearance-related harassment, (iv) intellectual harassment, and (v) politic...

Developmental change in tone perception in Mandarin monolingual, English monolingual, and Mandarin-English bilingual infants: Divergences between monolingual and bilingual learners.

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Singh, Leher; Fu, Charlene S L; Seet, Xian Hui; Tong, Ashley P Y; Wang, Joelle L; Best, Catherine T

2018-09-01

Most languages use lexical tone to discriminate the meanings of words. There has been recent interest in tracking the development of tone categories during infancy. These studies have focused largely on monolingual infants learning either a tone language or a non-tone language. It remains to be seen how bilingual infants learning one tone language (e.g., Mandarin) and one non-tone language (e.g., English) discriminate tones. Here, we examined infants' discrimination of two Mandarin tones pairs: one salient and one subtle. Discrimination was investigated in three groups: Mandarin-English bilinguals, English monolinguals, and Mandarin monolinguals at 6 months and 9 months of age in a cross-sectional design. Results demonstrated relatively strong Mandarin tone discrimination in Mandarin monolinguals, with salient tone discrimination at 6 months and both salient and subtle tone discrimination at 9 months. English monolinguals discriminated neither contrast at 6 months but discriminated the salient contrast at 9 months. Surprisingly, there was no evidence for tone discrimination in Mandarin-English bilingual infants. In a second experiment, 12- and 13-month-old Mandarin-English bilingual and English monolingual infants were tested to determine whether bilinguals would demonstrate tone sensitivity at a later age. Results revealed a lack of tone sensitivity at 12 or 13 months in bilingual infants, yet English monolingual infants were sensitive to both salient and subtle Mandarin tone contrasts at 12 or 13 months. Our findings provide evidence for age-related convergence in Mandarin tone discrimination in English and Mandarin monolingual infants and for a distinct pattern of tone discrimination in bilingual infants. Theoretical implications for phonetic category acquisition are discussed. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Lexical processing and organization in bilingual first language acquisition: Guiding future research.

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DeAnda, Stephanie; Poulin-Dubois, Diane; Zesiger, Pascal; Friend, Margaret

2016-06-01

A rich body of work in adult bilinguals documents an interconnected lexical network across languages, such that early word retrieval is language independent. This literature has yielded a number of influential models of bilingual semantic memory. However, extant models provide limited predictions about the emergence of lexical organization in bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA). Empirical evidence from monolingual infants suggests that lexical networks emerge early in development as children integrate phonological and semantic information. These findings tell us little about the interaction between 2 languages in early bilingual memory. To date, an understanding of when and how languages interact in early bilingual development is lacking. In this literature review, we present research documenting lexical-semantic development across monolingual and bilingual infants. This is followed by a discussion of current models of bilingual language representation and organization and their ability to account for the available empirical evidence. Together, these theoretical and empirical accounts inform and highlight unexplored areas of research and guide future work on early bilingual memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Language Assessment of a Farsi-Norwegian Bilingual Speaker with Aphasia

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Koumanidi Knoph, Monica I.

2011-01-01

The increased occurrence of strokes combined with the high incidence of bilingualism in many regions of the world has led to an increasing number of bilingual adults with aphasia. The literature on bilingual aphasia shows the need for valid, comprehensive and reliable assessment tools for diagnostic and treatment purposes. In spite of a growing…

Making Bilingualism Work: Developments in Bilingual Education in ASEAN.

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Pakir, Ann

1993-01-01

Systems of bilingual education in three neighboring countries, Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei Darussalam are examined in an attempt to understand basic issues. These are all Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries that fall into the category of Small Young Countries as discussed in Pakir (1992a). (Contains 43 references.) (JL)

The effect of lifelong bilingualism on regional grey and white matter volume.

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Olsen, Rosanna K; Pangelinan, Melissa M; Bogulski, Cari; Chakravarty, M Mallar; Luk, Gigi; Grady, Cheryl L; Bialystok, Ellen

2015-07-01

Lifelong bilingualism is associated with the delayed diagnosis of dementia, suggesting bilingual experience is relevant to brain health in aging. While the effects of bilingualism on cognitive functions across the lifespan are well documented, less is known about the neural substrates underlying differential behaviour. It is clear that bilingualism affects brain regions that mediate language abilities and that these regions are at least partially overlapping with those that exhibit age-related decline. Moreover, the behavioural advantages observed in bilingualism are generally found in executive function performance, suggesting that the frontal lobes may also be sensitive to bilingualism, which exhibit volume reductions with age. The current study investigated structural differences in the brain of lifelong bilingual older adults (n=14, mean age=70.4) compared with older monolinguals (n=14, mean age=70.6). We employed two analytic approaches: 1) we examined global differences in grey and white matter volumes; and, 2) we examined local differences in volume and cortical thickness of specific regions of interest previously implicated in bilingual/monolingual comparisons (temporal pole) or in aging (entorhinal cortex and hippocampus). We expected bilinguals would exhibit greater volume of the frontal lobe and temporal lobe (grey and white matter), given the importance of these regions in executive and language functions, respectively. We further hypothesized that regions in the medial temporal lobe, which demonstrate early changes in aging and exhibit neural pathology in dementia, would be more preserved in the bilingual group. As predicted, bilinguals exhibit greater frontal lobe white matter compared with monolinguals. Moreover, increasing age was related to decreasing temporal pole cortical thickness in the monolingual group, but no such relationship was observed for bilinguals. Finally, Stroop task performance was positively correlated with frontal lobe white

Relationship between the Onset Age of Bilingualism and Development of Cognitive Control among Nigerians

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Yasir Bdaiwi Jasim Al-Shujairi

2016-02-01

Full Text Available An increasing body of studies suggests that bilingual persons are better than monolinguals on a variety of cognitive measures. Thus, the present study investigates the relationship between the onset age of bilingual and the development of cognitive control among Nigerians. 10 bilingual students studying at University Putra Malaysia have been selected to participate in this study.  They are divided into two groups: 5 early and 5 late bilinguals. The data are collected using online English proficiency test and E-prime software as instruments. Both groups are examined for English proficiency and performance on a flanker task. The result demonstrates that early bilinguals are more proficient in English than late bilinguals. Moreover, early bilingual performs better than late bilingual on flanker task. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that being early active bilinguals tend to have greater advantages in cognitive control and higher language proficiency. Keywords: onset age, bilingualism, and cognitive control

Making Sense of Student Feedback Using Text Analysis--Adapting and Expanding a Common Lexicon

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Santhanam, Elizabeth; Lynch, Bernardine; Jones, Jeffrey

2018-01-01

Purpose: This paper aims to report the findings of a study into the automated text analysis of student feedback comments to assist in investigating a high volume of qualitative information at various levels in an Australian university. It includes the drawbacks and advantages of using selected applications and established lexicons. There has been…

Materiales en Marcha para el Esfuerzo Bilingue--Bicultural (Materials on the March for the Promotion of Bilingualism/Biculturalism). November, 1972.

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San Diego City Schools, CA.

This newsletter seeks to promote the concept of bilingual-bicultural education. Among its articles are "Arguments Against Bilingual Education,""Portuguese Reading Materials on Parade,""A Spanish Omnibus," and "Carrascolendas Makes Debut on Educational Television." There are announcements of the opening of a Portuguese materials resource center in…

Materiales en Marcha para el Esfuerzo Bilingue--Bicultural (Materials on the March for the Promotion of Bilingualism/Biculturalism). September 1972.

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San Diego City Schools, CA.

This newsletter seeks to promote the concept of bilingual-bicultural education. Among its articles are "The Indispensable Community Contribution,""Meaningful, Enjoyable Musical Experience,""A Breakthrough for Bilingual Science," and "Six Readers for Spanish-Speaking Fourth-Graders." There is a short essay on the importance of local participation…

Grammatical encoding in bilingual language production: A focus on code switching

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MEHDI ePURMOHAMMAD

2015-11-01

Full Text Available I report three experiments that examined whether words from one language of bilinguals can use the syntactic features form the other language and how such syntactic co-activation might influence syntactic processing. In other words, I examined whether there are any cases in which a lexical item inhibits its inherent syntactic feature and uses the syntactic feature(s that belongs to the other language, instead. In the non-switch condition in experiment 1 and 2, Persian-English bilinguals described pictures using an adjective-noun string from the same language requested. In the switch condition, they used the nouns and adjectives from the other language. In Experiment 3, in the switch condition participants used only the adjectives of noun phrases from the other language. The results showed that bilinguals may inhibit the activation of a word’s syntactic feature and use the syntactic property from the other language instead (e.g., pirāhane (N black. As the combinatorial node (the node that specify different kinds of syntactic structures in which a word can be used of a used adjective retains activation at least temporarily, bilinguals are more likely to use the same combinatorial node even for an adjective from the other language. Using the syntactic features from the other language increased in the switch conditions. Moreover, more inappropriate responses observed when switching from bilinguals’ L2 to L1. The results also revealed that different experimental contexts may lead to different patterns of the control mechanism. The results will be interpreted in terms of Hartsuiker and Pickering’s (2008 model of syntactic representation

The effects of stating problems in bilingual students' first and second languages on solving mathematical word problems.

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Bernardo, Allan B I; Calleja, Marissa O

2005-03-01

Researchers have suggested that among bilinguals, solving word problems in mathematics is influenced by linguistic factors (K. Durkin & B. Shire, 1991; L. Verschaffel, B. Greer, & E. De Corte, 2000). Others have suggested that students exhibit a strong tendency to exclude real-world constraints in solving mathematics word problems (L. Verschaffel, E. De Corte, & S. Lasure, 1994). In the present study, the authors explored the effects of stating word problems in either Filipino or English on how Filipino-English bilingual students solved word problems in which the solution required the application of real-world knowledge. The authors asked bilingual students to solve word problems in either their first or second language. For some of the word problems, real-life constraints prevented straightforward application of mathematical procedures. The authors analyzed the students' solutions to determine whether the language of the word problems affected the tendency to apply real-life constraints in the solution. Results showed that the bilingual students (a) rarely considered real-life constraints in their solutions, (b) were more successful in understanding and solving word problems that were stated in their first language, and (c) were more likely to experience failure in finding a solution to problems stated in their second language. The results are discussed in terms of the relationship between linguistic and mathematical problem-solving processes among bilinguals.

Early language development in children with profound hearing loss fitted with a device at a young age: part II--content of the first lexicon.

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Nott, Pauline; Cowan, Robert; Brown, P Margaret; Wigglesworth, Gillian

2009-10-01

Lexical content is commonly understood to refer to the various categories of words that children produce and has been studied extensively in children with normal hearing. Unlike the hearing child, however, little is known about the word categories that make up the first lexicon of children with hearing loss (HL). Knowledge of the first lexicon is increasingly important, as infants with HL are now being detected through universal newborn hearing screening programs and fitted with hearing aids and cochlear implants in before 12 months of age. For these children, emergence of the first spoken words is a major milestone eagerly awaited by parents and one of the first verbal language goals of teachers and therapists working with such children. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the lexical content of the first 50 and 100 words produced by children with HL and to contrast this with that of a group of hearing children. Lexical content was compared in two groups of children: one group composed of 24 participants with severe profound or profound HL and a second group composed of 16 participants with normal hearing. Twenty-three participants in the HL group were fitted with a cochlear implant and one with bilateral hearing aids. All were "switched on" or fitted before 30 months of age. The Diary of Early Language (Di-EL) was used to collect a 100-word lexicon from each participant. All single word and frozen phrase data from each child's Di-EL were allocated to 1 of 15 word types grouped into four word categories (noun, predicate, grammatical, and paralexical), and the results were compared for both groups. The hearing and HL groups showed similar distributions of word categories, with nouns constituting the largest portion of the lexicon followed by predicates and paralexicals. Grammaticals made up the smallest portion of the lexicon. However, several significant differences were evident between the two groups. In both the 50- and 100-word lexicons, the hearing group

Turning Local Bilingualism into a Touristic Experience

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Schedel, Larissa Semiramis

2018-01-01

Local languages/varieties play a key role in the construction of an authentic and local tourism experience. This is also the case in the bilingual town of Murten, which uses its situation at the language border between the French- and the German-speaking part of Switzerland and the local bilingualism to attract and entertain tourists in different…

Stuttering Characteristics of German-English Bilingual Speakers

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Schafer, Martina; Robb, Michael P.

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine stuttering behavior in German-English bilingual people who stutter (PWS), with particular reference to the frequency of stuttering on content and function words. Fifteen bilingual PWS were sampled who spoke German as the first language (L1) and English as a second language (L2). Conversational speech was…

Theory of Mind and Executive Functions in Young Bilingual Children.

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Dahlgren, SvenOlof; Almén, Helena; Dahlgren Sandberg, Annika

2017-01-01

Few studies have explored the relationship between theory of mind (ToM), executive function (EF), and bilingualism at the same time. In this study 14 young bilingual children were compared with monolingual children on a test battery composed of 5 ToM tests, 5 EF tests, and 1 test of general language ability. The result showed that despite significantly lower verbal ability, the bilingual children outperformed the monolingual ones on tests of EF. There were no differences in ToM performance. The authors argue that there is a strong relationship between bilingualism and EF, but, contrary to results from earlier studies, they could not find any relationship between bilingualism and ToM. EF did not predict ToM performance. Lack of a significant relationship could be due to the children's young age and consequently their low scores on the ToM tasks.

The Literature Review on the Bilingualism in China from a Sociolinguistic View

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

康硕

2015-01-01

Against the background of globalization,sociolinguists have long been dediated in the study of bilingualism.The Chinese-English bilingualism is demonstrated through a literature review,and analyzed from a sociolinguistic view in this paper.It explores an umber of published articles,analyzes the bilingual education abd the phenomenon of Chinese-English bilingualism in China on the basis of literature review.

The Literature Review on the Bilingualism in China from a Sociolinguistic View

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

康硕

2015-01-01

Against the background of globalization, sociolinguists have long been dedicated in the study of bilingualism.The Chinese-English bilingualism is demonstrated through a literature review,and analyzed from a sociolinguistic view in this paper.It explores a number of published articles,analyzes the bilingual education abd the phenomenon of Chinese-English bilingualism in China on the basis of literature review.

Spoken Language Activation Alters Subsequent Sign Language Activation in L2 Learners of American Sign Language

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Williams, Joshua T.; Newman, Sharlene D.

2017-01-01

A large body of literature has characterized unimodal monolingual and bilingual lexicons and how neighborhood density affects lexical access; however there have been relatively fewer studies that generalize these findings to bimodal (M2) second language (L2) learners of sign languages. The goal of the current study was to investigate parallel…

Cross-Linguistic Interactions Influence Reading Development in Bilinguals: A Comparison between Early Balanced French-Basque and Spanish-Basque Bilingual Children

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Lallier, Marie; Acha, Joana; Carreiras, Manuel

2016-01-01

This study investigates whether orthographic consistency and transparency of languages have an impact on the development of reading strategies and reading sub-skills (i.e. phonemic awareness and visual attention span) in bilingual children. We evaluated 21 French (opaque)-Basque (transparent) bilingual children and 21 Spanish (transparent)-Basque…

Effectiveness of Bilingual Education in Cambodia: A Longitudinal Comparative Case Study of Ethnic Minority Children in Bilingual and Monolingual Schools

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Lee, Scott; Watt, Ron; Frawley, Jack

2015-01-01

There is little research in the developing countries of South East Asia on the effectiveness of bilingual education programmes that use first language instruction for ethnic minority children. This study investigated the effectiveness of a bilingual education programme involving ethnic minority children in Cambodia by comparing their performance…

Bilingual children's social preferences hinge on accent.

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DeJesus, Jasmine M; Hwang, Hyesung G; Dautel, Jocelyn B; Kinzler, Katherine D

2017-12-01

Past research finds that monolingual and bilingual children prefer native speakers to individuals who speak in unfamiliar foreign languages or accents. Do children in bilingual contexts socially distinguish among familiar languages and accents and, if so, how do their social preferences based on language and accent compare? The current experiments tested whether 5- to 7-year-olds in two bilingual contexts in the United States demonstrate social preferences among the languages and accents that are present in their social environments. We compared children's preferences based on language (i.e., English vs. their other native language) and their preferences based on accent (i.e., English with a native accent vs. English with a non-native [yet familiar] accent). In Experiment 1, children attending a French immersion school demonstrated no preference between English and French speakers but preferred American-accented English to French-accented English. In Experiment 2, bilingual Korean American children demonstrated no preference between English and Korean speakers but preferred American-accented English to Korean-accented English. Across studies, bilingual children's preferences based on accent (i.e., American-accented English over French- or Korean-accented English) were not related to their own language dominance. These results suggest that children from diverse linguistic backgrounds demonstrate social preferences for native-accented speakers. Implications for understanding the potential relation between social reasoning and language acquisition are discussed. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Maternal talk in cognitive development: relations between psychological lexicon, semantic development, empathy and temperament

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Dolores eRollo

2016-03-01

Full Text Available In this study, we investigated the relationship between mothers’ psychological lexicon and children’s cognitive and socio-emotive development as assessed through conceptual and semantic understanding tasks, in addition to the traditional tasks of theory of mind. Currently, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the frequency of mothers’ mental state words used in mother-child picture-book reading is linked with children’s theory of mind skills. Furthermore, mothers’ use of cognitive terms is more strongly related to children’s theory of mind performances than the mothers’ references to other mental states, such as desires or emotions (Rollo, Buttiglieri, 2009. Current literature has established that early maternal input is related to later child mental state understanding; however it has not yet clarified which maternal terms are most useful for the socio-emotional and cognitive development of the child, and which aspect of the cognitive development benefits from the mother-child interaction.The present study addresses this issue and focuses on the relationship between mothers’ mental state talk and children’s behavior in conceptual and semantic tasks, and in a theory of mind task.In this study fifty pairs consisting of mothers and their 3 to 6-year-old children participated in two sessions: (1 The mothers read a picture book to their children. To assess the maternal psychological lexicon, their narrative was codified according to the categories of mental state references used in literature: perceptual, emotional, volitional, cognitive, moral and communicative. (2 After a few days, the conceptual and semantic skills of the children (tasks of contextualization and classification, memory and definition of words and their psychological lexicon were assessed.The results suggest close links between the frequency and variety of mothers’ mental state words and some semantic and conceptual skills of children.

Verbal intelligence in bilinguals when measured in L1 and L2.

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Ardila, Alfredo; Lopez-Recio, Alexandra; Sakowitz, Ariel; Sanchez, Estefania; Sarmiento, Stephanie

2018-04-04

This study was aimed at studying the Verbal IQ in two groups of Spanish/English bilinguals: simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals. 48 Spanish/English bilinguals born in the U.S. or Latin American countries but moving to United States before the age of 10 were selected. The verbal subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (English and Spanish) - Third Edition (WAIS-III) was administered. Overall, performance was significantly better in English for both groups of bilinguals. Verbal IQ difference when tested in Spanish and English was about one standard deviation higher in English for simultaneous bilinguals, and about half standard deviation for early sequential bilinguals. In both groups, Verbal IQ in English was about 100; considering the level of education of our sample (bachelor degree, on average), it can be assumed that Verbal IQ in English was lower than expected, suggesting that bilinguals may be penalized even when evaluated in the dominant language.

Bilingual instruction in early childhood education, can it better develop children?

OpenAIRE

Djahimo Santri E. P.; Indahri Yulia

2018-01-01

This is a case study of teaching and learning using bilingual instruction in two schools of Early Childhood Education in Kupang-NTT, Indonesia. The aims of this study are to find out whether or not bilingual instruction in Early Childhood Education can better develop children (the outcomes) and if the issue of ‘the younger, the better” in children’s language acquisition in bilingual setting is acceptable and true. 4 students from one bilingual and one monolingual schools have been observed. I...

Autism and Bilingualism: A Qualitative Interview Study of Parents' Perspectives and Experiences.

