Bilingualism and bilingual education Dra.

Irasema Mora Pablo ®

BILINGUALISM, COGNITION AND THE BRAIN

1. How does the author define cognition?

Cognition is defined as the internal processing involved in language, memory,

perception, and thought.

2. What are the problems with testing cognitive abilities in bilinguals? How do they relate with
“intelligence”?

The problem is that through testing, monolinguals were superior to bilinguals on

mental tests.

Bilinguals were behind monolinguals; disadvantage in thinking, difference in mental

ability

3. What factors can affect the results of these tests?

Defining and measuring intelligence

Language of testing
Analysis
Classification
Generalizability
Context
Matched groups

4. What are the main characteristics of the “period of neutral effects”?

 Bilingualism and bilingual education Dra. Irasema Mora Pablo ®

It highlights the inadequecies of the early detrimental effect research.

Zero correlation between two languages (bilinguals and monolinguals).

Bilingualism is not a source of intellectual disadvantage.

5. Why is Peal and Lambert’s study (1962) important for the period of additive effects? What are
some weaknesses in their methodology?

1) The research overcame methodological deficiencies from the detrimental effects.

2) It found that bilingualism leads to cognitive advantages over monolingualism.
3) It took a broader look at cognition e.g. thinking styles and strategies.

1) The 110 children aged 10 from montreal cannot be generalized.

2) Children in the bilingual group were “balanced bilinguals”.
3) The chicken and the egg problem (is it bilngualism that enhances IQ or the other way
around)
4) Socioeconomic status (sociocultural factors).

6. Explain the “separate storage hypothesis” and the “shared storage hypothesis”.

Separate storage hypothesis = bilinguals have two independent language storage and
retrival systems with one channel of communication.

Shared storage hypothesis = two languages are kept in a single memory store with two
different input and two different output channels.

7. How can we research how multiple languages are represented and organized in the brain?
Give examples.

Through neuroimaging e.g., event related brain potentials (ERP) to know when things
are happening in the brain during a stimulus; positron emition tomography (PET),
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to know where things are happening in
the brain by measuring changes in blood flow.

8. What is divergent thinking?

It means being creative, imaginative, elastic, open-ended, and free thinking, providing a
variety of answers

9. How has the research between bilingualism and metalinguistic awareness changed over the
last years?
 Bilingualism and bilingual education Dra. Irasema Mora Pablo ®

The recnt trend has been to look at the process of thinking rather than the products of
thinking focusing on nonverbal executive functioning(internal processes in the brain;
inhibition, updating, shifting) and metalinguistic awareness (thinking about and
reflecting upon the nature and fucntion of language; collection of abilities).

10. What is communicative sensitivity?

Awareness/appropriateness of social nature and communicative functions of language

(it considers gender, age, and race). Which language to speak in which situation
(through cues and clues).

11. Do different languages, or combinations of languages, influence the thinking of an individual?

Explain.

The Whorf hypothesis – speakers of different languages perceive the world through the
lens of their native language.
Thinking process rather than thinking abilities (perceptual and conceptual domains).
- My brain sometimes wants to gender objects in english -

12. What did you learn about bilingualism and the brain after reading this chapter?