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Languages
› American Sign Language (ASL) Major
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Bilingual studies
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Bilingualism in the family
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Very prevalent in today’s society
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Context: Functional Neuroplasticity
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Negative or Positive?
› Peal and Lambert study
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Two major trends in recent studies
› Verbal skills
› Word retrieval tasks
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BUT, better executive control
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Two independent language systems?
› Maybe not
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How do we know that there aren’t two
independent language systems?
› Cross language priming and lexical decision
studies
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Consequences for Joint Activation
› competition
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Two types
› Global
› Local
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Shows reduced speed and fluency of
lexical access
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Enhanced attentional control?
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Performance on Conflict Tasks
› Children vs. Young Adults vs. Older Adults
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Neural Correlates
› Method: fMRI (reliable?)
› Two primary areas:
 Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
 Broca’s area
› Basic Idea
Shows frontal regions activated
 Structure/function differences
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Only a few studies
› Color-shape switching task
 Monolinguals vs. Bilinguals
 Right IFG vs. left IFG
› Luk study
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Any definitive conclusions?
› Some studies about white and grey matter
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Seems to produce enhanced frontalposterior attentional control mechanisms
› How do we know?
 Maybe babies can shed some light on this
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If not inhibition control, then what?
› Maybe a combination of things
Based on idea of enhanced cognitive
control, could postpone onset of
dementia symptoms
 Cognitive reserve
 Three questions:
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› Reliability
› Validity
› Casuality
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Peal and Lambert’s idea of “mental
flexibility”
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Neuroplasticity
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BUT, what does research now have to
say about bilingual “advantages”?
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“file drawer effect”
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De Bruin study on publication bias
What is actually going on, then?
 Are there advantages?
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Are bilingual brains really any different?
 What about multilingual brains?
 What do cross-modal studies show? Are
bilingual signers different than bilingual
speakers?
 What about people that become fluent
later in life (after infancy and critical
period)? Do their brains look different?
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