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Hampton, Sarah; Rabagliati, Hugh; Sorace, Antonella; Fletcher-Watson, Sue

2017-02-01

Research into how bilingual parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) make choices about their children's language environment is scarce. This study aimed to explore this issue, focusing on understanding how bilingual parents of children with ASD may make different language exposure choices compared with bilingual parents of children without ASD. Semistructured qualitative interviews were conducted with 17 bilingual parents with a child with ASD and 18 bilingual parents with a typically developing (TD) child. Thematic analysis revealed that, in contrast to parents of TD children, parents with a child with ASD expressed concerns that a bilingual environment would cause confusion for their child and exacerbate language delays. This was particularly common for parents of children with lower verbal ability. Parents also identified potential benefits of bilingualism, particularly in terms of maintaining a close and affectionate bond with their child. Parents of children with ASD have concerns about bilingualism not present for parents of TD children, and these concerns are greater for parents of children with lower verbal ability. Future research in this area should take into account factors such as parent-child bonds as well as communication and language development.

Age of acquisition and allophony in Spanish-English bilinguals

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Barlow, Jessica A.

2014-01-01

This study examines age of acquisition (AoA) in Spanish-English bilinguals’ phonetic and phonological knowledge of /l/ in English and Spanish. In English, the lateral approximant /l/ varies in darkness by context [based on the second formant (F2) and the difference between F2 and the first formant (F1)], but the Spanish /l/ does not. Further, English /l/ is overall darker than Spanish /l/. Thirty-eight college-aged adults participated: 11 Early Spanish-English bilinguals who learned English before the age of 5 years, 14 Late Spanish-English bilinguals who learned English after the age of 6 years, and 13 English monolinguals. Participants’ /l/ productions were acoustically analyzed by language and context. The results revealed a Spanish-to-English phonetic influence on /l/ productions for both Early and Late bilinguals, as well as an English-to-Spanish phonological influence on the patterning of /l/ for the Late Bilinguals. These findings are discussed in terms of the Speech Learning Model and the effect of AoA on the interaction between a bilingual speaker’s two languages. PMID:24795664

Bilingualism as a contributor to cognitive reserve?Evidence from cerebral glucose metabolism in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease

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Magdalena Eva Kowoll

2016-04-01

Full Text Available Objective: Bilingualism is discussed as one factor contributing to ‘cognitive reserve’ (CR as it enhances executive control functions. To elucidate the underlying cerebral correlates regional glucose uptake was compared between bilinguals and monolinguals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI and beginning Alzheimer´s disease (AD by using [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG positron emission tomography (PET. Methods: 30 patients (73.2 ± 7.4 diagnosed with MCI or probable AD received physical and neuropsychological examinations, blood tests and FDG-PET scans. 16 patients were classified as lifelong bilinguals following the criterion of Bialystok et al.; groups were matched for age, sex and MMSE scores. Analyses were conducted using SPM 8 using the whole brain as reference region for intensity normalization controlling for years of education.Results: Bilingual patient groups showed substantially greater impairment of glucose uptake in frontotemporal and parietal regions (including Brodmann areas 9, 47, 40 and 21 and in the left cerebellum relative to monolingual patients.Conclusions: Bilingualism is likely to contribute to CR given that bilingual patients showed more severe brain changes than monolinguals when adjusting for severity of cognitive impairment . The latter did not only comprise Brodmann areas relevant to speech and language but also structures typically involved in AD pathology such as the temporal and the parietal cortices.

Assessing Bilingual Knowledge Organization in Secondary Science Classrooms =

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Wu, Jason S.

Improving outcomes for English language learners (ELLs) in secondary science remains an area of high need. The purpose of this study is to investigate bilingual knowledge organization in secondary science classrooms. This study involved thirty-nine bilingual students in three biology classes at a public high school in The Bronx, New York City. Methods included an in-class survey on language use, a science content and English proficiency exam, and bilingual free-recalls. Fourteen students participated in bilingual free-recalls which involved a semi-structured process of oral recall of information learned in science class. Free-recall was conducted in both English and Spanish and analyzed using flow-map methods. Novel methods were developed to quantify and visualize the elaboration and mobilization of ideas shared across languages. It was found that bilingual narratives displayed similar levels of organizational complexity across languages, though English recalls tended to be longer. English proficiency was correlated with narrative complexity in English. There was a high degree of elaboration on concepts shared across languages. Finally, higher Spanish proficiency correlated well with greater overlapping elaboration across languages. These findings are discussed in light of current cognitive theory before presenting the study's limitations and future directions of research.

THE BENEFICIAL EFFECT OF BILINGUALISM IN VISUAL MEDIA

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Aliva Rosdiana

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Bilingualism is a phenomenon that affects people throughout the world. People use bilingualism in particular situations in society such as in education, job, mass media, etc. People who speak bilingualism means that they get second language learning. Radio, televison, and YouTube are important vehicles of mass communication. Mass communication differs from the studies of other forms of communication, such as interpersonal communication, in that it focuses on a single source transmitting information to a large group of receivers. The study of bilingualism in visual media is chiefly concerned with how the content of visual media persuades or otherwise affects either behavior, attitude, opinion, or emotion of the person or people receiving the information. The beneficial effect is the development of bilingualism. Watching video affects children‘s acquisition of their native language and hasten language shift to the majority language. By watching the video, it also enrich our knowledge to particular vocabularies based on particular topics. The Internet makes it possible to have conversations across countries and continents. Individuals have multiple identities and belong to other speakers of their heritage language. So, the linguistic competence will develop as a by-product of the interest. In addition, it brings people closer.

Enriching semantic knowledge bases for opinion mining in big data applications.

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Weichselbraun, A; Gindl, S; Scharl, A

2014-10-01

This paper presents a novel method for contextualizing and enriching large semantic knowledge bases for opinion mining with a focus on Web intelligence platforms and other high-throughput big data applications. The method is not only applicable to traditional sentiment lexicons, but also to more comprehensive, multi-dimensional affective resources such as SenticNet. It comprises the following steps: (i) identify ambiguous sentiment terms, (ii) provide context information extracted from a domain-specific training corpus, and (iii) ground this contextual information to structured background knowledge sources such as ConceptNet and WordNet. A quantitative evaluation shows a significant improvement when using an enriched version of SenticNet for polarity classification. Crowdsourced gold standard data in conjunction with a qualitative evaluation sheds light on the strengths and weaknesses of the concept grounding, and on the quality of the enrichment process.

“ALL IN ALL, I AM BILINGUAL” A STUDY OF BILINGUALISM

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Zeynep CANLI

2016-04-01

Full Text Available he aim of the study is to investigate whether EFL instructors in a university preparatory school consider themselves bilingual, or not; and the reasons for the EFL instructors to consider themselves bilingual or not. For the purpose of the study, a qualitative research was carried out. Thirty EFL instructors participated in this study. The data were collected via an open-ended questionnaire. Analyzing the results indicated that most of the participants considered themselves bilingual. The results of the study emphasized the importance of awareness of being bilingual in order to empower EFL instructors, encourage them to use more L2 in the classroom, and raise their self-esteem as non native speakers of English. The findings help instructors to make them less concerned about the grammar and focus more on communication, and explain their students that they would be bilingual too. This study might be of pedagogical help and significance to teachers interested in bilingualism in EFL context.

Comparing Narrative Microstructure between Bilingual Balochi-Persian and Monolingual Persian Preschoolers

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Maryam Arabpour

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Background: To date, with rapid increase of bilingual children, more attention about different patterns of the bilingual children narratives is needed. The aim of this study was to compare microstructure level of narratives generated by typical developing kindergarten children who were bilingual in Persian and Balochi with monolingual Persian speakers. Method: Thirty Persian-speaking monolingual and thirteen available bilingual children (aged 48 months old participated in this study. Children’s story telling was audio-recorded and analyzed using the Persian-NAP (Narrative Assessment Protocol guidelines. Results: All of the NAP indicators include of group structure, phrase structure, modifiers, noun and verbs didn’t show significant difference between monolingual and bilingual children (0.06≤p≤0.5. Conclusion: We didn’t find different performance in the five NAP indicators between bilingual and monolingual children. It may be suggested that the different patterns of creating phrases and sentences in two languages don’t affect the grammatical use of them in second language.

Materiales en Marcha Para El Esfuerzo Bilingue--Bicultural (Materials on the March for the Promotion of Bilingualism/Biculturalism), March 1973.

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San Diego City Schools, CA.

This newsletter is designed to promote the concept of bilingual-bicultural education. Included in this issue are articles on "Bilingual Education: Acceptance and Allocation,""A World History Reference,""History Teachers, Take Heart,""Social Studies Materials in Spanish," and "Pride of Aztlan." Articles appear in Spanish and English. Included is a…

Materiales en marcha para el esfuerzo bilingue-bicultural (Materials on the March for the Promotion of Bilingualism/Biculturalism), September 1973.

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San Diego City Schools, CA.

This newsletter is designed to promote the needs and interests of bilingual-bicultural education. This issue contains the following articles: (1) What in the World Is a Team-Teaching, Continuous Progress, Non-Graded, Open Classroom in Bilingual Bicultural Education?, (2) Laughter and Anaya's "Lenguaje," (3) "Alegrias" and the Language Experience…

Materiales en Marcha para el Esfuerzo Bilingue--Bicultural (Materials on the March for the Promotion of Bilingualism/Biculturalism), August 1972.

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San Diego City Schools, CA.

This newsletter seeks to promote the concept of bilingual-bicultural education. Among its articles are "Steps Toward Effective Bilingualism,""A 'Used' Teacher's View of New Language Arts Materials,""Rich Resources for Reading," and "Tidbits to Turn On Science Students and Teachers." Book reviews and a list of recommended reading materials are…

Corima: A Bilingual Experiment in the Tarahumara Region in the State of Chihuahua, Mexico. How Does It Measure against Transitional Bilingual Programs in the United States?

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Nunez, Mario A.

This report explores two bilingual educational approaches currently in use in Mexico and the United States. The study pursues a limited comparison between two modalities of bilingual instruction, as observed and reported in the consulted literature. The U.S. model featured is known as the two-way bilingual model, an additive approach to…

Evaluating Classifiers in Detecting 419 Scams in Bilingual Cybercriminal Communities

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Mbaziira, Alex V.; Abozinadah, Ehab; Jones Jr, James H.

2015-01-01

Incidents of organized cybercrime are rising because of criminals are reaping high financial rewards while incurring low costs to commit crime. As the digital landscape broadens to accommodate more internet-enabled devices and technologies like social media, more cybercriminals who are not native English speakers are invading cyberspace to cash in on quick exploits. In this paper we evaluate the performance of three machine learning classifiers in detecting 419 scams in a bilingual Nigerian c...

Bilingualism and Cognitive Decline: A Story of Pride and Prejudice.

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Woumans, Evy; Versijpt, Jan; Sieben, Anne; Santens, Patrick; Duyck, Wouter

2017-01-01

In a recent review, Mukadam, Sommerlad, and Livingston (2017) argue that bilingualism offers no protection against cognitive decline. The authors examined the results of 13 studies (five prospective, eight retrospective) in which monolinguals and bilinguals were compared for cognitive decline and onset of dementia symptoms. Analysis of four of the five prospective studies resulted in the conclusion that there was no difference between monolinguals and bilinguals, whereas seven of the eight retrospective studies actually showed bilingualism to result in a four-to-five year delay of symptom onset. The authors decided to ignore the results from the retrospective studies in favor of those from the prospective studies, reasoning that the former may be confounded by participants' cultural background and education levels. In this commentary, we argue that most of these studies actually controlled for these two variables and still found a positive effect of bilingualism. Furthermore, we argue that the meta-analysis of the prospective studies is not complete, lacking the results of two crucial reports. We conclude that the literature offers substantial evidence for a bilingual effect on the development of cognitive decline and dementia.

The auditory attention status in Iranian bilingual and monolingual people

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Nayiere Mansoori

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Background and Aim: Bilingualism, as one of the discussing issues of psychology and linguistics, can influence the speech processing. Of several tests for assessing auditory processing, dichotic digit test has been designed to study divided auditory attention. Our study was performed to compare the auditory attention between Iranian bilingual and monolingual young adults. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 60 students including 30 Turkish-Persian bilinguals and 30 Persian monolinguals aged between 18 to 30 years in both genders. Dichotic digit test was performed on young individuals with normal peripheral hearing and right hand preference. Results: No significant correlation was found between the results of dichotic digit test of monolinguals and bilinguals (p=0.195, and also between the results of right and left ears in monolingual (p=0.460 and bilingual (p=0.054 groups. The mean score of women was significantly more than men (p=0.031. Conclusion: There was no significant difference between bilinguals and monolinguals in divided auditory attention; and it seems that acquisition of second language in lower ages has no noticeable effect on this type of auditory attention.

A Multidimensional Review of Bilingual Aphasia as a Language Disorder

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Mohsen Akbari

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Aphasia as a multifaceted language disorder associated with the complicated links between language and brain has been and is of interest and significance to the stream of research in different disciplines including neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive studies and language acquisition. Along with explorations into the manifestations of aphasia in monolingual speakers, bilingual aphasia has similarly become the most current form of this language disorder due to the rising number of bilingual speakers in recent decades all over the world and the probability of facing bilinguals suffering from this language deficit. To paint a picture of this multidimensional linguistic impairment and to get out of the labyrinth of aphasia and in particular bilingual aphasia, the present review study aims to provide a summary of aphasia-related studies in different contexts worldwide and run through the variables affecting the manifestations and language recovery patterns in bilingual aphasic speakers.

Influence of Bilingualism on Memory Generalization during Infancy

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Brito, Natalie; Barr, Rachel

2012-01-01

Very few studies have examined the cognitive advantages of bilingualism during the first two years of development, and a majority of the studies examining bilingualism throughout the lifespan have focused on the relationship between multiple languages and cognitive control. Early experience with multiple language systems may influence…

Bilingual Education: A Reference Handbook. Contemporary Education Issues.

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Feinberg, Rosa Castro

This book describes the evolution of bilingual education in the United States, emphasizing its relationship to educational and civil rights reform. Federal, state, and district policies affecting the implementation of bilingual programs are identified, along with related legal, political, demographic, and economic factors and controversies.…

Bilingual Education Act: Background and Reauthorization Issues. CRS Report for Congress.

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Aleman, Steven R.

The Bilingual Education Act (BEA) title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), is the federal program intended to help children who are limited English proficient (LEP) learn English. BEA activities focus on transitional bilingual education; developmental bilingual education; special alternative instruction (such as English as…

Costs and Benefits of Bilingual Education in Guatemala: A Partial Analysis

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Patrinos, Harry Anthony; Velez, Eduardo

2009-01-01

The benefits of bilingual education for a disadvantaged indigenous population as an investment in human capital are significant. Students of bilingual schools in Guatemala have higher attendance and promotion rates, and lower repetition and dropout rates. Bilingual students receive higher scores on all subject matters, including mastery of…

Is bilingualism associated with a lower risk of dementia in community-living older adults? Cross-sectional and prospective analyses.

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Yeung, Caleb M; St John, Philip D; Menec, Verena; Tyas, Suzanne L

2014-01-01

The aim of this study was to determine whether bilingualism is associated with dementia in cross-sectional or prospective analyses of older adults. In 1991, 1616 community-living older adults were assessed and were followed 5 years later. Measures included age, sex, education, subjective memory loss (SML), and the modified Mini-mental State Examination (3MS). Dementia was determined by clinical examination in those who scored below the cut point on the 3MS. Language status was categorized based upon self-report into 3 groups: English as a first language (monolingual English, bilingual English) and English as a Second Language (ESL). The ESL category had lower education, lower 3MS scores, more SML, and were more likely to be diagnosed with cognitive impairment, no dementia at both time 1 and time 2 compared with those speaking English as a first language. There was no association between being bilingual (ESL and bilingual English vs. monolingual) and having dementia at time 1 in bivariate or multivariate analyses. In those who were cognitively intact at time 1, there was no association between being bilingual and having dementia at time 2 in bivariate or multivariate analyses. We did not find any association between speaking >1 language and dementia.

Polish-German bilingualism at school. A Polish perspective

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Pulaczewska, Hanna

2014-03-01

Full Text Available This article presents the institutional frames for the acquisition of Polish literacy skills in Germany and the maintenance of Polish-German bilingualism after the repatriation of bilingual children to Poland. These processes are examined in the context of recent developments in the European domestic job market. While the European Union has placed proficiency in several languages among its educational objectives, and foreign languages have been made obligatory school subjects in all member countries, the potential advantages of internal European migrations for producing high-proficiency bilinguals are being ignored. Bilingualism resulting from migration and biculturalism enjoys little social prestige in the host countries. In Germany, there is significant regional variation in how school authorities react to challenges posed by the presence of minority languages. In many cases, the linguistic potential of many second-generation migrants and re-emigrants gets largely wasted because of lacking interest and incentives from German and Polish institutions alike.

Conceptual scoring of receptive and expressive vocabulary measures in simultaneous and sequential bilingual children.

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Gross, Megan; Buac, Milijana; Kaushanskaya, Margarita

2014-11-01

The authors examined the effects of conceptual scoring on the performance of simultaneous and sequential bilinguals on standardized receptive and expressive vocabulary measures in English and Spanish. Participants included 40 English-speaking monolingual children, 39 simultaneous Spanish-English bilingual children, and 19 sequential bilingual children, ages 5-7. The children completed standardized receptive and expressive vocabulary measures in English and also in Spanish for those who were bilingual. After the standardized administration, bilingual children were given the opportunity to respond to missed items in their other language to obtain a conceptual score. Controlling for group differences in socioeconomic status (SES), both simultaneous and sequential bilingual children scored significantly below monolingual children on single-language measures of English receptive and expressive vocabulary. Conceptual scoring removed the significant difference between monolingual and simultaneous bilingual children in the receptive modality but not in the expressive modality; differences remained between monolingual and sequential bilingual children in both modalities. However, in both bilingual groups, conceptual scoring increased the proportion of children with vocabulary scores within the average range. Conceptual scoring does not fully ameliorate the bias inherent in single-language standardized vocabulary measures for bilingual children, but the procedures employed here may assist in ruling out vocabulary deficits, particularly in typically developing simultaneous bilingual children.

What can speech production errors tell us about cross-linguistic processing in bilingual aphasia? Evidence from four English/Afrikaans bilingual individuals with aphasia

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Diane Kendall

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Introduction: The aim of this study is contribute to clinical practice of bilinguals around the globe, as well as to add to our understanding of bilingual aphasia processing, by analysing confrontation naming data from four Afrikaans/English bilingual individuals with acquired aphasia due to a left hemisphere stroke. Methods: This is a case series analysis of four Afrikaans/English bilingual aphasic individuals following a left cerebrovascular accident. Error analysis of confrontation naming data in both languages was performed. Research questions were directed toward the between language differences in lexical retrieval abilities, types of errors produced and degree of cognate overlap. Results: Three of the four participants showed significantly higher naming accuracy in first acquired language (L1 relative to the second acquired language (L2 and the largest proportion of error type for those three participants in both L1 and L2 was omission. One of the four participants (linguistically balanced showed no between language accuracy difference. Regarding cognate overlap, there was a trend for higher accuracy for higher cognate words (compared to low. Discussion: This study showed that naming performance in these four individuals was reflective of their relative language proficiency and use patterns prior to their stroke. These findings are consistent with the hierarchical model, in normal bilingual speakers and with persons with bilingual aphasia.

Materiales en Marcha para el Esfuerzo Bilingue--Bicultural (Materials on the March for the Promotion of Bilingualism/Biculturalism), December 1972.

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San Diego City Schools, CA.

This newsletter seeks to promote the concept of bilingual-cultural education. Among its articles are "Political Power and Bilingualism,""Saturday Fun for Joao and Maria,""Student Selected Geography Texts," and "To Become Aware of One's Reality." Included is a list of distributors of educational materials in Spanish and Portuguese. Some of the…

Supporting Concept Extraction and Identifier Quality Improvement through Programmers' Lexicon Analysis

OpenAIRE

Abebe, Surafel Lemma

2013-01-01

Identifiers play an important role in communicating the intentions associated with the program entities they represent. The information captured in identifiers support programmers to (re-)build the “mental model” of the software and facilitates understanding. (Re-)building the “mental model” and understanding large software, however, is difficult and expensive. Besides, the effort involved in the process heavily depends on the quality of the programmers’ lexicon used to construct th...

