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...

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 meas...

This paper focuses on the relationships between bilingualism, intelligence quotient (IQ) and errors made by learners in their attempt to master the rules of the target language(s). The first part of the paper explains the true nature of bilingualism contrarily to the controversial and stereotyped definitions found in the previous literature of the 1950’s: the author refers to Weinreich’s and Su...

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...

Bilingualism: Language and Cognition / Volume 16 / Special Issue 02 / April 2013, pp 304 324 DOI: 10.1017/S1366728912000466, Published online: 06 September 2012 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1366728912000466 How to cite this article: ANTHONY SHOOK and VIORICA MARIAN (2013). The Bilingual Language Interaction Network for Comprehension of Speech. Bilingualism: Lang...

The concept of bilingualism as applied to individual children and to educational programs is discussed, and the history of research on bilingual children and bilingual education programs in the United States is reviewed. Bilingualism has been defined predominantly in linguistic dimensions despite the fact that bilingualism is correlated with a number of nonlinguistic social parameters. The ling...

Okanda, et al. (2010) reported new evidence concerning associations between language ability, bilingualism, and executive functioning early in development. The paper adds to a growing body of literature suggesting that bilingualism is associated with advantages in executive functioning generally, and the Dimensional Change Card Sort task in particular. However, as with all findings that hinge o...

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...

Bilingualism means more than speaking two languages, it also has cognitive consequences. Recently, the question whether or not bilingualism affects cognitive control abilities has raised fierce debates. In this thesis, the effect of bilingualism on executive control was tested in different domains. First, bilingual speakers showed enhanced attentional control abilities while performing non-verb...

Studies using artificial language streams indicate that infants and adults can use statistics to correctly segment words. However, most studies have utilized only a single input language. Given the prevalence of bilingualism, how is multiple language input segmented? One particular problem may occur if learners combine input across languages: the statistics of particular units that overlap diff...