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In individuals who know more than one language, the languages are always active to some degree. This has consequences for language processing, but bilinguals rarely make mistakes in language selection. A prevailing explanation is that bilingualism is supported by strong cognitive control abilities, developed through long-term practice with managing multiple languages and spilling over into more general executive functions. However, not all bilinguals are the same, and not all contexts for bilingualism provide the same support for control and regulation abilities. This paper reviews research on hearing sign–speech bimodal bilinguals who have a unique ability to use and comprehend their two languages at the same time. We discuss the role of this research in re-examining the role of cognitive control in bilingual language regulation, focusing on how results from bimodal bilingualism research relate to recent findings emphasizing the correlation of control abilities with a bilingual’s contexts of language use. Most bimodal bilingualism research has involved individuals in highly English-dominant language contexts. We offer a critical examination of how existing bimodal bilingualism findings have been interpreted, discuss the value of broadening the scope of this research and identify long-standing questions about bilingualism and L2 learning which might benefit from this perspective.
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Moving From Bilingual Traits to States: Understanding Cognition and Language Processing Through Moment-to-Moment Variation
Abstract The study of how bilingualism is linked to cognitive processing, including executive functioning, has historically focused on comparing bilinguals to monolinguals across a range of tasks. These group comparisons presume to capture relatively stable cognitive traits and have revealed important insights about the architecture of the language processing system that could not have been gleaned from studying monolinguals alone. However, there are drawbacks to using a group-comparison, or Traits, approach. In this theoretical review, we outline some limitations of treating executive functions as stable traits and of treating bilinguals as a uniform group when compared to monolinguals. To build on what we have learned from group comparisons, we advocate for an emerging complementary approach to the question of cognition and bilingualism. Using an approach that compares bilinguals to themselves under different linguistic or cognitive contexts allows researchers to ask questions about how language and cognitive processes interact based on dynamically fluctuating cognitive and neural states. A States approach, which has already been used by bilingualism researchers, allows for cause-and-effect hypotheses and shifts our focus from questions of group differences to questions of how varied linguistic environments influence cognitive operations in the moment and how fluctuations in cognitive engagement impact language processing.
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- PAR ID:
- 10307148
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1162
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Neurobiology of Language
- Volume:
- 2
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 2641-4368
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 487-512
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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