The relationship between stuttering and bilingualism to functional cerebral hemispheric processing was examined using a visual hemifield paradigm. Eighty native German speakers, half of whom were also proficient speakers of English as a second language (L2), were recruited. The participants were organised into four different groups according to speech status and language ability: 20 monolingual...

During the last decade, much attention has been paid to language competition in the complex systems community, that is, how the fractions of speakers of several competing languages evolve in time. In this paper we review recent advances in this direction and focus on three aspects. First we consider the shift from two-state models to three state models that include the possibility of bilingual ...

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 reserv...

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 lan...

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...

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...

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...

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...