1. Bilingualism: Consequences for Mind & Brain
Limei Zhang & Liyu Cai

2. ADVANTAGES Of
Bilingualism ?

3. ? Bilingualism Dementia

4. Examine effects of Bilingualism on cognition in adulthood;
Review recent studies:
Examine effects of Bilingualism on cognition in adulthood;
Explore possible mechanism for these effects
Methods:
Behavioral
Neuro-imaging

5. What is Different
about
Bilingual Minds ?

6. Bilingual Children Symbol manipulation Reorganization
Difference between form &meaning
Ignore misleading information

7. Adult Bilinguals ?

8. Verbal Skills Executive Control
Receptive vocabulary size
Picture-naming tasks
Comprehending &producing words
Verbal fluency tasks
High-level thought
Multi-tasking
Sustained attention

9. How do Bilinguals process languages ?

10. Joint Activation

11. Evidence of Joint Activation
Cross-language priming
Lexical decision
Patient studies
Imaging studies …

12. How is Executive Control
Executed ?

13. Inhibition Local Inhibition Linguistic Performance
Global Inhibition Linguistic Performance
Cognitive Performance

14. Consequences of Joint Activation
reduced speed of lexical access Linguistic outcome
a role for activation
Cognitive outcome enhanced attentional control

15. Conflict Tasks Measure of Attentional Control Flanker Task Simon Task
Stroop Task

16. Red

17. Red

18. Green

19. Purple

20. Evidence from Neural-Imaging

21. fMRI Blood-oxygen-level dependent signal
(Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging)
Blood-oxygen-level dependent signal

23. Brain Plasticity
Grey Matter
White Matter

24. Nature of Bilingual Advantages
Evidences and counter-evidences

25. Evidences
☼Evidence 1(empirical) to manage two jointly activated languages Better control of attention ☼Evidence 2 other enhanced cognitive controls, such as LANGUAGE INHIBITION & CONFLICT MONITORING 1. older bilinguals outperform monolinguals in pure blocks of incongruent trials 2. Bilinguals outperform monolinguals in ‘interference suppression ’task when there are bivalent stimuli(not univalent stimuli) 3. Later diagnosis of dementia, AD( due to cognitive reverse or brain reverse

26. Bialystok, Craik, and Freedman ’s study on hospital record
Discovery : With all the other factors equal or similar ,bilinguals tend to be diagnosed with dementia (AD, Alzheimer ) 3-4 years later than monolinguals, thanks to better maintenance of cognitive function in healthy aging and postponing the onset of symptoms by continually stimulating physical or mental activity.
Reliability: replicated results done by various scholars among different languages
Validity: predictors are kept being ruled out as contributing factors , i.e. education/social status/culture/immigration ,etc.
Causality: irrelevant to ‘good brain’

27. Counter-evidences
 1. ONLY proved by recurrent congruent/ incongruent trials  2. preverbal advantage of bilingual children  3. no advantage shown in low-monitoring required conditions  4. no advantage shown on ‘response inhibition’ (univalent stimuli)

28. Preverbal advantage of bilingual infants
No confusion over languages
Phonic discrimination ability
Phonic discrimination ability over Non-acoustic properties of language (renewed attention by bilingual infants of 8-month old)
Better perceptual attentiveness to won visual rewards

29. Controversy over bilingual advantage
As Cozalto and his colleagues pointed out : bilingual advantage is not due to the constant exercise of inhibition, but that learning to keep two languages separate leads to an improvement in selecting goal-relevant information from goal- irrelevant information
Bilingual advantages are not fully discovered except for monitoring or difficulties conditions
Specific task and precise language histories need to be studied

30. How bilingualism
?the possibility of a cumulative benefit for multiple languages. (multilinguals>bilinguals VS bilinguals>monolinguals)
? the degree of bilingualism required for these benefits to emerge. (no single factor decisive, i.e. Age, Fluency, Literacy, etc. )
? Whether the similarity of the two languages matter(Spanish-English VS English-Chinese)

31. Conclusion
As Peal and Lambert concluded :bilinguals have mental flexibility, meaning a superiority in concept formation and a more diversified set of mental abilities.
Bilinguals outperform in inhibition, selection, switching , sustaining attention, working memory , representation and retrieval.
Fear and anecdotes served as counter-evidence to show that bilingualism may bring in retardation, academic struggle and language confusion.
There is still much we do not know about the effect of bilingualism on the mind, the neural correlates of those effects, and the causal components of the experience that lead to them . 　ＳＯ　ＬＥＴ‘Ｓ　ＣＯＮＴＩＮＵＥ　ＯＵＲ　ＰＲＯＢＥ

32. Questions
From your own experience , did you experience TOT phenomenon in using a language while the equivalence in another language emerged? Do you think you have a good inhibition ability to control it?
Do you believe the multicompetence /bilingualism brings in retardation or personal struggle? Share your story or any anecdote.