Measuring growth in bilingual and monolingual children's english productive vocabulary development: the utility of combining parent and teacher report.

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Vagh, Shaher Banu; Pan, Barbara Alexander; Mancilla-Martinez, Jeannette

2009-01-01

This longitudinal study examined growth in the English productive vocabularies of bilingual and monolingual children between ages 24 and 36 months and explored the utility and validity of supplementing parent reports with teacher reports to improve the estimation of children's vocabulary. Low-income, English-speaking and English/Spanish-speaking parents and Early Head Start and Head Start program teachers completed the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory, Words and Sentences for 85 children. Results indicate faster growth rates for monolingual than for bilingual children and larger vocabularies for bilingual children who spoke mostly English than mostly Spanish at home. Parent-teacher composite reports, like parent reports, significantly related to children's directly assessed productive vocabulary at ages 30 and 36 months, but parent reports fit the model better. Implications for vocabulary assessment are discussed.

Nonviolent words. Introduction to a glossary for a Capitinian lexicon

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Daniele TAURINO

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Aldo Capitini (1899-1968 is the most important philosopher for the nonviolence in Italy. In this article I will try to write a brief philosophical introduction about his complex thought, focusing on Capitini’s peculiar use of language. By throwing the proposal of a Capitinian Lexicon, here I’ll speak about three coordinates of Capitini’s philosophy: nonviolence, persuasion, co-presence. In my opinion these coordinates give the idea of revolutionary scope of his thought: trying to clarify the meaning of these terms is essential for the understanding of its influence and to imagine future researches and nonviolent actions.

Electrophysiological explorations of the bilingual advantage: evidence from a Stroop task.

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Coderre, Emily L; van Heuven, Walter J B

2014-01-01

Bilinguals have been shown to exhibit a performance advantage on executive control tasks, outperforming their monolingual counterparts. Although a wealth of research has investigated this 'bilingual advantage' behaviourally, electrophysiological correlates are lacking. Using EEG with a Stroop task that manipulated the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of word and colour presentation, the current study addressed two facets of the bilingual advantage. The possibility that bilinguals experience superior conflict processing relative to monolinguals (a 'conflict-specific advantage') was investigated by comparing behavioural interference effects as well as the amplitude of the Ninc, a conflict-related ERP component occurring from approximately 300-500 ms after the onset of conflict. In contrast, the hypothesis that bilinguals experience domain-general, conflict-independent enhancements in executive processing (a 'non-conflict-specific advantage') was evaluated by comparing the control condition (symbol strings) between groups. There was some significant, but inconsistent, evidence for a conflict-specific bilingual advantage. In contrast, strong evidence emerged for a non-conflict-specific advantage, with bilinguals demonstrating faster RTs and reduced ERP amplitudes on control trials compared to monolinguals. Importantly, when the control stimulus was presented before the colour, ERPs to control trials revealed group differences before the onset of conflict, suggesting differences in the ability to ignore or suppress distracting irrelevant information. This indicates that bilinguals experience superior executive processing even in the absence of conflict and semantic salience, and suggests that the advantage extends to more efficient proactive management of the environment.

Electrophysiological explorations of the bilingual advantage: evidence from a Stroop task.

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Emily L Coderre

Full Text Available Bilinguals have been shown to exhibit a performance advantage on executive control tasks, outperforming their monolingual counterparts. Although a wealth of research has investigated this 'bilingual advantage' behaviourally, electrophysiological correlates are lacking. Using EEG with a Stroop task that manipulated the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA of word and colour presentation, the current study addressed two facets of the bilingual advantage. The possibility that bilinguals experience superior conflict processing relative to monolinguals (a 'conflict-specific advantage' was investigated by comparing behavioural interference effects as well as the amplitude of the Ninc, a conflict-related ERP component occurring from approximately 300-500 ms after the onset of conflict. In contrast, the hypothesis that bilinguals experience domain-general, conflict-independent enhancements in executive processing (a 'non-conflict-specific advantage' was evaluated by comparing the control condition (symbol strings between groups. There was some significant, but inconsistent, evidence for a conflict-specific bilingual advantage. In contrast, strong evidence emerged for a non-conflict-specific advantage, with bilinguals demonstrating faster RTs and reduced ERP amplitudes on control trials compared to monolinguals. Importantly, when the control stimulus was presented before the colour, ERPs to control trials revealed group differences before the onset of conflict, suggesting differences in the ability to ignore or suppress distracting irrelevant information. This indicates that bilinguals experience superior executive processing even in the absence of conflict and semantic salience, and suggests that the advantage extends to more efficient proactive management of the environment.

The Effects of Bilingualism on Toddlers' Executive Functioning

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Poulin-Dubois, Diane; Blaye, Agnes; Coutya, Julie; Bialystok, Ellen

2011-01-01

Bilingual children have been shown to outperform monolingual children on tasks measuring executive functioning skills. This advantage is usually attributed to bilinguals' extensive practice in exercising selective attention and cognitive flexibility during language use because both languages are active when one of them is being used. We examined…

The Effect of Bilingualism and Trilingualism on Metacognitive Processing: Detrimental or Beneficial?

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Soleimani, Hassan; Rahmanian, Mahboubeh

2018-01-24

Research in multilingualism has shown that bilinguals have enhanced executive function (e.g., Donnelly et al. in Proceedings of the 37th annual conference of the cognitive science society 2015; Green in Bilingualism Lang Cognit 1(02):67-81, 1998. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728998000133 ); however, this with many other areas in multilingualism have been questioned like their non-verbal reasoning or their metacognitive ability. This study attempts to explore learning more than one languages in the field of metacognitive abilities. Three groups of monolinguals, bilinguals, and trilinguals were explored to examine the effect of language learning on enhancing or weakening accuracy and response time in metacognitive processing. Conducting dot discrimination task, we found that multilingualism might have some advantages in this field. As cognition and metacognitive abilities demonstrated no positive correlation in this study, we might conclude that executive functioning can not bring about higher order functioning for the individuals. Nevertheless, monolinguals did the task in the least period of time with the least accuracy. Trilinguals, on the contrary, could respond more accurately with an average speed. Accuracy, difficulty, and response time choice in metacognitive processing were discussed for each group. It is concluded that multilingualism might have different effects on higher-order decision making abilities.

The impact of bilingualism on brain reserve and metabolic connectivity in Alzheimer's dementia.

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Perani, Daniela; Farsad, Mohsen; Ballarini, Tommaso; Lubian, Francesca; Malpetti, Maura; Fracchetti, Alessandro; Magnani, Giuseppe; March, Albert; Abutalebi, Jubin

2017-02-14

Cognitive reserve (CR) prevents cognitive decline and delays neurodegeneration. Recent epidemiological evidence suggests that lifelong bilingualism may act as CR delaying the onset of dementia by ∼4.5 y. Much controversy surrounds the issue of bilingualism and its putative neuroprotective effects. We studied brain metabolism, a direct index of synaptic function and density, and neural connectivity to shed light on the effects of bilingualism in vivo in Alzheimer's dementia (AD). Eighty-five patients with probable AD and matched for disease duration (45 German-Italian bilingual speakers and 40 monolingual speakers) were included. Notably, bilingual individuals were on average 5 y older than their monolingual peers. In agreement with our predictions and with models of CR, cerebral hypometabolism was more severe in the group of bilingual individuals with AD. The metabolic connectivity analyses crucially supported the neuroprotective effect of bilingualism by showing an increased connectivity in the executive control and the default mode networks in the bilingual, compared with the monolingual, AD patients. Furthermore, the degree of lifelong bilingualism (i.e., high, moderate, or low use) was significantly correlated to functional modulations in crucial neural networks, suggesting both neural reserve and compensatory mechanisms. These findings indicate that lifelong bilingualism acts as a powerful CR proxy in dementia and exerts neuroprotective effects against neurodegeneration. Delaying the onset of dementia is a top priority of modern societies, and the present in vivo neurobiological evidence should stimulate social programs and interventions to support bilingual or multilingual education and the maintenance of the second language among senior citizens.

Prevalence of Stuttering in Javanroud\\'s Bilingual Students

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Hiva Mohammadi

2008-04-01

Full Text Available Objective: Study of prevalence of stuttering in Iranian bilingual societies is essential for determine the effects of linguistic factors in stuttering and therapy demands in these bilingual societies. The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of stuttering among Javanrud’s bilingual students. Materials & Methods: In this cross- sectional, descriptive and analytical study, all of bilingual students of Javanrud’s schools were examined and in order to this purpose, teacher referral method was used for the primary screening of speech disorders at all. Essential information about speech disorders specifically stuttering had been given to teachers before this primary step. Then researcher diagnosed stuttering students based on personal interview, reading, spontaneous speech and description of serial images that tell a story in Kurdish and Persian. Data were analysed by statistical tests such as Chi-square and Logistic Regression. Results: Among 11425 bilingual students of Javanrud’s schools, 129 students were identified as stutterers. These findings indicated that overall prevalence of stuttering in this population is 1/13 percent. Among primary, guidance and high school students the prevalence of stuttering was 2/06, 0/87 and 0/5 percent respectively. Prevalence of stuttering among boys was 1/35 and among girls was 0/88 percent. An overall male/female ratio was 1/5. Prevalence of stuttering in primary, guidance and high school was differ from each other significantly (P<0/001. Prevalence of stuttering in male was higher than female significantly (P=0/034. Conclusion: Prevalence of stuttering among Javanrood’s bilingual students was higher than accepted prevalence in monolinguals (1%. Risk of being stuttering in male was higher than female.

Bilingualism delays the onset of behavioral but not aphasic forms of frontotemporal dementia.

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Alladi, Suvarna; Bak, Thomas H; Shailaja, Mekala; Gollahalli, Divyaraj; Rajan, Amulya; Surampudi, Bapiraju; Hornberger, Michael; Duggirala, Vasanta; Chaudhuri, Jaydip Ray; Kaul, Subhash

2017-05-01

Bilingualism has been found to delay onset of dementia and this has been attributed to an advantage in executive control in bilinguals. However, the relationship between bilingualism and cognition is complex, with costs as well as benefits to language functions. To further explore the cognitive consequences of bilingualism, the study used Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) syndromes, to examine whether bilingualism modifies the age at onset of behavioral and language variants of Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) differently. Case records of 193 patients presenting with FTD (121 of them bilingual) were examined and the age at onset of the first symptoms were compared between monolinguals and bilinguals. A significant effect of bilingualism delaying the age at onset of dementia was found in behavioral variant FTD (5.7 years) but not in progressive nonfluent aphasia (0.7 years), semantic dementia (0.5 years), corticobasal syndrome (0.4 years), progressive supranuclear palsy (4.3 years) and FTD-motor neuron disease (3 years). On dividing all patients predominantly behavioral and predominantly aphasic groups, age at onset in the bilingual behavioral group (62.6) was over 6 years higher than in the monolingual patients (56.5, p=0.006), while there was no difference in the aphasic FTD group (60.9 vs. 60.6 years, p=0.851). The bilingual effect on age of bvFTD onset was shown independently of other potential confounding factors such as education, gender, occupation, and urban vs rural dwelling of subjects. To conclude, bilingualism delays the age at onset in the behavioral but not in the aphasic variants of FTD. The results are in line with similar findings based on research in stroke and with the current views of the interaction between bilingualism and cognition, pointing to advantages in executive functions and disadvantages in lexical tasks. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Bilinguals Have Different Hemispheric Lateralization in Visual Word Processing from Monolinguals

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Sze-Man Lam

2011-05-01

Full Text Available Previous bilingual studies showed reduced hemispheric asymmetry in visual tasks such as face perception in bilinguals compared with monolinguals, suggesting experience in reading one or two languages could be a modulating factor. Here we examined whether difference in hemispheric asymmetry in visual tasks can also be observed in bilinguals who have different language backgrounds. We compared the behavior of three language groups in a tachistoscopic English word sequential matching task: English monolinguals (or alphabetic monolinguals, A-Ms, bilinguals with an alphabetic-L1 and English-L2 (alphabetic-alphabetic bilinguals, AA-Bs, and bilinguals with Chinese-L1 and English-L2 (logographic-alphabetic bilinguals, LA-Bs. The results showed that AA-Bs had a stronger right visual field/ left hemispheric (LH advantage than A-Ms and LA-Bs, suggesting that different language learning experiences can influence how visual words are processed in the brain. In addition, we showed that this effect could be accounted for by a computational model that implements a theory of hemispheric asymmetry in perception (i.e., the Double Filtering by Frequency theory; Ivry & Robertson, 1998; the modeling data suggested that this difference may be due to both the difference in participants' vocabulary size and the difference in word-to-sound mapping between alphabetic and logographic languages.

Validating Models of Clinical Word Recognition Tests for Spanish/English Bilinguals

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Shi, Lu-Feng

2014-01-01

Purpose: Shi and Sánchez (2010) developed models to predict the optimal test language for evaluating Spanish/English (S/E) bilinguals' word recognition. The current study intended to validate their conclusions in a separate bilingual listener sample. Method: Seventy normal-hearing S/E bilinguals varying in language profile were included.…

Examining the Text Quality of English/Chinese Bilingual Children's Picture Books

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Huang, Qiaoya; Chen, Xiaoning

2016-01-01

As a branch of multicultural literature, bilingual children's picture books present a special opportunity for readers to expand their horizons and knowledge of other cultures. The researchers took a closer look at the text quality of 31 English/Chinese bilingual children's picture books. These bilingual books were examined on the aspects of the…

The effect of childhood bilingualism on episodic and semantic memory tasks.

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Kormi-Nouri, Reza; Shojaei, Razie-Sadat; Moniri, Sadegheh; Gholami, Ali-Reza; Moradi, Ali-Reza; Akbari-Zardkhaneh, Saeed; Nilsson, Lars-Göran

2008-04-01

Kormi-Nouri, Moniri and Nilsson (2003) demonstrated that Swedish-Persian bilingual children recalled at a higher level than Swedish monolingual children, when they were tested using Swedish materials. The present study was designed to examine the bilingual advantage of children who use different languages in their everyday life but have the same cultural background and live in their communities in the same way as monolingual children. In four experiments, 488 monolingual and bilingual children were compared with regard to episodic and semantic memory tasks. In experiments 1 and 2 there were 144 boys and 144 girls in three school groups (aged 9-10 years, 13-14 years and 16-17 years) and in three language groups (Persian monolingual, Turkish-Persian bilingual, and Kurdish-Persian bilingual). In experiments 3 and 4, there were 200 male students in two school groups (aged 9-10 years and 16-17 years) and in two language groups (Persian monolingual and Turkish-Persian bilingual). In the episodic memory task, children learned sentences (experiments 1-3) and words (Experiment 4). Letter and category fluency tests were used as measures of semantic memory. To change cognitive demands in memory tasks, in Experiment 1, the integration of nouns and verbs within sentences was manipulated by the level of association between verb and noun in each sentence. At retrieval, a recognition test was used. In experiments 2 and 3, the organization between sentences was manipulated at encoding in Experiment 2 and at both encoding and retrieval in Experiment 3 through the use of categories among the objects. At retrieval, free recall or cued recall tests were employed. In Experiment 4, the bilingual children were tested with regard to both their first and their second language. In all four experiments, a positive effect of bilingualism was found on episodic and semantic memory tasks; the effect was more pronounced for older than younger children. The bilingual advantage was not affected by

Language Mediated Concept Activation in Bilingual Memory Facilitates Cognitive Flexibility

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Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin

2017-06-01

Full Text Available This is the first attempt of empirical investigation of language mediated concept activation (LMCA in bilingual memory as a cognitive mechanism facilitating divergent thinking. Russian–English bilingual and Russian monolingual college students were tested on a battery of tests including among others Abbreviated Torrance Tests for Adults assessing divergent thinking traits and translingual priming (TLP test assessing the LMCA. The latter was designed as a lexical decision priming test, in which a prime and a target were not related in Russian (language of testing, but were related through their translation equivalents in English (spoken only by bilinguals. Bilinguals outperformed their monolingual counterparts on divergent thinking trait of cognitive flexibility, and bilinguals’ performance on this trait could be explained by their TLP effect. Age of second language acquisition and proficiency in this language were found to relate to the TLP effect, and therefore were proposed to influence the directionality and strength of connections in bilingual memory.

Working memory in multilingual children: is there a bilingual effect?

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Engel de Abreu, Pascale M J

2011-07-01

This research investigates whether early childhood bilingualism affects working memory performance in 6- to 8-year-olds, followed over a longitudinal period of 3 years. The study tests the hypothesis that bilinguals might exhibit more efficient working memory abilities than monolinguals, potentially via the opportunity a bilingual environment provides to train cognitive control by combating interference and intrusions from the non-target language. A total of 44 bilingual and monolingual children, matched on age, sex, and socioeconomic status, completed assessments of working memory (simple span and complex span tasks), fluid intelligence, and language (vocabulary and syntax). The data showed that the monolinguals performed significantly better on the language measures across the years, whereas no language group effect emerged on the working memory and fluid intelligence tasks after verbal abilities were considered. The study suggests that the need to manage several language systems in the bilingual mind has an impact on children's language skills while having little effects on the development of working memory.

Bilingual skills of deaf/hard of hearing children from Spain.

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Guiberson, Mark

2014-03-01

This study described the first language (L1) and second language (L2) skills of a group of Spanish deaf/hard of hearing (DHH) children who were bilingual. Participants included parents of 51 DHH children from Spain. Parents completed an electronic survey that included questions on background, details on child's hearing loss, and bilingual status and L2 exposure. Parents also completed the Student Oral Language Observation Matrix, a rating scale that describes language skills. DHH bilingual children demonstrated L1 skills that were stronger than their monolingual DHH peers. Bilingual children demonstrated a wide range of L2 proficiency, and most were exposed to an L2 through parents and/or schooling. The majority of parents reported that their children demonstrated L2 skills that were either better than or at the level they had expected. These results correspond with earlier studies that indicate the DHH children are capable of becoming bilingual. Implications for clinical practice are discussed.

A source of parametric variation in the lexicon

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Guglielmo Cinque

2016-12-01

Full Text Available An influential conjecture concerning parameters is that they can possibly be “restricted to formal features of functional categories” (Chomsky 1995: 6. In Rizzi (2009, 2011 such features are understood as instructions triggering one of the following syntactic actions: (1 External Merge; (2 Internal Merge (Move; (3 Pronunciation/Non pronunciation (the latter arguably dependent on Internal Merge – Kayne 2005a, b. In this article I consider a particular source of parametric variation across languages in the domain of the lexicon (both functional and substantive which appears to be due to the possibility of underspecifying certain features in some languages. The paradigmatic variation can be characterized as follows: language A has two (or more lexical items which correspond to just one lexical item in language B.

Graphic Arts. A Bilingual Text = Artes Graficas. Un Texto Bilingue.

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Los Angeles Unified School District, CA. Div. of Career and Continuing Education.

This bilingual instructional text, one in a series of six texts covering various vocational and technical topics, provides secondary level English and Spanish instruction in graphic arts. Addressed in the individual sections are basic graphic arts (composition, stone and press work, offset printing, silk screen, and photography) and allied graphic…

Motivations For Code-Switching Among Igboenglish Bilinguals: A ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Studies have shown that code-switching is not a manifestation of mental confusion but a rule-governed behaviour among bilinguals which is motivated by various socio-psychological as well as linguistic factors. It has been observed that code-switching is more predominant among Igbo-English bilinguals compared to any ...

Bilingualism and performance on two widely used developmental neuropsychological test batteries.

