BACKGROUND Bilingualism may contribute to cognitive reserve, protect against cognitive decline, and delay the onset of dementia. OBJECTIVE We systematically reviewed evidence about the effect of bilingualism on subsequent cognitive decline or dementia. METHODS We searched electronic databases and references for longitudinal studies comparing cognitive decline in people who were bilingual wi...

Recent studies suggest that learning and using a second language (L2) can affect brain structure, including the structure of white matter (WM) tracts. This observation comes from research looking at early and older bilingual individuals who have been using both their first and second languages on an everyday basis for many years. This study investigated whether young, highly immersed late bilin...

This study explores the effects of bilingualism in Sardinian as a regional minority language on the linguistic competence in Italian as the dominant language and on non-linguistic cognitive abilities. Sardinian/Italian adult speakers and monolingual Italian speakers living in the same geographical area of Sardinia were compared in two kinds of tasks: (a) verbal and non-verbal cognitive tasks ta...

The problem of researching the relation between bilingualism and cognitive development at once raises two thorny definitional issues. What do we mean by bilingualism, and what is it that develops in cognitive development? Much of the confusion in this area can be attributed to the lack of theoretical specificity in defining the intersection point of these component concepts. Our primary emphasi...

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-speaki...

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 bili...

the use of l1 in language classroom has been traditionally repressed by applied linguists. however, in recent years, it is believed that switching to l1 can be considered a pedagogical instrument by teachers rather than a heterodox. consequently, this two-phase study was an attempt to investigate the functions that are fulfilled by efl teachers through their use of l1. in the first phase (i.e.,...

In this talk I am concerned with the following questions: 1. What is phonological typology? 2. How are phonological typology and phonetic typology the same/different? 3. How are phonological typology and general phonology the same/different? 4. How are phonological typology and general typology the same/different? Despite earlier work by Trubetzkoy, Jakobson, Martinet, Greenberg and others, and...

Researchers have suggested that being bilingual may increase the likelihood of development of stuttering. This suggestion was recently discounted by the data that indicate bilingual children who do not stutter produce an atypically high number of speech disfluencies. Thus, bilingual children are not at increased risk for development of stuttering, but they do appear to be at increased risk for ...