Monolingual? Bilingual?
I read an article titled Bilingual People Have Improved Attention Control at nerosciencenews.com about researchers from the University of Birmingham that found "an enhanced ability to maintain attention and focus" in individuals that are bilingual (Zhou, 2016). Reading this article was a painful reminder of why all of my staff calls me pequeño jefe.
All of my employees at work are 100% bilingual, while I am 100% monolingual. Of course, they have taught me the things not to say in public and some slang that will most likely get me kneecapped in certain company but, that only makes me foul and possibly in danger, not bilingual. In one of my psychology courses, we learned that bilinguals have an advantage over monolingual individuals.
Bilinguals, who are completely fluent in both languages, “consistently outperform their monolingual counterparts on tasks involving executive control” (Bialystok, 2011). A bilingual for the purpose of this blog entry means a person who speaks two languages fluently and speaks both of them regularly. A monolingual is a person that speaks only one language. Executive control is a domain general ability, which is used by various cognitive processes, which shows up in the frontal lobe, and are higher level cognition control such as attention and working memory.
Current research has shown that bilingual individuals can have an advantage over monolinguals in various areas. De Groot (2011) found that bilingual children perform better on cognitive tasks than monolingual children. It has also been found that bilinguals perform better on the Stroop Test, "a task that requires people to emphasize an items color and ignore it's meaning" in a study conducted by Bialystok (2009) (pg. 358). One most notable advantage of being bilingual is that " bilingual adults who have dementia typically develop signs of dementia later than monolingual adults with dementia (Bialystok, 2009; Bialystok et al., 2007)" (pg. 359). The belief is that bilinguals have two full vocabularies at the ready and when using one, they are constantly having to suppress the other one, therefore their executive control is greater. Miyake et al. (2000) found that the executive control system has three core components which are inhibition, updating, and shifting. When a bilingual is speaking one language, they are having to use these attention orientated abilities consistently to use and decided not to use one language or another.
There are some slight disadvantages to being bilingual such as possibly having a smaller vocabulary (Bialystok, 2009; Bialystok et al., 2010). Bilinguals may process language slower than monolinguals, and they may alter how they pronounce some speech sounds in both languages (Gollan et al., 2005).
Upon relaying this information to my staff they agreed, that yes, they were all smarter than me. Thus they began to call me pequeño jefe. In hindsight, this may have been information better left at school. :(
All of my employees at work are 100% bilingual, while I am 100% monolingual. Of course, they have taught me the things not to say in public and some slang that will most likely get me kneecapped in certain company but, that only makes me foul and possibly in danger, not bilingual. In one of my psychology courses, we learned that bilinguals have an advantage over monolingual individuals.
Bilinguals, who are completely fluent in both languages, “consistently outperform their monolingual counterparts on tasks involving executive control” (Bialystok, 2011). A bilingual for the purpose of this blog entry means a person who speaks two languages fluently and speaks both of them regularly. A monolingual is a person that speaks only one language. Executive control is a domain general ability, which is used by various cognitive processes, which shows up in the frontal lobe, and are higher level cognition control such as attention and working memory.
Current research has shown that bilingual individuals can have an advantage over monolinguals in various areas. De Groot (2011) found that bilingual children perform better on cognitive tasks than monolingual children. It has also been found that bilinguals perform better on the Stroop Test, "a task that requires people to emphasize an items color and ignore it's meaning" in a study conducted by Bialystok (2009) (pg. 358). One most notable advantage of being bilingual is that " bilingual adults who have dementia typically develop signs of dementia later than monolingual adults with dementia (Bialystok, 2009; Bialystok et al., 2007)" (pg. 359). The belief is that bilinguals have two full vocabularies at the ready and when using one, they are constantly having to suppress the other one, therefore their executive control is greater. Miyake et al. (2000) found that the executive control system has three core components which are inhibition, updating, and shifting. When a bilingual is speaking one language, they are having to use these attention orientated abilities consistently to use and decided not to use one language or another.
There are some slight disadvantages to being bilingual such as possibly having a smaller vocabulary (Bialystok, 2009; Bialystok et al., 2010). Bilinguals may process language slower than monolinguals, and they may alter how they pronounce some speech sounds in both languages (Gollan et al., 2005).
Upon relaying this information to my staff they agreed, that yes, they were all smarter than me. Thus they began to call me pequeño jefe. In hindsight, this may have been information better left at school. :(
References:
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., Green, D. W., & Gollan, T. H. (2009). Bilingual minds. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 10, 89 –129. doi:10.1177/1529100610387084
Bialystok, E., Luk, G., Peets, K. F., & Yang, S. (2011). Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, 525–531. doi:10.1017/S1366728909990423
Bialystok, E. (2010). Global-local and trail-making tasks by monolingual and bilingual children: Beyond inhibition. Developmental Psychology, 46, 93–105. doi:10.1037/a0015466
De Groot, A.M.B. (2011). Language and Cognition in bilinguals and multilinguals: An Introductions. New York: Psychology Press.
Emmorey, K., Borinstein, H. B., Thompson, R., & Gollan, T. H. (2008a). Bimodal bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11, 43–61.doi:10.1017/ S1366728907003203
Miyake, A. and Shah, P. (2000), Models of working memory: Mechanisms of active maintenance and executive control (pp. 442–481). New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Zhou, Beinan and Krott, Andrea. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. doi:10.1017/S1366728916000869. neurosciencenews.com/bilingual-attention-control-5007/ (accessed September 10, 2016).
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