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Karlsson, Linda C; Soveri, Anna; Räsänen, Pekka; Kärnä, Antti; Delatte, Sonia; Lagerström, Emma; Mård, Lena; Steffansson, Mikaela; Lehtonen, Minna; Laine, Matti

2015-01-01

The present study investigated the effect of bilingualism on the two widely used developmental neuropsychological test batteries Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Fourth Edition (WISC-IV) and A Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment, Second Edition (NEPSY-II) in children. The sample consisted of 100 Finland-Swedish children in two age groups. About half (n = 52) of the participants were early simultaneous bilinguals, and the other half (n = 48) were monolinguals. As no Finland-Swedish versions of the tests are available at the moment, both tests were translated and adapted to suit this population. The results revealed no difference in the performance between bilingual and monolingual children. This speaks against a cognitive advantage in bilingual children and indicates that development of separate norms for monolingual and bilingual children is not needed for clinical use.

INTERCULTURAL FEATURES AND THE THEME OF TRAVELLING IN BILINGUAL MATHEMATICS LESSONS

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Zuzana Naštická

2016-08-01

Full Text Available The present qualitative research is focused on bilingual mathematics education. The research presents findings of a case study of one bilingual Slovak and English mathematics 40-minute lesson within an after school elective bilingual mathematics course running weekly since October, 2015. The lesson took place in March, 2016, and was attended by nine learners aged 12-13, eight boys and one girl. The learners are cases of successive school additive bilingual education. The elective course as a whole is a case of immerse bilingual educational programme. In terms of sociolinguistic settings, the course lessons are cases of bilingual education with external second language. The researcher designed and realized the course lessons in terms of CLIL approach, i.e. Content and Language Integrated Learning. The main aim of the case study was to examine if bilingual mathematics instruction does or does not prevent learners from solving math word problems. Secondly, the analysis of transcription of the lesson audio-record served for identification of intercultural features which might hinder the learning process. The analysis of the transcribed audio-record indicates that the bilingual context did not prevent students from solving math word problems, although each of the students worked at their individual rate. On the other hand, some students were confused by the comma as a thousands-separator in multi-digit numbers, and this actually hindered their learning and problem solving process. This fact has been identified as an intercultural difference which had to be explicitly explained to the students. In order to lessen the possible negative influences of bilingual context on mathematics education, teachers need to predict students’ responses to various intercultural differences which students are unfamiliar with.

Radiology residents' comprehension of the breast imaging reporting and data system: The ultrasound lexicon and final assessment category

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jeong, Sun Hye; Lee, Eun Hye; Roh, Yun Ho; Kim, Min Jung; Youk, Ji Hyun; Yoon, Jung Hyun; Kim, Sung Hun; Kim, You Me

2017-01-01

To evaluate radiology residents' performance in interpretation and comprehension of breast ultrasonographic descriptors in the Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) to suggest the adequate duration of training in breast ultrasonography. A total of 102 radiology residents working in the Department of Radiology were included in this study. They were asked to answer 16 questions about the ultrasonographic lexicon and 11 questions about the BI-RADS category. We analyzed the proportion of correct answers according to the radiology residents’ year of training and duration of breast imaging training. With respect to the duration of breast imaging training, the proportion of correct answers for lexicon descriptors ranged from 77.2% to 81.3% (p = 0.368) and the proportion of correct answers for the BI-RADS category was highest after three-four months of training compared with after one month of training (p = 0.033). The proportion of correct answers for lexicon descriptors and BI-RADS category did not differ significantly according to the year of residency training. Radiology residents' comprehension of the BI-RADS category on breast ultrasonography was not associated with their year of residency training. Based on our findings, radiology residents' assessment of the BI-RADS category was significantly improved with three-four months of training compared with one month of training

The effect of bilingualism on amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

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Ossher, Lynn; Bialystok, Ellen; Craik, Fergus I M; Murphy, Kelly J; Troyer, Angela K

2013-01-01

Previous reports have found that lifelong bilingualism is associated with a delay in the onset of dementia, including Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type (DAT). Because amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) is often a transition stage between normal aging and DAT, our aim in this paper was to establish whether this delay in symptom onset for bilinguals would also be seen in the onset of symptoms of aMCI and whether this delay would be consistent in different subtypes of aMCI. We examined the effect of bilingualism on the age of diagnosis in individuals with single- or multiple-domain aMCI who were administered a battery of neuropsychological tests and questionnaires about their language and social background. Our results showed an interaction between aMCI type and language history. Only individuals diagnosed with single-domain aMCI demonstrated a later age of diagnosis for bilinguals (M = 79.4 years) than monolinguals (M = 74.9 years). This preliminary evidence suggests that the early protective advantage of bilingualism may be specific to single-domain aMCI, which is the type of aMCI most specifically associated with progression to DAT.

Neuropsychological profiles and verbal abilities in lifelong bilinguals with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.

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Kowoll, Magdalena Eva; Degen, Christina; Gladis, Saskia; Schröder, Johannes

2015-01-01

Bilingualism is associated with enhanced executive functioning and delayed onset of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here, we investigated neuropsychological differences between mono- and bilingual patients with MCI and AD as well as the respective effects of dementia on the dominant and non-dominant language of bilinguals. 69 patients with MCI (n = 22) or AD (n = 47) and 17 healthy controls were included. 41 subjects were classified as lifelong bilinguals (mean age: 73.6; SD = 11.5) and 45 as monolinguals (mean age: 78.1; SD = 10.9). Neuropsychological performance was assessed on the CERAD-NP, the clock-drawing test, and the logical memory subscale of the Wechsler Memory Scale. Neuropsychological profiles showed only minor nonsignificant differences between mono- and bilingual subjects when compared between diagnostic groups. Bilingual MCI patients scored significantly lower on the verbal fluency and picture naming task in their dominant language than bilingual controls. Bilingual AD patients showed a reduced performance in their nondominant language when compared to bilingual MCI patients and bilingual controls (main effect language dominance: verbal fluency task p Bilingual MCI and AD patients show a similar pattern of neuropsychological deficits as monolingual patients do. The dominant language appears to be compromised first in bilingual MCI patients, while severe deficits of the nondominant language develop later in the course with manifestation of AD. These findings are important for the diagnostic work up of bilingual patients and the development of improved care concepts for bilingual patients such as migrant populations.

Bilingualism as a Window into the Language Faculty: The Acquisition of Objects in French-Speaking Children in Bilingual and Monolingual Contexts

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Perez-Leroux, Ana T.; Pirvulescu, Mihaela; Roberge, Yves

2009-01-01

Where do the two languages of the bilingual child interact? The literature has debated whether bilingual children have delays in the acquisition of direct objects. The variety of methods and languages involved have prevented clear conclusions. In a transitivity-based approach, null objects are a default structural possibility, present in all…

Escaping Capture: Bilingualism Modulates Distraction from Working Memory

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Hernandez, Mireia; Costa, Albert; Humphreys, Glyn W.

2012-01-01

We ask whether bilingualism aids cognitive control over the inadvertent guidance of visual attention from working memory and from bottom-up cueing. We compare highly-proficient Catalan-Spanish bilinguals with Spanish monolinguals in three visual search conditions. In the working memory (WM) condition, attention was driven in a top-down fashion by…

English Verb Accuracy of Bilingual Cantonese-English Preschoolers

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Rezzonico, Stefano; Goldberg, Ahuva; Milburn, Trelani; Belletti, Adriana; Girolametto, Luigi

2017-01-01

Purpose: Knowledge of verb development in typically developing bilingual preschoolers may inform clinicians about verb accuracy rates during the 1st 2 years of English instruction. This study aimed to investigate tensed verb accuracy in 2 assessment contexts in 4- and 5-year-old Cantonese-English bilingual preschoolers. Method: The sample included…

Breaking down the Bilingual Cost in Speech Production

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Sadat, Jasmin; Martin, Clara D.; Magnuson, James S.; Alario, François-Xavier; Costa, Albert

2016-01-01

Bilinguals have been shown to perform worse than monolinguals in a variety of verbal tasks. This study investigated this bilingual verbal cost in a large-scale picture-naming study conducted in Spanish. We explored how individual characteristics of the participants and the linguistic properties of the words being spoken influence this performance…

Language Growth in English Monolingual and Spanish-English Bilingual Children from 2.5 to 5 Years.

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Hoff, Erika; Ribot, Krystal M

2017-11-01

To describe the trajectories of English and Spanish language growth in typically developing children from bilingual homes and compare those with the trajectories of English growth in children from monolingual homes, to assess effects of dual language exposure on language growth in typically developing children. Expressive vocabularies were assessed at 6-month intervals from age 30 to 60 months, in English for monolinguals and English and Spanish for bilinguals. Use of English and Spanish in the home was assessed via parental report. Multilevel modeling, including parent education as a covariate, revealed that children from bilingual homes lagged 6 months to 1 year behind monolingual children in English vocabulary growth. The size of the lag was related to the relative amount of English use in the home, but the relation was not linear. Increments in English use conferred the greatest benefit most among homes with already high levels of English use. These homes also were likely to have 1 parent who was a native English speaker. Bilingual children showed stronger growth in English than in Spanish. Bilingual children can lag 6 months to 1 year behind monolingual children in normal English language development. Such lags may not necessarily signify clinically relevant delay if parents report that children also have skills in the home language. Shorter lags are associated with 2 correlated factors: more English exposure and more exposure from native English speakers. Early exposure to Spanish in the home does not guarantee acquisition of Spanish. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cognitive reserve in Parkinson's disease: the effects of welsh-english bilingualism on executive function.

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Hindle, John V; Martin-Forbes, Pamela A; Bastable, Alexandra J M; Pye, Kirstie L; Martyr, Anthony; Whitaker, Christopher J; Craik, Fergus I M; Bialystok, Ellen; Thomas, Enlli M; Mueller Gathercole, Virginia C; Clare, Linda

2015-01-01

Objective. Bilingualism has been shown to benefit executive function (EF) and delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. This study aims at examining whether a bilingual advantage applies to EF in Parkinson's disease (PD). Method. In a cross-sectional outpatient cohort of monolingual English (n = 57) and bilingual Welsh/English (n = 46) speakers with PD we evaluated the effects of bilingualism compared with monolingualism on performance on EF tasks. In bilinguals we also assessed the effects of the degree of daily usage of each language and the degree of bilingualism. Results. Monolinguals showed an advantage in performance of language tests. There were no differences in performance of EF tests in monolinguals and bilinguals. Those who used Welsh less in daily life had better performance on one test of English vocabulary. The degree of bilingualism correlated with one test of nonverbal reasoning and one of working memory but with no other tests of EF. Discussion. The reasons why the expected benefit in EF in Welsh-English bilinguals with PD was not found require further study. Future studies in PD should include other language pairs, analysis of the effects of the degree of bilingualism, and longitudinal analysis of cognitive decline or dementia together with structural or functional neuroimaging.

Bilingualism and cognitive decline : a story of pride and prejudice

OpenAIRE

Woumans, Evy; Versijpt, Jan; Sieben, Anne; Santens, Patrick; Duyck, Wouter

2017-01-01

In a recent review, Mukadam, Sommerlad, and Livingston (2017) argue that bilingualism offers no protection against cognitive decline. The authors examined the results of 13 studies (five prospective, eight retrospective) in which monolinguals and bilinguals were compared for cognitive decline and onset of dementia symptoms. Analysis of four of the five prospective studies resulted in the conclusion that there was no difference between monolinguals and bilinguals, whereas seven of the eight re...

Recognizing the Effects of Language Mode on the Cognitive Advantages of Bilingualism

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Ziying Yu

2018-03-01

Full Text Available For bilinguals, it is argued that a cognitive advantage can be linked to the constant management and need for conflict resolution that occurs when the two languages are co-activated (Bialystok, 2015. Language mode (Grosjean, 1998, 2001 is a significant variable that defines and shapes the language experiences of bilinguals and consequently, the cognitive advantages of bilingualism. Previous work, however, has not sufficiently tested the effects of language mode on the bilingual experience. In this brief conceptual analysis, we discuss the significance of language mode in bilingual work on speech perception, production, and reading. We offer possible explanations for conflicting findings and ways in which future work should control for its modulating effects.

Recognizing the Effects of Language Mode on the Cognitive Advantages of Bilingualism

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Yu, Ziying; Schwieter, John W.

2018-01-01

For bilinguals, it is argued that a cognitive advantage can be linked to the constant management and need for conflict resolution that occurs when the two languages are co-activated (Bialystok, 2015). Language mode (Grosjean, 1998, 2001) is a significant variable that defines and shapes the language experiences of bilinguals and consequently, the cognitive advantages of bilingualism. Previous work, however, has not sufficiently tested the effects of language mode on the bilingual experience. In this brief conceptual analysis, we discuss the significance of language mode in bilingual work on speech perception, production, and reading. We offer possible explanations for conflicting findings and ways in which future work should control for its modulating effects. PMID:29615949

Recognizing the Effects of Language Mode on the Cognitive Advantages of Bilingualism.

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Yu, Ziying; Schwieter, John W

2018-01-01

For bilinguals, it is argued that a cognitive advantage can be linked to the constant management and need for conflict resolution that occurs when the two languages are co-activated (Bialystok, 2015). Language mode (Grosjean, 1998, 2001) is a significant variable that defines and shapes the language experiences of bilinguals and consequently, the cognitive advantages of bilingualism. Previous work, however, has not sufficiently tested the effects of language mode on the bilingual experience. In this brief conceptual analysis, we discuss the significance of language mode in bilingual work on speech perception, production, and reading. We offer possible explanations for conflicting findings and ways in which future work should control for its modulating effects.

Translanguaging Pedagogies for Positive Identities in Two-Way Dual Language Bilingual Education

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García-Mateus, Suzanne; Palmer, Deborah

2017-01-01

Research suggests that identity matters for school success and that language and identity are powerfully intertwined. A monolingual solitudes understanding of bilingualism undermines children's bilingual identities, yet in most bilingual education classrooms, academic instruction is segregated by language and children are encouraged to engage in…

A Comparison between Verbal Working Memory and Vocabulary in Bilingual and Monolingual South African School Beginners: Implications for Bilingual Language Assessment

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Cockcroft, Kate

2016-01-01

This study compared bilingual and monolingual school beginners on measures of simple and complex verbal working memory and receptive and expressive vocabulary. The aim was to determine whether the tests of working memory are fairer measures of language ability than the vocabulary tests for bilingual children when tested in their second language.…

The interdependencies of bilingual behaviour. Psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic profile of Hungarian-Romanian bilinguals

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Erika-Mária Tódor

2015-07-01

Full Text Available This paper presents the specific features of a school population in Romania for whom Romanian is a non-native language, their mother tongue being Hungarian. The first part of the study offers a description of the main characteristics of the verbal behaviour of this bilingual population. The first subheading will discuss, on the one hand, the linguistic profile of the subjects (linguistic interference, linguistic pseudo-creativity etc. and, on the other hand, it will present the main aspects of the socio-affective dimension of verbal behaviour (such as communicational anguish, displacement of communicational intention, linguistic code switching etc.. Practically, these features can be followed in the case of other bi(multilingual speakers as well. The second part of the paper presents certain lexical and semantic interference and vocabulary activating habits in the case of bilingual persons, relating them to the linguistic context and the linguistic landscape.The formulated data and observations represent a synthesis of empirical research carried out between 2000–2013 through different methods, such as: observation, case studies (within the context of the data referring to the profile of language behaviour, structured interviews and questionnaires (employed in the study of the linguistic landscape. The main aim of this study is to offer a socio- and psycholinguistic profile of Hungarian-Romanian bilingualism set in a holistic context.

Families and Educators Supporting Bilingualism in Early Childhood

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Rodríguez, M. Victoria

2015-01-01

This article explores the strategies that three Latino families in the U.S. employed in raising their children bilingually in Spanish and English. It also looks at their rationale for bilingualism as well as the challenges the parents failed to anticipate in implementing their strategies. The data were gleaned from comparative case studies over a…

Neural processing of speech in children is influenced by bilingual experience

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Krizman, Jennifer; Slater, Jessica; Skoe, Erika; Marian, Viorica; Kraus, Nina

2014-01-01

Language experience fine-tunes how the auditory system processes sound. For example, bilinguals, relative to monolinguals, have more robust evoked responses to speech that manifest as stronger neural encoding of the fundamental frequency (F0) and greater across-trial consistency. However, it is unknown whether such enhancements increase with increasing second language experience. We predict that F0 amplitude and neural consistency scale with dual-language experience during childhood, such that more years of bilingual experience leads to more robust F0 encoding and greater neural consistency. To test this hypothesis, we recorded auditory brainstem responses to the synthesized syllables ‘ba’ and ‘ga’ in two groups of bilingual children who were matched for age at test (8.4+/−0.67 years) but differed in their age of second language acquisition. One group learned English and Spanish simultaneously from birth (n=13), while the second group learned the two languages sequentially (n=15), spending on average their first four years as monolingual Spanish speakers. We find that simultaneous bilinguals have a larger F0 response to ‘ba’ and ‘ga’ and a more consistent response to ‘ba’ compared to sequential bilinguals. We also demonstrate that these neural enhancements positively relate with years of bilingual experience. These findings support the notion that bilingualism enhances subcortical auditory processing. PMID:25445377

Developing the Bilingual Competence in Learning Foreign Languages

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T. A. Znamenskaya

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The paper considers the problem of bilingualism and its effect on the personality of the speaker. Various types of bilingualism are described along with the factors determining the bilingual competence formation: age, individual experience, socio-cultural conditions of the native and foreign language interaction. The author points out both the positive and negative impact on the native language as the result of the second language learning. The special emphasis is on language interference in the process of learning a foreign language. To make sure the students achieve the adequate degree of its authenticity, and therefore the bilingual competence, the teacher should take into account the specificity of national styles, communicative strategies and speech tactics of both languages. A comparative analysis of linguistic differences of the English and Russian languages is demonstrated on the level of phonetics, vocabulary, grammar and national communicative stylistics. The author maintains that successful inter-language and cross-cultural communication requires the integrative cross-disciplinary approach, consolidation of the linguistic theory and methods of foreign language teaching. 

Studying bilingual students’ literacy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Laursen, Helle Pia

2012-01-01

In the official educational discourse in the Nordic countries literacy teaching has become a central and contested issue. In both public and political debate literacy seems to be constructed as a unified concept streamlined for administration and measurement (Prinsloo & Baynham, 2008...... conceived of as a threat to a school’s profile (Rampton, Harris & Leung, 2001). In this paper, I focus on different conceptualizations of literacy and discuss the implications for research on bilingual children's literacy acquisition and the need to expand the understanding of literacy in ways, which might...... contribute to lift the basic understanding of bilinguals’ literacy out of a disqualifying political discourse. Drawing on the ongoing study Sign of Language (Laursen, 2011), I reflect on how a social semiotic framework might help open new research perspectives on bilingual children’s literacy acquisition...

Home and Community Language Proficiency in Spanish-English Early Bilingual University Students.

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Schmidtke, Jens

2017-10-17

This study assessed home and community language proficiency in Spanish-English bilingual university students to investigate whether the vocabulary gap reported in studies of bilingual children persists into adulthood. Sixty-five early bilinguals (mean age = 21 years) were assessed in English and Spanish vocabulary and verbal reasoning ability using subtests of the Woodcock-Muñoz Language Survey-Revised (Schrank & Woodcock, 2009). Their English scores were compared to 74 monolinguals matched in age and level of education. Participants also completed a background questionnaire. Bilinguals scored below the monolingual control group on both subtests, and the difference was larger for vocabulary compared to verbal reasoning. However, bilinguals were close to the population mean for verbal reasoning. Spanish scores were on average lower than English scores, but participants differed widely in their degree of balance. Participants with an earlier age of acquisition of English and more current exposure to English tended to be more dominant in English. Vocabulary tests in the home or community language may underestimate bilingual university students' true verbal ability and should be interpreted with caution in high-stakes situations. Verbal reasoning ability may be more indicative of a bilingual's verbal ability.

Bilingual child acquisition through the lens of sociolinguistic approaches

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Cornips, L.; Miller, David; Bayram, Fatih; Rothman, Jason; Serratrice, Ludovica

2018-01-01

This paper entails a perspective on bilingual child acquisition through the lens of sociolinguistic approaches. A discussion of the concepts of monolingual language ideology and power dynamics is undertaken in order to reveal their important consequences on studying bilingual child acquisition, in

Verbal fluency in bilingual Spanish/English Alzheimer's disease patients.

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Salvatierra, Judy; Rosselli, Monica; Acevedo, Amarilis; Duara, Ranjan

2007-01-01

Studies have demonstrated that in verbal fluency tests, monolinguals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) show greater difficulties retrieving words based on semantic rather than phonemic rules. The present study aimed to determine whether this difficulty was reproduced in both languages of Spanish/English bilinguals with mild to moderate AD whose primary language was Spanish. Performance on semantic and phonemic verbal fluency of 11 bilingual AD patients was compared to the performance of 11 cognitively normal, elderly bilingual individuals matched for gender, age, level of education, and degree of bilingualism. Cognitively normal subjects retrieved significantly more items under the semantic condition compared to the phonemic, whereas the performance of AD patients was similar under both conditions, suggesting greater decline in semantic verbal fluency tests. This pattern was produced in both languages, implying a related semantic decline in both languages. Results from this study should be considered preliminary because of the small sample size.

Cognitive Reserve in Parkinson's Disease: The Effects of Welsh-English Bilingualism on Executive Function

OpenAIRE

Hindle, John V.; Martin-Forbes, Pamela A.; Bastable, Alexandra J. M.; Pye, Kirstie L.; Martyr, Anthony; Whitaker, Christopher J.; Craik, Fergus I. M.; Bialystok, Ellen; Thomas, Enlli M.; Mueller Gathercole, Virginia C.; Clare, Linda

2015-01-01

Objective. Bilingualism has been shown to benefit executive function (EF) and delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. This study aims at examining whether a bilingual advantage applies to EF in Parkinson's disease (PD). Method. In a cross-sectional outpatient cohort of monolingual English (n = 57) and bilingual Welsh/English (n = 46) speakers with PD we evaluated the effects of bilingualism compared with monolingualism on performance on EF tasks. In bilinguals we also assessed the effects of ...

Metamorphological awareness and EFL students' memory, retention, and retrieval of English adjectival lexicons.

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Zhang, Lawrence Jun

2002-12-01

Research has shown that foreign or second language learners' metalinguistic awareness has important effects on their acquisition of the target language. Important among a multitude of the concerns are problems these learners encounter when they have to process the morphological features of individual words, particularly in the acquisition of literacy skills. Nevertheless, for students who learn English as a foreign or second language for academic purposes, one of the biggest challenges in their advanced study is how they can effectively remember, retain, and retrieve the colossal number of newly learnt English vocabulary, including adjectival lexicons, to enhance their academic success. Results from the present report on the effects of metamorphological awareness of 65 adult Chinese EFL learners' memory, retention, and retrieval of adjectival lexicons show that, although the subjects in the two groups did not differ significantly in their performance on a pretest designed to check their lexical knowledge and no sex difference was observed, statistically significant differences were found between the two groups in both conditions (immediate and delayed retrievals) on a posttest. The experimental group and women predominantly performed better in the memory-retention-retrieval tasks assigned to them. Implications for educational research and practices are also discussed.

Materiales en Marcha para el Esfuerzo Bilingue--Bicultural (Materials on the March for the Promotion of Bilingualism/Biculturalism), March/April 1973.

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San Diego City Schools, CA.

This newsletter is designed to promote the needs and aims of bilingual-bicultural education. This issue contains articles on: (1) Multi-ethnic Cooperation in Bilingual Education, (2) A Primary-Level Poetry Volume, (3) "Mi Escuela" for Your School, (4) An "Enciclopedia" That Is Also a "Tesoro," (5) Sample Lesson for "Abecedario Disney", (6) Bird of…

Bilingualism delays clinical manifestation of Alzheimer's disease

OpenAIRE

Woumans, Evy; Santens, Patrick; Sieben, Anne; Versijpt, Jan; Stevens, Michaël; Duyck, Wouter

2015-01-01

The current study investigated the effects of bilingualism on the clinical manifestation of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in a European sample of patients. We assessed all incoming AD patients in two university hospitals within a specified timeframe. Sixty-nine monolinguals and 65 bilinguals diagnosed with probable AD were compared for time of clinical AD manifestation and diagnosis. The influence of other potentially interacting variables was also examined. Results indicated a significant delay f...

Bilingualism and Working Memory Capacity: A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis

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Grundy, John G.; Timmer, Kalinka

2017-01-01

Bilinguals often outperform monolinguals on executive function tasks, including tasks that tap cognitive flexibility, conflict monitoring, and task-switching abilities. Some have suggested that bilinguals also have greater working memory capacity than comparable monolinguals, but evidence for this suggestion is mixed. We therefore conducted a…

Maturation of Executive Functioning Skills in Early Sequential Bilingualism

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Kalashnikova, Marina; Mattock, Karen

2014-01-01

Previous research has demonstrated that being bilingual from birth is advantageous for the development of skills of social cognition, executive functioning, and metalinguistic awareness due to bilingual children's extensive experience of processing and manipulating two linguistic systems. The present study investigated whether these cognitive…

Bilingualism Alters Children's Frontal Lobe Functioning for Attentional Control

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Arredondo, Maria M.; Hu, Xiao-Su; Satterfield, Teresa; Kovelman, Ioulia

2017-01-01

Bilingualism is a typical linguistic experience, yet relatively little is known about its impact on children's cognitive and brain development. Theories of bilingualism suggest that early dual-language acquisition can improve children's cognitive abilities, specifically those relying on frontal lobe functioning. While behavioral findings present…

Bilingual Intercultural Education in Ecuador: A Study of Social Demand

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Marcelo Bastidas Jiménez

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The Intercultural Bilingual Education System in Ecuador is guaranteed by the Constitution and assured by the Organic Law of Intercultural Bilingual Education, in a process that took a few decades to the indigenous population. The Ecuadorian state currently counts with a Model of Intercultural Bilingual Education that has its own structure, attached to the Ministry of Education and responsible for generating educational guidelines for 35 indigenous nationalities that coexist in the country. The objective of this study is to analyze the social demand for the Bachelor in Intercultural Bilingual Education, offered by Universidad Politécnica Salesiana. The analysis was carried out through two studies, one of them quantitative, addressed to educational institutions, and the other one qualitative and directed to government officials. The research objectives were to determine the need for graduates in Intercultural Bilingual Education, identify the desired profile of graduates of the career and academic requirements for a successful career. The results highlighted that the current presence of professionals in bilingual intercultural education is 0,65 per institution, with an average necessity of 1,85, which determines the existence of a demand in the next three years of 3 315 professionals. The main conclusion is that there is a significant demand for this career. Although the deficiencies of the current educational system, there in a strengthening trend.

To electrify bilingualism: Electrophysiological insights into bilingual metaphor comprehension.

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Jankowiak, Katarzyna; Rataj, Karolina; Naskręcki, Ryszard

2017-01-01

Though metaphoric language comprehension has previously been investigated with event-related potentials, little attention has been devoted to extending this research from the monolingual to the bilingual context. In the current study, late proficient unbalanced Polish (L1)-English (L2) bilinguals performed a semantic decision task to novel metaphoric, conventional metaphoric, literal, and anomalous word pairs presented in L1 and L2. The results showed more pronounced P200 amplitudes to L2 than L1, which can be accounted for by differences in the subjective frequency of the native and non-native lexical items. Within the early N400 time window (300-400 ms), L2 word dyads evoked delayed and attenuated amplitudes relative to L1 word pairs, possibly indicating extended lexical search during foreign language processing, and weaker semantic interconnectivity for L2 compared to L1 words within the memory system. The effect of utterance type was observed within the late N400 time window (400-500 ms), with smallest amplitudes evoked by literal, followed by conventional metaphoric, novel metaphoric, and anomalous word dyads. Such findings are interpreted as reflecting more resource intensive cognitive mechanisms governing novel compared to conventional metaphor comprehension in both the native and non-native language. Within the late positivity time window (500-800 ms), Polish novel metaphors evoked reduced amplitudes relative to literal utterances. In English, on the other hand, this effect was observed for both novel and conventional metaphoric word dyads. This finding might indicate continued effort in information retrieval or access to the non-literal route during novel metaphor comprehension in L1, and during novel and conventional metaphor comprehension in L2. Altogether, the present results point to decreased automaticity of cognitive mechanisms engaged in non-native and non-dominant language processing, and suggest a decreased sensitivity to the levels of

Autism and Bilingualism: A Qualitative Interview Study of Parents' Perspectives and Experiences

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Hampton, Sarah; Rabagliati, Hugh; Sorace, Antonella; Fletcher-Watson, Sue

2017-01-01

Purpose: Research into how bilingual parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) make choices about their children's language environment is scarce. This study aimed to explore this issue, focusing on understanding how bilingual parents of children with ASD may make different language exposure choices compared with bilingual parents of…

The Longitudinal Effect of Bilingual Immersion Schooling on Cognitive Control and Intelligence

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Woumans, Evy; Surmont, Jill; Struys, Esli; Duyck, Wouter

2016-01-01

Throughout the past century, the effects of bilingualism on general cognition have been extensively explored. Studies evolved from a negative to a more positive perspective, but longitudinal assessments of effects of bilingualism are scarce. This study investigated the long-term effect of becoming a bilingual on the development of general…

Bilingual Teaching Research and Practice of Complex Function Theory

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Ma, Lixin

2011-01-01

Mathematics bilingual teaching is assisted in Chinese with English teaching, and gradually enables students to independently use English to learn, study, reflect and exchange Mathematics. In order to better carry out mathematics teaching, department of mathematics in Dezhou University forms discussion groups and launches bilingual teaching…

Using What Matters to Students in Bilingual Mathematics Problems

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Dominguez, Higinio

2011-01-01

In this study, the author represented what matters to bilingual students in their everyday lives--namely bilingualism and everyday experiences--in school-based mathematical problems. Solving problems in pairs, students demonstrated different patterns of organizing and coordinating talk across problem contexts and across languages. Because these…

The effects of bilingualism on conflict monitoring, cognitive control, and garden-path recovery.

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Teubner-Rhodes, Susan E; Mishler, Alan; Corbett, Ryan; Andreu, Llorenç; Sanz-Torrent, Monica; Trueswell, John C; Novick, Jared M

2016-05-01

Bilinguals demonstrate benefits on non-linguistic tasks requiring cognitive control-the regulation of mental activity to resolve information-conflict during processing. This "bilingual advantage" has been attributed to the consistent management of two languages, yet it remains unknown if these benefits extend to sentence processing. In monolinguals, cognitive control helps detect and revise misinterpretations of sentence meaning. Here, we test if the bilingual advantage extends to parsing and interpretation by comparing bilinguals' and monolinguals' syntactic ambiguity resolution before and after practicing N-back, a non-syntactic cognitive-control task. Bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on a high-conflict but not a no-conflict version of N-back and on sentence comprehension, indicating that the advantage extends to language interpretation. Gains on N-back conflict trials also predicted comprehension improvements for ambiguous sentences, suggesting that the bilingual advantage emerges across tasks tapping shared cognitive-control procedures. Because the overall task benefits were observed for conflict and non-conflict trials, bilinguals' advantage may reflect increased cognitive flexibility. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Musical training, bilingualism, and executive function: working memory and inhibitory control.

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D'Souza, Annalise A; Moradzadeh, Linda; Wiseheart, Melody

2018-01-01

The current study investigated whether long-term experience in music or a second language is associated with enhanced cognitive functioning. Early studies suggested the possibility of a cognitive advantage from musical training and bilingualism but have failed to be replicated by recent findings. Further, each form of expertise has been independently investigated leaving it unclear whether any benefits are specifically caused by each skill or are a result of skill learning in general. To assess whether cognitive benefits from training exist, and how unique they are to each training domain, the current study compared musicians and bilinguals to each other, plus to individuals who had expertise in both skills, or neither. Young adults ( n = 153) were categorized into one of four groups: monolingual musician; bilingual musician; bilingual non-musician; and monolingual non-musician. Multiple tasks per cognitive ability were used to examine the coherency of any training effects. Results revealed that musically trained individuals, but not bilinguals, had enhanced working memory. Neither skill had enhanced inhibitory control. The findings confirm previous associations between musicians and improved cognition and extend existing evidence to show that benefits are narrower than expected but can be uniquely attributed to music compared to another specialized auditory skill domain. The null bilingual effect despite a music effect in the same group of individuals challenges the proposition that young adults are at a performance ceiling and adds to increasing evidence on the lack of a bilingual advantage on cognition.

The gender congruency effect during bilingual spoken-word recognition

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Morales, Luis; Paolieri, Daniela; Dussias, Paola E.; Valdés kroff, Jorge R.; Gerfen, Chip; Bajo, María Teresa

2016-01-01

We investigate the ‘gender-congruency’ effect during a spoken-word recognition task using the visual world paradigm. Eye movements of Italian–Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals were monitored while they viewed a pair of objects on a computer screen. Participants listened to instructions in Spanish (encuentra la bufanda / ‘find the scarf’) and clicked on the object named in the instruction. Grammatical gender of the objects’ name was manipulated so that pairs of objects had the same (congruent) or different (incongruent) gender in Italian, but gender in Spanish was always congruent. Results showed that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, looked at target objects less when they were incongruent in gender, suggesting a between-language gender competition effect. In addition, bilinguals looked at target objects more when the definite article in the spoken instructions provided a valid cue to anticipate its selection (different-gender condition). The temporal dynamics of gender processing and cross-language activation in bilinguals are discussed. PMID:28018132

Bilingualism in older Mexican-American immigrants is associated with higher scores on cognitive screening.

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Padilla, Claudia; Mendez, Mario F; Jimenez, Elvira E; Teng, Edmond

2016-11-24

Bilingualism may protect against cognitive aging and delay the onset of dementia. However, studies comparing monolinguals and bilinguals on such metrics have produced inconsistent results complicated by confounding variables and methodological concerns. We addressed this issue by comparing cognitive performance in a more culturally homogeneous cohort of older Spanish-speaking monolingual (n = 289) and Spanish-English bilingual (n = 339) Mexican-American immigrants from the Sacramento Longitudinal Study on Aging. After adjusting for demographic differences and depressive symptoms, both groups performed similarly at baseline on verbal memory but the bilingual group performed significantly better than the monolingual group on a cognitive screening test, the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination (3MS; p bilingual group, neither language of testing nor degree of bilingualism was significantly associated with 3MS or verbal memory scores. Amongst individuals who performed in the normal or better range on both tests at baseline and were followed for an average of 6 years, both monolinguals and bilinguals exhibited similar rates of cognitive decline on both measures. These findings suggest that bilingualism is associated with modest benefits in cognitive screening performance in older individuals in cross-sectional analyses that persist across longitudinal analyses. The effects of bilingualism should be considered when cognitively screening is performed in aging immigrant populations.

Requirements for an "ideal" bilingual L1 →L2 translation- oriented ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The major aim of this article is to outline the requirements for an "ideal" bilingual L1 →L2 dictionary of the general vocabulary specifically designed for the purposes of professional translation. The article challenges three commonly accepted beliefs: (a) a bilingual dictionary equals a translation dictionary; (b) a bilingual ...

Bilingualism in the English of tertiary students: A sine-qua-non for ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Effects of Bilingualism on the English of Tertiary Students as a mentorship and entrepreneurial tool were investigated. The term bilingualism is the use of two languages (repertoire) of an individual or a speech community. An important feature of bilingualism is that it is a consequence of language in contact which deals with ...

Radiology residents' comprehension of the breast imaging reporting and data system: The ultrasound lexicon and final assessment category

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Jeong, Sun Hye; Lee, Eun Hye [Bucheon Hospital, Bucheon (Korea, Republic of); Roh, Yun Ho; Kim, Min Jung; Youk, Ji Hyun [Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul (Korea, Republic of); Yoon, Jung Hyun; Kim, Sung Hun [The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul (Korea, Republic of); Kim, You Me [Dankook University College of Medicine, Cheonan (Korea, Republic of)

2017-07-15

To evaluate radiology residents' performance in interpretation and comprehension of breast ultrasonographic descriptors in the Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) to suggest the adequate duration of training in breast ultrasonography. A total of 102 radiology residents working in the Department of Radiology were included in this study. They were asked to answer 16 questions about the ultrasonographic lexicon and 11 questions about the BI-RADS category. We analyzed the proportion of correct answers according to the radiology residents’ year of training and duration of breast imaging training. With respect to the duration of breast imaging training, the proportion of correct answers for lexicon descriptors ranged from 77.2% to 81.3% (p = 0.368) and the proportion of correct answers for the BI-RADS category was highest after three-four months of training compared with after one month of training (p = 0.033). The proportion of correct answers for lexicon descriptors and BI-RADS category did not differ significantly according to the year of residency training. Radiology residents' comprehension of the BI-RADS category on breast ultrasonography was not associated with their year of residency training. Based on our findings, radiology residents' assessment of the BI-RADS category was significantly improved with three-four months of training compared with one month of training.

Sizing up the competition: quantifying the influence of the mental lexicon on auditory and visual spoken word recognition.

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Strand, Julia F; Sommers, Mitchell S

2011-09-01

Much research has explored how spoken word recognition is influenced by the architecture and dynamics of the mental lexicon (e.g., Luce and Pisoni, 1998; McClelland and Elman, 1986). A more recent question is whether the processes underlying word recognition are unique to the auditory domain, or whether visually perceived (lipread) speech may also be sensitive to the structure of the mental lexicon (Auer, 2002; Mattys, Bernstein, and Auer, 2002). The current research was designed to test the hypothesis that both aurally and visually perceived spoken words are isolated in the mental lexicon as a function of their modality-specific perceptual similarity to other words. Lexical competition (the extent to which perceptually similar words influence recognition of a stimulus word) was quantified using metrics that are well-established in the literature, as well as a statistical method for calculating perceptual confusability based on the phi-square statistic. Both auditory and visual spoken word recognition were influenced by modality-specific lexical competition as well as stimulus word frequency. These findings extend the scope of activation-competition models of spoken word recognition and reinforce the hypothesis (Auer, 2002; Mattys et al., 2002) that perceptual and cognitive properties underlying spoken word recognition are not specific to the auditory domain. In addition, the results support the use of the phi-square statistic as a better predictor of lexical competition than metrics currently used in models of spoken word recognition. © 2011 Acoustical Society of America

Predictors of Processing-Based Task Performance in Bilingual and Monolingual Children

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Buac, Milijana; Gross, Megan; Kaushanskaya, Margarita

2016-01-01

In the present study we examined performance of bilingual Spanish-English-speaking and monolingual English-speaking school-age children on a range of processing-based measures within the framework of Baddeley’s working memory model. The processing-based measures included measures of short-term memory, measures of working memory, and a novel word-learning task. Results revealed that monolinguals outperformed bilinguals on the short-term memory tasks but not the working memory and novel word-learning tasks. Further, children’s vocabulary skills and socioeconomic status (SES) were more predictive of processing-based task performance in the bilingual group than the monolingual group. Together, these findings indicate that processing-based tasks that engage verbal working memory rather than short-term memory may be better-suited for diagnostic purposes with bilingual children. However, even verbal working memory measures are sensitive to bilingual children’s language-specific knowledge and demographic characteristics, and therefore may have limited clinical utility. PMID:27179914

Examining Bilingual Children's Gender Ideologies through Critical Discourse Analysis

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Martinez-Roldan, Carmen M.

2005-01-01

This article presents a case study of young bilingual students' discussions of literature in a second-grade Spanish/English bilingual classroom in the US. Sociocultural, critical, and Chicana feminist perspectives informed an analysis of the ways the children worked at understanding, marking, and resisting gender boundaries. This critical…

Identity Constructions in Bilingual Advertising: A Critical-Cognitive Approach

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Li, Songqing

2017-01-01

Does English always play an important role in constructing identities within the multimodal ad? This question has wide-ranging implications for the study of identity constructions in bilingual advertising in particular, and for bilingualism and multilingualism generally. This article presents a critical-cognitive approach that is an evidence-based…

Oral Narratives in Monolingual and Bilingual Preschoolers with SLI

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Rezzonico, Stefano; Chen, Xi; Cleave, Patricia L.; Greenberg, Janice; Hipfner-Boucher, Kathleen; Johnson, Carla J.; Milburn, Trelani; Pelletier, Janette; Weitzman, Elaine; Girolametto, Luigi

2015-01-01

Background: The body of literature on narratives of bilingual children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) is growing. However, little is known about the narrative abilities of bilingual preschool children with SLI and their patterns of growth. Aims: To determine the similarities and differences in narrative abilities between…

Code-switching among chiShona-English bilinguals in courtroom ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

As has become the norm in bilingual situations, code-switching in both formal and informal contexts has increased recognition as a verbal mode of communication. This article presents a parsimonious exegesis of the patterns and functions of code-switching in the courtroom discourse of chiShona-English bilinguals.

Cognitive Reserve in Parkinson’s Disease: The Effects of Welsh-English Bilingualism on Executive Function

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

John V. Hindle

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Objective. Bilingualism has been shown to benefit executive function (EF and delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. This study aims at examining whether a bilingual advantage applies to EF in Parkinson’s disease (PD. Method. In a cross-sectional outpatient cohort of monolingual English (n=57 and bilingual Welsh/English (n=46 speakers with PD we evaluated the effects of bilingualism compared with monolingualism on performance on EF tasks. In bilinguals we also assessed the effects of the degree of daily usage of each language and the degree of bilingualism. Results. Monolinguals showed an advantage in performance of language tests. There were no differences in performance of EF tests in monolinguals and bilinguals. Those who used Welsh less in daily life had better performance on one test of English vocabulary. The degree of bilingualism correlated with one test of nonverbal reasoning and one of working memory but with no other tests of EF. Discussion. The reasons why the expected benefit in EF in Welsh-English bilinguals with PD was not found require further study. Future studies in PD should include other language pairs, analysis of the effects of the degree of bilingualism, and longitudinal analysis of cognitive decline or dementia together with structural or functional neuroimaging.

CzEngClass – Towards a Lexicon of Verb Synonyms with Valency Linked to Semantic Roles

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Urešová Zdeňka

2017-12-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we introduce our ongoing project about synonymy in bilingual context. This project aims at exploring semantic ‘equivalence’ of verb senses of generally different verbal lexemes in a bilingual (Czech-English setting. Specifically, it focuses on their valency behavior within such equivalence groups. We believe that using bilingual context (translation as an important factor in the delimitation of classes of synonymous lexical units (verbs, in our case may help to specify the verb senses, also with regard to the (semantic roles relation to other verb senses and roles of their arguments more precisely than when using monolingual corpora. In our project, we work “bottom-up”, i.e., from an evidence as recorded in our corpora and not “top-down”, from a predefined set of semantic classes.

Does bilingualism increase brain or cognitive reserve in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy?

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Reyes, Anny; Paul, Brianna M; Marshall, Anisa; Chang, Yu-Hsuan A; Bahrami, Naeim; Kansal, Leena; Iragui, Vicente J; Tecoma, Evelyn S; Gollan, Tamar H; McDonald, Carrie R

2018-05-01

Bilingual healthy adults have been shown to exhibit an advantage in executive functioning (EF) that is associated with microstructural changes in white matter (WM) networks. Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) often show EF deficits that are associated with WM compromise. In this study, we investigate whether bilingualism can increase cognitive reserve and/or brain reserve in bilingual patients with TLE, mitigating EF impairment and WM compromise. Diffusion tensor imaging was obtained in 19 bilingual and 26 monolingual patients with TLE, 12 bilingual healthy controls (HC), and 21 monolingual HC. Fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) were calculated for the uncinate fasciculus (Unc) and cingulum (Cing), superior frontostriatal tract (SFS), and inferior frontostriatal tract (IFS). Measures of EF included Trail Making Test-B (TMT-B) and Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System Color-Word Inhibition/Switching. Analyses of covariance were conducted to compare FA and MD of the Unc, Cing, SFS, and IFS and EF performance across groups. In bilingual patients, FA was lower in the ipsilateral Cing and Unc compared to all other groups. For both patient groups, MD of the ipsilateral Unc was higher relative to HC. Despite more pronounced reductions in WM integrity, bilingual patients performed similarly to monolingual TLE and both HC groups on EF measures. By contrast, monolingual patients performed worse than HC on TMT-B. In addition, differences in group means between bilingual and monolingual patients on TMT-B approached significance when controlling for the extent of WM damage (P = .071; d = 0.62), suggesting a tendency toward higher performance for bilingual patients. Despite poorer integrity of regional frontal lobe WM, bilingual patients performed similarly to monolingual patients and HC on EF measures. These findings align with studies suggesting that bilingualism may provide a protective factor for individuals with neurological disease, potentially

The Bilingual Adaptation: How Minds Accommodate Experience

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Bialystok, Ellen

2017-01-01

According to some estimates, more than half of the world’s population is multilingual to some extent. Because of the centrality of language use to human experience and the deep connections between linguistic and nonlinguistic processing, it would not be surprising to find that there are interactions between bilingualism and cognitive and brain processes. The present review uses the framework of experience-dependent plasticity to evaluate the evidence for systematic modifications of brain and cognitive systems that can be attributed to bilingualism. The review describes studies investigating the relation between bilingualism and cognition in infants and children, younger and older adults, and patients, using both behavioral and neuroimaging methods. Excluded are studies whose outcomes focus primarily on linguistic abilities because of their more peripheral contribution to the central question regarding experience-dependent changes to cognition. Although most of the research discussed in the review reports some relation between bilingualism and cognitive or brain outcomes, several areas of research, notably behavioral studies with young adults, largely fail to show these effects. These discrepancies are discussed and considered in terms of methodological and conceptual issues. The final section proposes an account based on “executive attention” to explain the range of research findings and to set out an agenda for the next steps in this field. PMID:28230411

More Limitations to Monolingualism: Bilinguals Outperform Monolinguals in Implicit Word Learning.

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Escudero, Paola; Mulak, Karen E; Fu, Charlene S L; Singh, Leher

2016-01-01

To succeed at cross-situational word learning, learners must infer word-object mappings by attending to the statistical co-occurrences of novel objects and labels across multiple encounters. While past studies have investigated this as a learning mechanism for infants and monolingual adults, bilinguals' cross-situational word learning abilities have yet to be tested. Here, we compared monolinguals' and bilinguals' performance on a cross-situational word learning paradigm that featured phonologically distinct word pairs (e.g., BON-DEET) and phonologically similar word pairs that varied by a single consonant or vowel segment (e.g., BON-TON, DEET-DIT, respectively). Both groups learned the novel word-referent mappings, providing evidence that cross-situational word learning is a learning strategy also available to bilingual adults. Furthermore, bilinguals were overall more accurate than monolinguals. This supports that bilingualism fosters a wide range of cognitive advantages that may benefit implicit word learning. Additionally, response patterns to the different trial types revealed a relative difficulty for vowel minimal pairs than consonant minimal pairs, replicating the pattern found in monolinguals by Escudero et al. (2016) in a different English accent. Specifically, all participants failed to learn vowel contrasts differentiated by vowel height. We discuss evidence for this bilingual advantage as a language-specific or general advantage.

Differences in Word Recognition between Early Bilinguals and Monolinguals: Behavioral and ERP Evidence

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Lehtonen, Minna; Hulten, Annika; Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni; Cunillera, Toni; Tuomainen, Jyrki; Laine, Matti

2012-01-01

We investigated the behavioral and brain responses (ERPs) of bilingual word recognition to three fundamental psycholinguistic factors, frequency, morphology, and lexicality, in early bilinguals vs. monolinguals. Earlier behavioral studies have reported larger frequency effects in bilinguals' nondominant vs. dominant language and in some studies…

Specifying the Needs of a "Bilingual" Developmentally Disabled Population: Issues and Case Studies.

Science.gov (United States)

Greenlee, Mel

Linguistic and cognitive assessment of children whose home language is not English involves a number of complex issues: minority labeling, the relationship between cognition and bilingualism, "normal" data on bilingual development, and monolingual versus bilingual environment for children experiencing delay. This paper concentrates on reviewing…

Bilingualism delays age at onset of dementia, independent of education and immigration status.

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Alladi, Suvarna; Bak, Thomas H; Duggirala, Vasanta; Surampudi, Bapiraju; Shailaja, Mekala; Shukla, Anuj Kumar; Chaudhuri, Jaydip Ray; Kaul, Subhash

2013-11-26

The purpose of the study was to determine the association between bilingualism and age at onset of dementia and its subtypes, taking into account potential confounding factors. Case records of 648 patients with dementia (391 of them bilingual) diagnosed in a specialist clinic were reviewed. The age at onset of first symptoms was compared between monolingual and bilingual groups. The influence of number of languages spoken, education, occupation, and other potentially interacting variables was examined. Overall, bilingual patients developed dementia 4.5 years later than the monolingual ones. A significant difference in age at onset was found across Alzheimer disease dementia as well as frontotemporal dementia and vascular dementia, and was also observed in illiterate patients. There was no additional benefit to speaking more than 2 languages. The bilingual effect on age at dementia onset was shown independently of other potential confounding factors such as education, sex, occupation, and urban vs rural dwelling of subjects. This is the largest study so far documenting a delayed onset of dementia in bilingual patients and the first one to show it separately in different dementia subtypes. It is the first study reporting a bilingual advantage in those who are illiterate, suggesting that education is not a sufficient explanation for the observed difference. The findings are interpreted in the context of the bilingual advantages in attention and executive functions.

The Impact of Early Bilingualism on Face Recognition Processes.

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Kandel, Sonia; Burfin, Sabine; Méary, David; Ruiz-Tada, Elisa; Costa, Albert; Pascalis, Olivier

2016-01-01

Early linguistic experience has an impact on the way we decode audiovisual speech in face-to-face communication. The present study examined whether differences in visual speech decoding could be linked to a broader difference in face processing. To identify a phoneme we have to do an analysis of the speaker's face to focus on the relevant cues for speech decoding (e.g., locating the mouth with respect to the eyes). Face recognition processes were investigated through two classic effects in face recognition studies: the Other-Race Effect (ORE) and the Inversion Effect. Bilingual and monolingual participants did a face recognition task with Caucasian faces (own race), Chinese faces (other race), and cars that were presented in an Upright or Inverted position. The results revealed that monolinguals exhibited the classic ORE. Bilinguals did not. Overall, bilinguals were slower than monolinguals. These results suggest that bilinguals' face processing abilities differ from monolinguals'. Early exposure to more than one language may lead to a perceptual organization that goes beyond language processing and could extend to face analysis. We hypothesize that these differences could be due to the fact that bilinguals focus on different parts of the face than monolinguals, making them more efficient in other race face processing but slower. However, more studies using eye-tracking techniques are necessary to confirm this explanation.

Multiple literacies: Linking the research on bilingualism and biliteracies to the practical.

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Dufresne, Therese; Masny, Diana

2006-11-01

The present article addresses the fundamental developmental differences between monolingualism and bilingualism, as outlined in the literature. It takes into account research using qualitative and quantitative methodologies and reviews the advantages and possible disadvantages of bilingualism in preschool children. It then moves on to biliteracies in early childhood education. The questions addressed are: Will the early learning of a second language delay a child's language development? What effect does bilingualism have on the development of phonemic awareness, and does that have an impact on reading development? Do bilingual children have an advantage over monolingual children? What happens when a child with language impairment is called upon to develop two languages? What are some challenges regarding the acquisition of biliteracies? The present article concludes with recommendations for physicians who counsel bilingual families regarding early childhood literacy promotion and development.

Functional and anatomical dissociation between the orthographic lexicon and the orthographic buffer revealed in reading and writing Chinese characters by fMRI.

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Chen, Hsiang-Yu; Chang, Erik C; Chen, Sinead H Y; Lin, Yi-Chen; Wu, Denise H

2016-04-01

The contribution of orthographic representations to reading and writing has been intensively investigated in the literature. However, the distinction between neuronal correlates of the orthographic lexicon and the orthographic (graphemic) buffer has rarely been examined in alphabetic languages and never been explored in non-alphabetic languages. To determine whether the neural networks associated with the orthographic lexicon and buffer of logographic materials are comparable to those reported in the literature, the present fMRI experiment manipulated frequency and the stroke number of Chinese characters in the tasks of form judgment and stroke judgment, which emphasized the processing of character recognition and writing, respectively. It was found that the left fusiform gyrus exhibited higher activation when encountering low-frequency than high-frequency characters in both tasks, which suggested this region to be the locus of the orthographic lexicon that represents the knowledge of character forms. On the other hand, the activations in the posterior part of the left middle frontal gyrus and in the left angular gyrus were parametrically modulated by the stroke number of target characters only in the stroke judgment task, which suggested these regions to be the locus of the orthographic buffer that represents the processing of stroke sequence in writing. These results provide the first evidence for the functional and anatomical dissociation between the orthographic lexicon and buffer in reading and writing Chinese characters. They also demonstrate the critical roles of the left fusiform area and the frontoparietal network to the long-term and short-term representations of orthographic knowledge, respectively, across different orthographies. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

On the Economic Approach to Bilingual Education in China

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Xiong, Zhiwei; Shao, Cheng

2009-01-01

In the process of globalization, each country culture retains an independence from the others besides in reality a fusion of several cultures. Bilingual education as an effective means and intangible resource, which have long been neglected, will play an important part in social and economic development in China. Bilingual education, in this…

Cognitive Development in Bilingual and Monolingual Lower-Class Children.

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Myers, Barbara; Goldstein, David

1979-01-01

The cognitive development of lower-class English-speaking monolingual and English-Spanish speaking bilingual children in kindergarten, third, and sixth grades was compared by means of standard verbal and nonverbal measures. The verbal ability of bilingual children was assessed in both English and Spanish. Their scores in both languages were low.…

Latino Bilingual Teachers: Negotiating the Figured World of Masculinity

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Lara, Gilberto P.; Fránquiz, María E.

2015-01-01

This article focuses on a group of male teachers from Proyecto Bilingüe, a professional development master's degree program for bilingual teachers. The study is guided by one broad research question: How do Latino male bilingual teachers negotiate their identities in a gendered profession? Specifically the study addresses: What spaces for…

Colonial Bilingual Heritage and Post-Colonial Myths in Cameroon's ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Thus, the study traces and shows that an uncritical support of the existing school bilingualism, a aspect of the general political objective of national unity and integration, hinges on a fictitious collective post-colonial dream about using the bilingual heritage of French and English, and the cultures that lie behind them, ...

Silencing Bilingualism: A Day in a Life of a Bilingual Practitioner

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Robertson, Leena H.; Drury, Rose; Cable, Carrie

2014-01-01

Based on sociocultural theories of learning, this paper draws on findings from a research project "a day in a life of a bilingual practitioner". It explores how two multilingual practitioners in English early years settings supported the learning of young 3-4 year-old children, and their parents and teachers. The paper challenges the…

The Translation of Indonesian Cultural Lexicons in the Novel Saman

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Evert H. Hilman

2015-05-01

Full Text Available Article was aimed to explore and identity the manners used by the translator in translating the Indonesian cultural lexicon in the novel Saman into English, and to find out which manners that contained the least semantic shifts concerning the problems of meaning related to cultural differences. Method applied was descriptive qualitative research by collecting and analyzing both the Indonesian and English versions of the novel. The samples were classified by Newmark four categories: loan words, cultural equivalent, functional equivalent, and addition. It can be concluded that there are only seven manners found from the collected data but only four manners used in the analysis, they are loan word, cultural equivalent, functional equivalent, and addition.

The timing and magnitude of Stroop interference and facilitation in monolinguals and bilinguals.

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Coderre, Emily L; VAN Heuven, Walter J B; Conklin, Kathy

2013-04-01

Executive control abilities and lexical access speed in Stroop performance were investigated in English monolinguals and two groups of bilinguals (English-Chinese and Chinese-English) in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages. Predictions were based on a bilingual cognitive advantage hypothesis, implicating cognitive control ability as the critical factor determining Stroop interference; and two bilingual lexical disadvantage hypotheses, focusing on lexical access speed. Importantly, each hypothesis predicts different response patterns in a Stroop task manipulating stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). There was evidence for a bilingual cognitive advantage, although this effect was sensitive to a number of variables including proficiency, language immersion, and script. In lexical access speed, no differences occurred between monolinguals and bilinguals in their native languages, but there was evidence for a delay in L2 processing speed relative to the L1. Overall, the data highlight the multitude of factors affecting executive control and lexical access speed in bilinguals.

“ALL IN ALL, I AM BILINGUAL” A STUDY OF BILINGUALISM

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Zeynep CANLI; Bekir CANLI

2016-01-01

he aim of the study is to investigate whether EFL instructors in a university preparatory school consider themselves bilingual, or not; and the reasons for the EFL instructors to consider themselves bilingual or not. For the purpose of the study, a qualitative research was carried out. Thirty EFL instructors participated in this study. The data were collected via an open-ended questionnaire. Analyzing the results indicated that most of the participants considered themselves bilingual. The res...

A Progress Evaluation of Four Bilingual Children's Television Shows.

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Klein, Stephen P.; And Others

An evaluation of a bilingual education TV series was conducted involving 6-year-old English speaking, Spanish speaking, and bilingual children at four sites. Children were assigned to control and experimental groups with the latter group seeing four 30 minute shows. A pretest-posttest design was employed with the pretest serving as the covariate…

The Organization of Words and Symbolic Gestures in 18-Month-Olds' Lexicons: Evidence from a Disambiguation Task

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Suanda, Sumarga H.; Namy, Laura L.

2013-01-01

Infants' early communicative repertoires include both words and symbolic gestures. The current study examined the extent to which infants organize words and gestures in a single unified lexicon. As a window into lexical organization, eighteen-month-olds' ("N" = 32) avoidance of word-gesture overlap was examined and compared with…

Bilingualism does not alter cognitive decline or dementia risk among Spanish-speaking immigrants.

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Zahodne, Laura B; Schofield, Peter W; Farrell, Meagan T; Stern, Yaakov; Manly, Jennifer J

2014-03-01

Clinic-based studies suggest that dementia is diagnosed at older ages in bilinguals compared with monolinguals. The current study sought to test this hypothesis in a large, prospective, community-based study of initially nondemented Hispanic immigrants living in a Spanish-speaking enclave of northern Manhattan. Participants included 1,067 participants in the Washington/Hamilton Heights Inwood Columbia Aging Project (WHICAP) who were tested in Spanish and followed at 18-24 month intervals for up to 23 years. Spanish-English bilingualism was estimated via both self-report and an objective measure of English reading level. Multilevel models for change estimated the independent effects of bilingualism on cognitive decline in 4 domains: episodic memory, language, executive function, and speed. Over the course of the study, 282 participants developed dementia. Cox regression was used to estimate the independent effect of bilingualism on dementia conversion. Covariates included country of origin, gender, education, time spent in the United States, recruitment cohort, and age at enrollment. Independent of the covariates, bilingualism was associated with better memory and executive function at baseline. However, bilingualism was not independently associated with rates of cognitive decline or dementia conversion. Results were similar whether bilingualism was measured via self-report or an objective test of reading level. This study does not support a protective effect of bilingualism on age-related cognitive decline or the development of dementia. In this sample of Hispanic immigrants, bilingualism is related to higher initial scores on cognitive tests and higher educational attainment and may not represent a unique source of cognitive reserve. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Errors in the Production of Adult Early and Late Bilinguals

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Teresa Lee

2014-08-01

Full Text Available This study examines the grammatical knowledge of adult second language (L2 learners and heritage speakers. Given the differences in the mode and age of acquisition between L2 learners (late bilinguals and heritage speakers (early bilinguals, the question arises as to whether and how these groups differ from each other in their knowledge of Korean. To address this question, the present study looks at the production of Korean relative clauses by three groups of learners (26 L2 learners, 11 simultaneous bilinguals, and 38 early sequential bilinguals. The results of a written production task showed that all three groups made similar types of errors such as those involving the use of incorrect word order and case markers. Yet differences were also observed in the nature of errors made by these three groups. Based on the findings, pedagogical implications are drawn for classroom instruction.

Cognitive and electrophysiological correlates of the bilingual Stroop effect

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Lavelda J. Naylor

2012-04-01

Full Text Available The bilingual color-word Stroop effect is commonly half the magnitude when naming and reading languages are different than the same. This between-within language Stroop difference (BWLS is likened to a response set effect, with greater response conflict for response relevant than irrelevant words. The BWLS was analyzed in 2 experiments. Color congruent and incongruent words (Exp 1 appeared in the naming language or not (single, or randomly in both languages (mixed. The BWLS effect was observed in both balanced and unbalanced bilinguals. However, color congruent trials during mixed-language blocks led to slower times between than within languages, indicating that response irrelevant stimuli interfered with processing. To investigate the neural timing of the BWLS effect (Exp 2, event related potentials were recorded while balanced bilinguals named silently. Replicating monolingual findings, an N450 effect was observed with larger negative amplitude for color incongruent than congruent trials (350-550 ms post stimulus onset. This effect was equivalent within and between languages, indicating that color words from both languages created response conflict, contrary to a response set effect. A sustained negativity followed with larger amplitude for color incongruent than congruent trials, resolving earlier for between than within language Stroop. The effect shared timing (550-700 ms, but not morphology or distribution with a previously reported sustained potential. Finally, a larger early negativity (200-350 ms was observed for between than within languages independent of color congruence. This no-go N2-like negativity may reflect processes of inhibitory control that facilitate the resolution of conflict at the sustained negativity, while the N450 reflects parallel processing of distracter words, independent of response set. In sum, the BWLS reflects brain activity over time with contributions from language and color conflict at different points.

Construcción de una base de conocimiento léxico multilíngüe de amplia cobertura: Multilingual Central Repository

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Aitor Gonzalez-Agirre

2013-07-01

Full Text Available El uso de recursos semánticos de amplia cobertura y dominio general se ha convertido en una práctica común y a menudo necesaria para los sistemas actuales de Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural (PLN. WordNet es, con mucho, el recurso semántico más utilizado en PLN. Siguiendo el éxito de WordNet, el proyecto EuroWordNet ha diseñado una infraestructura semántica multilingüe para desarrollar wordnets para un conjunto de lenguas europeas. En EuroWordNet, estos wordnets están interconectados con enlaces interlingüísticos almacenados en el índice interlingual (en inglés, interlingual-index o ILI. Siguiendo la arquitectura de EuroWordNet, el proyecto MEANING ha desarrollado las primeras versiones del Multilingual Central Repository (MCR usando un ILI basado en WordNet 1.6. Con ello, se mantiene la compatibilidad entre los wordnets de diferentes idiomas y versiones. Esta versión del MCR integra seis versiones diferentes de la WordNet inglés (de 1.6 a 3.0 y también wordnets en castellano, catalán, euskera e italiano, junto a más de un millón de relaciones semánticas entre conceptos así como propiedades semánticas de diferentes ontologías. Recientemente hemos desarrollado una nueva versión del MCR usando un ILI basado en WordNet 3.0. Esta nueva versión del MCR integra wordnets de cinco idiomas diferentes: inglés, castellano, catalán, euskera y gallego. La versión actual del MCR, al igual que la anterior, integra sistemáticamente miles de relaciones semánticas entre conceptos. Además, el MCR se ha enriquecido con cerca de 460.000 propiedades semánticas y ontológicas que incluyen Base Level Concepts, Top Ontology, WordNet Domains y AdimenSUMO, proporcionando coherencia ontológica a todos los wordnets y recursos semánticos integrados en ella.

An Understanding of the Concept and Conditions of Bilingualism: A Study in an EFL Setting

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Sandra Patricia Lastra R.

2015-07-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a study carried out at a private school that implemented a bilingual program more than a decade ago. The main aim of the project was to find out how the school community understands the concept of bilingualism and the conditions required to fulfill the goals of a bilingual curriculum at the school. Data were collected through surveys and focus groups made up of different members of the school community. The results showed that bilingualism is associated with a high intensification of English classes and the necessity of having English-speaking employees. Results also depict some theoretical issues about bilingualism and important conditions for implementing a bilingual program.

A Cross-Lingual Similarity Measure for Detecting Biomedical Term Translations

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Bollegala, Danushka; Kontonatsios, Georgios; Ananiadou, Sophia

2015-01-01

Bilingual dictionaries for technical terms such as biomedical terms are an important resource for machine translation systems as well as for humans who would like to understand a concept described in a foreign language. Often a biomedical term is first proposed in English and later it is manually translated to other languages. Despite the fact that there are large monolingual lexicons of biomedical terms, only a fraction of those term lexicons are translated to other languages. Manually compiling large-scale bilingual dictionaries for technical domains is a challenging task because it is difficult to find a sufficiently large number of bilingual experts. We propose a cross-lingual similarity measure for detecting most similar translation candidates for a biomedical term specified in one language (source) from another language (target). Specifically, a biomedical term in a language is represented using two types of features: (a) intrinsic features that consist of character n-grams extracted from the term under consideration, and (b) extrinsic features that consist of unigrams and bigrams extracted from the contextual windows surrounding the term under consideration. We propose a cross-lingual similarity measure using each of those feature types. First, to reduce the dimensionality of the feature space in each language, we propose prototype vector projection (PVP)—a non-negative lower-dimensional vector projection method. Second, we propose a method to learn a mapping between the feature spaces in the source and target language using partial least squares regression (PLSR). The proposed method requires only a small number of training instances to learn a cross-lingual similarity measure. The proposed PVP method outperforms popular dimensionality reduction methods such as the singular value decomposition (SVD) and non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) in a nearest neighbor prediction task. Moreover, our experimental results covering several language pairs such as

A cross-lingual similarity measure for detecting biomedical term translations.

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Danushka Bollegala

Full Text Available Bilingual dictionaries for technical terms such as biomedical terms are an important resource for machine translation systems as well as for humans who would like to understand a concept described in a foreign language. Often a biomedical term is first proposed in English and later it is manually translated to other languages. Despite the fact that there are large monolingual lexicons of biomedical terms, only a fraction of those term lexicons are translated to other languages. Manually compiling large-scale bilingual dictionaries for technical domains is a challenging task because it is difficult to find a sufficiently large number of bilingual experts. We propose a cross-lingual similarity measure for detecting most similar translation candidates for a biomedical term specified in one language (source from another language (target. Specifically, a biomedical term in a language is represented using two types of features: (a intrinsic features that consist of character n-grams extracted from the term under consideration, and (b extrinsic features that consist of unigrams and bigrams extracted from the contextual windows surrounding the term under consideration. We propose a cross-lingual similarity measure using each of those feature types. First, to reduce the dimensionality of the feature space in each language, we propose prototype vector projection (PVP--a non-negative lower-dimensional vector projection method. Second, we propose a method to learn a mapping between the feature spaces in the source and target language using partial least squares regression (PLSR. The proposed method requires only a small number of training instances to learn a cross-lingual similarity measure. The proposed PVP method outperforms popular dimensionality reduction methods such as the singular value decomposition (SVD and non-negative matrix factorization (NMF in a nearest neighbor prediction task. Moreover, our experimental results covering several language

Evaluation of speech and language assessment approaches with bilingual children.

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De Lamo White, Caroline; Jin, Lixian

2011-01-01

British society is multicultural and multilingual, thus for many children English is not their main or only language. Speech and language therapists are required to assess accurately the speech and language skills of bilingual children if they are suspected of having a disorder. Cultural and linguistic diversity means that a more complex assessment procedure is needed and research suggests that bilingual children are at risk of misdiagnosis. Clinicians have identified a lack of suitable assessment instruments for use with this client group. This paper highlights the challenges of assessing bilingual children and reviews available speech and language assessment procedures and approaches for use with this client group. It evaluates different approaches for assessing bilingual children to identify approaches that may be more appropriate for carrying out assessments effectively. This review discusses and evaluates the efficacy of norm-referenced standardized measures, criterion-referenced measures, language-processing measures, dynamic assessment and a sociocultural approach. When all named procedures and approaches are compared, the sociocultural approach appears to hold the most promise for accurate assessment of bilingual children. Research suggests that language-processing measures are not effective indicators for identifying speech and language disorders in bilingual children, but further research is warranted. The sociocultural approach encompasses some of the other approaches discussed, including norm-referenced measures, criterion-referenced measures and dynamic assessment. The sociocultural approach enables the clinician to interpret results in the light of the child's linguistic and cultural background. In addition, combining approaches mitigates the weaknesses inherent in each approach. © 2011 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

Bilingualism in older Mexican-American immigrants is associated with higher scores on cognitive screening

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Claudia Padilla

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Bilingualism may protect against cognitive aging and delay the onset of dementia. However, studies comparing monolinguals and bilinguals on such metrics have produced inconsistent results complicated by confounding variables and methodological concerns. Methods We addressed this issue by comparing cognitive performance in a more culturally homogeneous cohort of older Spanish-speaking monolingual (n = 289 and Spanish-English bilingual (n = 339 Mexican-American immigrants from the Sacramento Longitudinal Study on Aging. Results After adjusting for demographic differences and depressive symptoms, both groups performed similarly at baseline on verbal memory but the bilingual group performed significantly better than the monolingual group on a cognitive screening test, the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination (3MS; p < 0.001. Group differences on the 3MS were driven by language/executive and language/praxis factors. Within the bilingual group, neither language of testing nor degree of bilingualism was significantly associated with 3MS or verbal memory scores. Amongst individuals who performed in the normal or better range on both tests at baseline and were followed for an average of 6 years, both monolinguals and bilinguals exhibited similar rates of cognitive decline on both measures. Conclusions These findings suggest that bilingualism is associated with modest benefits in cognitive screening performance in older individuals in cross-sectional analyses that persist across longitudinal analyses. The effects of bilingualism should be considered when cognitively screening is performed in aging immigrant populations.

Pulling it all together: The road to lasting bilingualism for children with developmental disabilities.

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Kay-Raining Bird, Elizabeth; Trudeau, Natacha; Sutton, Ann

Children with DD must and do become bilingual, but the research reported in this special issue raises questions about equitable access to bilingual opportunities and provision of appropriate supports to ensure optimal bilingual growth in these children. The purpose of the present article was to apply the findings from our international collaboration to inform policy and practice on bilingualism in children with developmental disabilities (DD). To do this, we first overview the research presented in detail in other articles of this special issue: a narrative literature review, a review of site policies and practices related to special education and language education, a qualitative analysis of key informant interviews, and a quantitative analysis of surveys of practitioners. From these overviews emerge a complex set of contextual factors that impact bilingual development in children with DD. We then use the Bioecological Systems model of Bronfenbrenner and Morris (2007) and conceptual maps (C-maps) to examine the particular circumstances of three hypothetical children with DD who are in very different bilingual contexts. In so doing, areas of both positive and negative influence on lasting bilingualism are identified for each child. We end with recommendations for increasing access to and support for bilingualism in children with DD. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The language and social background questionnaire: Assessing degree of bilingualism in a diverse population.

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Anderson, John A E; Mak, Lorinda; Keyvani Chahi, Aram; Bialystok, Ellen

2018-02-01

Research examining the cognitive consequences of bilingualism has expanded rapidly in recent years and has revealed effects on aspects of cognition across the lifespan. However, these effects are difficult to find in studies investigating young adults. One problem is that there is no standard definition of bilingualism or means of evaluating degree of bilingualism in individual participants, making it difficult to directly compare the results of different studies. Here, we describe an instrument developed to assess degree of bilingualism for young adults who live in diverse communities in which English is the official language. We demonstrate the reliability and validity of the instrument in analyses based on 408 participants. The relevant factors for describing degree of bilingualism are: (1) the extent of non-English language proficiency and use at home, and (2) non-English language use socially. We then use the bilingualism scores obtained from the instrument to demonstrate their association with: (1) performance on executive function tasks, and (2) previous classifications of participants into categories of monolinguals and bilinguals.

The Cultured Word: Cultural Background, Bilingualism, and the School Library.

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Agosto, Denise E.

2001-01-01

Presents major research related to cultural background as a framework for textual meaning-making, bilingualism, and literacy development. Discusses bilingualism, literacy, and social context; considers why these issues are important to school librarians; and offers suggestions for making multicultural materials central aspects of school library…

Bilingualism, executive control, and age at diagnosis among people with early-stage Alzheimer's disease in Wales.

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Clare, Linda; Whitaker, Christopher J; Craik, Fergus I M; Bialystok, Ellen; Martyr, Anthony; Martin-Forbes, Pamela A; Bastable, Alexandra J M; Pye, Kirstie L; Quinn, Catherine; Thomas, Enlli M; Gathercole, Virginia C Mueller; Hindle, John V

2016-09-01

The observation of a bilingual advantage in executive control tasks involving inhibition and management of response conflict suggests that being bilingual might contribute to increased cognitive reserve. In support of this, recent evidence indicates that bilinguals develop Alzheimer's disease (AD) later than monolinguals, and may retain an advantage in performance on executive control tasks. We compared age at the time of receiving an AD diagnosis in bilingual Welsh/English speakers (n = 37) and monolingual English speakers (n = 49), and assessed the performance of bilinguals (n = 24) and monolinguals (n = 49) on a range of executive control tasks. There was a non-significant difference in age at the time of diagnosis, with bilinguals being on average 3 years older than monolinguals, but bilinguals were also significantly more cognitively impaired at the time of diagnosis. There were no significant differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in performance on executive function tests, but bilinguals appeared to show relative strengths in the domain of inhibition and response conflict. Bilingual Welsh/English speakers with AD do not show a clear advantage in executive function over monolingual English speakers, but may retain some benefits in inhibition and management of response conflict. There may be a delay in onset of AD in Welsh/English bilinguals, but if so, it is smaller than that found in some other clinical populations. In this Welsh sample, bilinguals with AD came to the attention of services later than monolinguals, and reasons for this pattern could be explored further. © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

Translanguaging, TexMex, and Bilingual Pedagogy: Emergent Bilinguals Learning through the Vernacular

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Sayer, Peter

2013-01-01

This article presents an ethnographic study of how bilingual teachers and children use their home language, TexMex, to mediate academic content and standard languages. From the premise that TESOL educators can benefit from a fuller understanding of students' linguistic repertoires, the study describes language practices in a second-grade classroom…

Towards culturally competent health care: language use of bilingual staff.

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Johnson, M; Noble, C; Matthews, C; Aguilar, N

1998-01-01

The presence of diverse language skills within health staff provides opportunities to better meet the needs of a multicultural population. A cross-sectional survey of all staff within the South Western Sydney Area Health Service was undertaken to compare language skills with population needs and examine the context of language use. Thirty-one per cent of staff (n = 964) were bilingual or multilingual, with the predominant languages spoken being Tagalog (Filipino), Cantonese, Hindi, Spanish, Vietnamese and Italian. Thirty-seven per cent of bilingual staff used their language skills at least weekly, predominantly in situations of simple conversation and giving directions. Bilingual staff are a valuable resource for the organisation and the presence of a similar overall proportion of bilingual and bicultural staff may engender tolerance and adaptability in providing care to a diverse population. However, supply does not directly match community demand. This mismatch will continue unless recruitment is focused towards identified language groups. The high proportion of staff who rarely used their language skills (37%) may be due to lack of opportunity or limited need, and suggests that further research needs to examine service models that locate bilingual workers close to client need. This study takes a crucial first step towards realising equitable and culturally appropriate care utilising the principles of productive diversity.

Bilingualism modulates the white matter structure of language-related pathways.

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Hämäläinen, Sini; Sairanen, Viljami; Leminen, Alina; Lehtonen, Minna

2017-05-15

Learning and speaking a second language (L2) may result in profound changes in the human brain. Here, we investigated local structural differences along two language-related white matter trajectories, the arcuate fasciculus and the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), between early simultaneous bilinguals and late sequential bilinguals. We also examined whether early exposure to two languages might lead to a more bilateral structural organization of the arcuate fasciculus. Fractional anisotropy, mean and radial diffusivities (FA, MD, and RD respectively) were extracted to analyse tract-specific changes. Additionally, global voxel-wise effects were investigated with Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS). We found that relative to late exposure, early exposure to L2 leads to increased FA along a phonology-related segment of the arcuate fasciculus, but induces no modulations along the IFOF, associated to semantic processing. Late sequential bilingualism, however, was associated with decreased MD along the bilateral IFOF. Our results suggest that early vs. late bilingualism may lead to qualitatively different kind of changes in the structural language-related network. Furthermore, we show that early bilingualism contributes to the structural laterality of the arcuate fasciculus, leading to a more bilateral organization of these perisylvian language-related tracts. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The impact of late, non-balanced bilingualism on cognitive performance.

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Vega-Mendoza, Mariana; West, Holly; Sorace, Antonella; Bak, Thomas H

2015-04-01

We present a study examining cognitive functions in late non-balanced bilinguals with different levels of second language proficiency. We examined in two experiments a total of 193 mono- and bilingual university students. We assessed different aspects of attention (sustained, selective and attentional switching), verbal fluency (letter and category) as well as picture-word association as a measure of language proficiency. In Experiment 2 we also compared students in their first/initial (Y1) and fourth/final (Y4) year of either language or literature studies. There were no differences between both groups in category fluency. In selective attention, bilinguals outperformed monolinguals in Y1 and this difference remained significant in Y4 despite overall improvement in both groups. Contrasting results were found in attentional switching and letter fluency: while no differences were found in Y1 in both tasks, in Y4 there was an advantage for bilinguals in attentional switching and for monolinguals in letter fluency. We conclude that overall late-acquisition non-balanced bilinguals experience similar cognitive effects as their early-acquisition balanced counterparts. However, different cognitive effects may appear at different stages of adult second language acquisition. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Elite vs. Folk Bilingualism: The Mismatch between Theories and Educational and Social Conditions

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Guerrer, Carmen Helena

2010-01-01

This article aims at contributing to the ongoing discussion about how bilingualism is understood in the current National Bilingualism Plan (PNB for its initials in Spanish). Based on previous research and discussions held at academic events, it is evident that the promoters of the PNB use the term "bilingualism" in a rather…

BILINGUALISM AMONG THE ADOLESCENTS IN BADUNG REGENCY, BALI

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I Nyoman Muliana

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a discussion of bilingualism among the adolescents in Badung Regency, the Province of Bali. It aims to explore the bilingualism situation and the existence of Balinese Language among them. The discussion is based on participant observation to the adolescents and it is based on Sociolinguistic Theory. The result of the discussion shows that the adolescents in Badung Regency are bilinguals of Balinese and Indonesian languages. They use Balinese language in all their communicative activities, except some females occasionally showed the use of Indonesian language. Their conversations both in Balinese and Indonesian languages are also followed by code mixing of the words and phrase of Indonesian, Balinese, and English languages.  The result of the discussion also indicates that Balinese language still used and maintained by the adolescents in Badung Regency.

Bilingualism modulates infants' selective attention to the mouth of a talking face.

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Pons, Ferran; Bosch, Laura; Lewkowicz, David J

2015-04-01

Infants growing up in bilingual environments succeed at learning two languages. What adaptive processes enable them to master the more complex nature of bilingual input? One possibility is that bilingual infants take greater advantage of the redundancy of the audiovisual speech that they usually experience during social interactions. Thus, we investigated whether bilingual infants' need to keep languages apart increases their attention to the mouth as a source of redundant and reliable speech cues. We measured selective attention to talking faces in 4-, 8-, and 12-month-old Catalan and Spanish monolingual and bilingual infants. Monolinguals looked more at the eyes than the mouth at 4 months and more at the mouth than the eyes at 8 months in response to both native and nonnative speech, but they looked more at the mouth than the eyes at 12 months only in response to nonnative speech. In contrast, bilinguals looked equally at the eyes and mouth at 4 months, more at the mouth than the eyes at 8 months, and more at the mouth than the eyes at 12 months, and these patterns of responses were found for both native and nonnative speech at all ages. Thus, to support their dual-language acquisition processes, bilingual infants exploit the greater perceptual salience of redundant audiovisual speech cues at an earlier age and for a longer time than monolingual infants. © The Author(s) 2015.

Methods for Identifying Specific Language Impairment in Bilingual Populations in Germany

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Cornelia Hamann

2017-10-01

Full Text Available This study investigates the performance of 22 monolingual and 54 bilingual children with and without specific language impairment (SLI, in a non-word repetition task (NWRT and a sentence repetition task (SRT. Both tasks were constructed according to the principles for LITMUS tools (Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings developed within COST Action IS0804 and incorporated phonological or syntactic structures that are linguistically complex and have been shown to be difficult for children with SLI across languages. For phonology these are in particular (nonwords containing consonant clusters. In morphosyntax, complexity has been attributed to factors such as embedding and/or syntactic movement. Tasks focusing on such structures are expected to identify SLI in bilinguals across language combinations. This is notoriously difficult because structures that are problematic for typically developing bilinguals (BiTDs and monolingual children with SLI (MoSLI often overlap. We show that the NWRT and the SRT are reliable tools for identification of SLI in bilingual contexts. However, interpretation of the performance of bilingual children depends on background information as provided by parental questionnaires. To evaluate the accuracy of our tasks, we recruited children in ordinary kindergartens or schools and in speech language therapy centers and verified their status with a battery of standardized language tests, assessing bilingual children in both their languages. We consider a bilingual child language impaired if she shows impairments in two language domains in both her languages. For assessment, we used tests normed for monolinguals (with one exception and adjusted the norms for bilingualism and for language dominance. This procedure established the following groups: 10 typical monolinguals (MoTD, 12 MoSLI, 46 BiTD, and 8 bilingual children with SLI (BiSLI. Our results show that both tasks target relevant structures: monolingual

Elite Vs. Folk Bilingualism: The Mismatch between Theories and Educational and Social Conditions

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Carmen Helena Guerrero

2010-12-01

Full Text Available This article aims at contributing to the ongoing discussion about how bilingualism is understood in the current National Bilingualism Plan (PNB for its initials in Spanish. Based on previous research and discussions held at academic events, it is evident that the promoters of the PNB use the term “bilingualism” in a rather indiscriminate way, without adopting a clear approach or definition. This ambiguity in conceptualization has serious consequences in the way the PNB is implemented around the country. The main contribution of this reflection article is, then, to explore from a theoretical perspective two opposite types of bilingualism: elite/folk bilingualism to show that even though on the surface the PNB seems to aim at an elite bilingualism, the educational and social conditions show otherwise.

Dinamismo conceptual en las bases de conocimiento terminológico: el caso de EcoLexicon

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Pamela Faber Benítez

2010-05-01

Full Text Available Introducción: la nueva orientación de la Terminología, en sentido lingüístico-conceptual, ha dado lugar al desarrollo de un nuevo enfoque centrado en el discurso y el uso real de los términos (Temmerman y Kerremans, 2003. Este cambio de paradigma ha originado una mejora sustancial del contenido de las bases de conocimiento terminológico. Sin embargo, la novedad más destacada en cuanto a la modelización del conocimiento parte del uso extensivo de las ontologías, añadiéndole un mayor grado de expresividad semántica a la Terminología. Objetivo: presentar la base de conocimiento EcoLexicon, desarrollada en la Universidad de Granada por el grupo de investigación LexiCon. Para sacar el máximo partido de las ventajas que ofrece la aplicación de ontologías se propone la definición de un inventario de relaciones conceptuales junto con su potencial combinatorio. A su vez, éste origina una representación restringida por el contexto. Método: según los datos extraídos del corpus recopilado para la investigación, los conceptos del dominio se dividen según su tipología y su poder relacional. Se aplican características propias del lenguaje de ontologías (Web Ontology Language (OWL para realizar inferencias (ej. la transitividad de la meronimia. Resultados: la definición de las relaciones conceptuales según la naturaleza de los conceptos ofrece una solución cuantitativa para la sobrecarga de información y, a su vez, cualitativa, para la adquisición del conocimiento. Conclusiones: EcoLexicon une con éxito la Terminología y la capacidad expresiva de las ontologías, lo que ayudará en el futuro a diseñar sistemas de búsqueda adaptados a distintos usuarios.

Perceived Requirements of MIS Curriculum Implementation in Bilingual Developing Countries

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Kabeil, Magdy M.

2005-01-01

This paper addresses additional requirements associated with implementing a standard curriculum of Management Information Systems (MIS) in bilingual developing countries where both students and workplace users speak English as a second language. In such countries, MIS graduates are required to develop bilingual computer applications and to…

Perceptions of Cataloguers and End-Users towards Bilingual Authority Files.

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Abdoulaye, Kaba

2002-01-01

Analyzes and describes bilingual authority files at the main library of the International Islamic University of Malaysia. Highlights include a review of multilingual research; perceptions of end users and catalogers; problems with bilingual files; and use of the OPAC (online public access catalog) by users. (Author/LRW)

Positive Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism and Multilingualism on Cerebral Function: a Review.

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Quinteros Baumgart, Cibel; Billick, Stephen Bates

2018-06-01

A review of the current literature regarding bilingualism demonstrates that bilingualism is linked to higher levels of controlled attention and inhibition in executive control and can protect against the decline of executive control in aging by contributing to cognitive reserve. Bilinguals may also have smaller vocabulary size and slower lexical retrieval for each language. The joint activation theory is proposed to explain these results. Older trilingual adults experience more protection against cognitive decline and children and young adults showed similar cognitive advantages to bilinguals in inhibitory control. Second language learners do not yet show cognitive changes associated with multilingualism. The Specificity Principle states that the acquisition of multiple languages is moderated by multiple factors and varies between experiences. Bilingualism and multilingualism are both associated with immigration but different types of multilingualism can develop depending on the situation. Cultural cues and language similarity also play a role in language switching and multiple language acquisition.

When learning a second language does not mean losing the first: bilingual language development in low-income, Spanish-speaking children attending bilingual preschool.

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Winsler, A; Díaz, R M; Espinosa, L; Rodríguez, J L

1999-01-01

This article discusses two investigations which explored the bilingual language development outcomes of comparable groups of low-income, Spanish-speaking, Mexican American children who either did or did not attended a bilingual (Spanish/English) preschool. Study 1 is a replication of a study by Rodríguez, Díaz, Duran, and Espinosa, involving a new sample of 26 children who attended bilingual preschool for one year and 20 control children who remained at home. Study 2 represents a 1-year, longitudinal follow-up of Rodríguez et al.'s, sample of children during and after the children spent another year at home or in the preschool. In both investigations, standardized, objective measures of three components of children's language proficiency (productive language, receptive language, and language complexity) in English and Spanish were obtained at the beginning and end of the academic year. Contrary to fears that have been expressed by some that early exposure to English would lead to children's native language loss, the results of both studies offered no evidence of Spanish proficiency loss for children attending bilingual preschool. Children who attended bilingual preschool, compared to those who remained at home, showed significant and parallel gains in Spanish language development as well as significant and greater increases in English language proficiency over time. Results are discussed in terms of the need for more systematic research to be conducted in this area to inform policy and practice in the early education and development of language-minority children.

Monolingual or bilingual intervention for primary language impairment? A randomized control trial.

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Thordardottir, Elin; Cloutier, Geneviève; Ménard, Suzanne; Pelland-Blais, Elaine; Rvachew, Susan

2015-04-01

This study investigated the clinical effectiveness of monolingual versus bilingual language intervention, the latter involving speech-language pathologist-parent collaboration. The study focuses on methods that are currently being recommended and that are feasible within current clinical contexts. Bilingual children with primary language impairment who speak a minority language as their home language and French as their second (n=29, mean age=5 years) were randomly assigned to monolingual treatment, bilingual treatment, and no-treatment (delayed-treatment) conditions. Sixteen sessions of individual language intervention were offered, targeting vocabulary and syntactic skills in French only or bilingually, through parent collaboration during the clinical sessions. Language evaluations were conducted before and after treatment by blinded examiners; these evaluations targeted French as well as the home languages. An additional evaluation was conducted 2 months after completion of treatment to assess maintenance of gains. Both monolingual and bilingual treatment followed a focused stimulation approach. Results in French showed a significant treatment effect for vocabulary but no difference between treatment conditions. Gains were made in syntax, but these gains could not be attributed to treatment given that treatment groups did not improve more than the control group. Home language probes did not suggest that the therapy had resulted in gains in the home language. The intervention used in this study is in line with current recommendations of major speech-language pathology organizations. However, the findings indicate that the bilingual treatment created through collaboration with parents was not effective in creating a sufficiently intense bilingual context to make it significantly different from the monolingual treatment. Further studies are needed to assess the gains associated with clinical modifications made for bilingual children and to search for effective ways

Minimalism and Bilingualism: How and Why Bilingualism Could Benefit Children with SLI

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Roeper, Thomas

2012-01-01

We begin with the hypothesis that all people are "bilingual" because every language contains ingredients from several grammars, just as English exhibits both an Anglo-Saxon and a Latinate vocabulary system. We argue that the dominant grammar is defined by productivity and recursion in particular. Although current evidence is sparse, in principle,…

A word association response approach toward lexical relationships within the mental lexicon of second language learners: pedagogic ideas from testing McCarthy's theories on Japanese students.

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Murphy, Robert S; Post, Michael D

2009-06-01

Through use of word association as detailed in McCarthy (1990) this paper will explore pedagogic implications derived from the following three points in relation to the lexical development of Japanese learners of English: 1) the ability of word association tests to examine the mental links between words in learners' developing mental lexicon, 2) the importance of phonological similarities for lower level students and 3) the correlation between the results from a word association test with the characteristic types of word association patterns discussed in McCarthy (1990). It will be argued that while lexical development within the mental lexicon is difficult to delineate due to overlap of organizational categories, the patterns of syntactic, semantic and conceptual relations between learned words is apparent within the retrieval process for word association and that additionally, context may play a vital role in how words are construed along the links within the mental lexicon. Pedagogic ideas and future research ideas are detailed.

The Bilingual Advantage: Language, Literacy and the US Labor Market

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Callahan, Rebecca M., Ed.; Gándara, Patricia C., Ed.

2014-01-01

The Bilingual Advantage draws together researchers from education, economics, sociology, anthropology and linguistics to examine the economic and employment benefits of bilingualism in the US labor market, countering past research that shows no such benefits exist. Collectively, the authors draw on novel methodological approaches and new data to…

HOW CAN BILINGUAL EDUCATION CONTRIBUTE TO LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN THE 21st CENTURY?

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José Ignacio Vila Mendiburu

2010-10-01

Full Text Available This article is a reflection about the future which does not obviate all the knowledge acquired in nearly a hundred years time of research about bilingualism and bilingual education. In the first part, it considers the psycho-educational base where bilingualism lies on. In the second part, this article shows the possibilities and the limits of bilingual education in societies which are more and more diversified on linguistic terms. Finally, it reviews some of the guidelines about linguistic education both in Europe and in this country, while it points out some methods to promote the multilingual competence of students.

Syntactic bootstrapping in children with Down syndrome: the impact of bilingualism.

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Cleave, Patricia L; Kay-Raining Bird, Elizabeth; Trudeau, Natacha; Sutton, Ann

2014-01-01

The purpose of the study was to add to our knowledge of bilingual learning in children with Down syndrome (DS) using a syntactic bootstrapping task. Four groups of children and youth matched on non-verbal mental age participated. There were 14 bilingual participants with DS (DS-B, mean age 12;5), 12 monolingual participants with DS (DS-M, mean age 10;10), 9 bilingual typically developing children (TD-B; mean age 4;1) and 11 monolingual typically developing children (TD-M; mean age 4;1). The participants completed a computerized syntactic bootstrapping task involving unfamiliar nouns and verbs. The syntactic cues employed were a for the nouns and ing for the verbs. Performance was better on nouns than verbs. There was also a main effect for group. Follow-up t-tests revealed that there were no significant differences between the TD-M and TD-B or between the DS-M and DS-B groups. However, the DS-M group performed more poorly than the TD-M group with a large effect size. Analyses at the individual level revealed a similar pattern of results. There was evidence that Down syndrome impacted performance; there was no evidence that bilingualism negatively affected the syntactic bootstrapping skills of individuals with DS. These results from a dynamic language task are consistent with those of previous studies that used static or product measures. Thus, the results are consistent with the position that parents should be supported in their decision to provide bilingual input to their children with DS. Readers of this article will identify (1) research evidence regarding bilingual development in children with Down syndrome and (2) syntactic bootstrapping skills in monolingual and bilingual children who are typically developing or who have Down syndrome. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A comparative study on students' attitudes towards bilingualism

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Marina Furlan

2010-11-01

Full Text Available The aim of the research was to assess the existence of differences between attitudes towards bilingualism held by students of the Faculty of Humanities Koper and those held by students of Italian language and literacy from the Faculty of Philosophy in Split (Croatia. We investigated whether there are differences between attitudes towards bilingualism of both groups and if attitudes towards bilingualism held by students from Split are more favorable than those held by students from the Faculty of Humanities Koper. The results confirmed the first hypothesis partially, and the second one completely. 11 items out of 20 have shown to conduct to statistically different attitudes, whereas in one case a tendency towards statistically significant difference is to be found. In all cases, where statistically significant differences are to be found, attitudes held by students from Split are more positive, if compared to those held by students from Koper.

The perception and expression of verb morphology in bilinguals with specific language impairment

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Hourieh Ahadi

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Background and Aim: Most of the researches are about bilingual children with specific language impairment and importance of it in recognition and treatment. This study aimed to assess verb morphology in bilinguals with specific language impairment (SLI and compare them with normal bilinguals.Methods: Six bilingual (Azeri and Persian children with specific language impairment at the age of 7-8 years were collected from clinics of Tehran, Iran. They were evaluated about verb morphology using narrative speech and specific language impairment test and then, compared with six age-matched and six other language-matched children as control group. Children with specific language impairment were diagnosed by exhibiting a significant delay (more than one year in language that can not be explained by intelligence deficits, hearing loss or visual impairment. We used Man-Whitney test for comparing the groups.Results: Bilingual children with specific language impairment had delay in comparison with their age-matched group in subject-verb agreement (p=0.020 and articulating tense morphemes (p=0.019. They also had meaningful delay in using proper tense of verbs (past, present, and future in comparison with language-matched control group (p=0.029.Conclusion: Comparison of typical development of bilingual children and bilinguals with specific language impairment shows that verb morphology is a good clinical marker for diagnosing and treatment of these children.

Bilingual children referred for psychiatric services: associations of language disorders, language skills, and psychopathology.

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Toppelberg, Claudio O; Medrano, Laura; Peña Morgens, Liana; Nieto-Castañon, Alfonso

2002-06-01

To investigate (1) the prevalence of language deficits and disorders and (2) the relationship of bilingual language skills and psychopathology, in Spanish-English bilingual children referred for child and adolescent psychiatry services. Bilingual language skills, emotional/behavioral problems, sociodemographics, immigration variables, and nonverbal IQ were studied in 50 consecutively referred children. Estimated prevalence was high for language deficits (48%) and disorders (41%), with most cases (>79%) being of the mixed receptive-expressive type. In children with clinically significant emotional/behavioral problems, bilingual language skills were strongly and inversely correlated with problem scores, particularly global problems (r = -0.67, p or = -0.54; p language disorders and delays and (2) the close tie between poor language skills and emotional/behavioral problems. The data strongly suggest the clinical importance and feasibility of language assessment and the significance of receptive problems in bilingual children referred for psychiatric services. A safe approach is to fully assess language skills, rather than misattributing these children's language delays to normal bilingual acquisition processes.

Bilingualism increases neural response consistency and attentional control: evidence for sensory and cognitive coupling.

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Krizman, Jennifer; Skoe, Erika; Marian, Viorica; Kraus, Nina

2014-01-01

Auditory processing is presumed to be influenced by cognitive processes - including attentional control - in a top-down manner. In bilinguals, activation of both languages during daily communication hones inhibitory skills, which subsequently bolster attentional control. We hypothesize that the heightened attentional demands of bilingual communication strengthens connections between cognitive (i.e., attentional control) and auditory processing, leading to greater across-trial consistency in the auditory evoked response (i.e., neural consistency) in bilinguals. To assess this, we collected passively-elicited auditory evoked responses to the syllable [da] in adolescent Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals and separately obtained measures of attentional control and language ability. Bilinguals demonstrated enhanced attentional control and more consistent brainstem and cortical responses. In bilinguals, but not monolinguals, brainstem consistency tracked with language proficiency and attentional control. We interpret these enhancements in neural consistency as the outcome of strengthened attentional control that emerged from experience communicating in two languages. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cross-Cultural Transfer in Gesture Frequency in Chinese-English Bilinguals

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So, Wing Chee

2010-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to examine cross-cultural differences in gesture frequency and the extent to which exposure to two cultures would affect the gesture frequency of bilinguals when speaking in both languages. The Chinese-speaking monolinguals from China, English-speaking monolinguals from America, and Chinese-English bilinguals from…

Teacher Beliefs regarding Bilingualism in an English Medium Reading Program

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Vaish, Viniti

2012-01-01

Reading classes in schools where English is the medium of instruction are increasingly servicing a linguistically diverse population; however, teacher-training for English teachers lacks a focus on bilingualism. Using the context of Singapore, this paper analyses beliefs on bilingualism of English teachers in an early intervention reading program.…

Emergent Bilingualism and Working Memory Development in School Aged Children

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Hansen, Laura Birke; Macizo, Pedro; Duñabeitia, Jon Andoni; Saldaña, David; Carreiras, Manuel; Fuentes, Luis J.; Bajo, M. Teresa

2016-01-01

The present research explores working memory (WM) development in monolingual as well as emergent bilingual children immersed in an L2 at school. Evidence from recent years suggests that bilingualism may boost domain-general executive control, but impair nonexecutive linguistic processing. Both are relevant for verbal WM, but different paradigms…

Challenging the Dominant Narrative: Critical Bilingual Leadership ("Liderazgo") for Emergent Bilingual Latin@ Students

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Wiemelt, Joseph; Welton, Anjale

2015-01-01

The growing "Latinization" of the United States is drastically changing the demographics of the students served in PK-12 public schools (Irizarry, 2011). To understand how educational leaders can best serve this changing student population, we used Critical Bilingual leadership, "Liderazgo," to interrogate the aim to create a…

Bilingual processing strategies in a university level immersion program Bilingual processing strategies in a university level immersion program

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Andrew D. Cohen

2008-04-01

Full Text Available It is likely that for some people, if not many, the use of one language or another for thinking while performing language tasks is not viewed by them as a matter of strategy selection or of strategizing. Rather, it is seen as a given. The fact is that for bilinguals and multilinguals — especially for those with at least minimal control of a second or third language, there is an element of choice involved in arriving at the language(s used to perform cognitive operations (Cook, 1994; Cohen, 1995. Furthermore, the very choice of language of thought may have significant implications for ultimate success at learning and using the target language in a given situation. Methods of second language teaching and learning are often predicated on the principle that learners need to think as much as possible in a language that they wish to learn. The intuitively-based assumption has been that the more thinking through the target language the better. It is likely that for some people, if not many, the use of one language or another for thinking while performing language tasks is not viewed by them as a matter of strategy selection or of strategizing. Rather, it is seen as a given. The fact is that for bilinguals and multilinguals — especially for those with at least minimal control of a second or third language, there is an element of choice involved in arriving at the language(s used to perform cognitive operations (Cook, 1994; Cohen, 1995. Furthermore, the very choice of language of thought may have significant implications for ultimate success at learning and using the target language in a given situation. Methods of second language teaching and learning are often predicated on the principle that learners need to think as much as possible in a language that they wish to learn. The intuitively-based assumption has been that the more thinking through the target language the better.