Skip to main content

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
Cancel
×
Home
  • Home
Article
    • Aa
    • Aa
  • Cited by 248
  • Cited by
    Crossref Citations
    Crossref logo
    This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by CrossRef.
    Barbosa, Poliana G. Jiang, Zixia and Nicoladis, Elena 2017. The role of working and short-term memory in predicting receptive vocabulary in monolingual and sequential bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, p. 1.
    Yaden, David B. Marx, Ronald W. Cimetta, Adriana D. Alkhadim, Ghadah S. and Cutshaw, Christina 2017. Assessing Early Literacy With Hispanic Preschoolers: The Factor Structure of the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening—Español. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 39, Issue. 2, p. 193.
    SINGH, LEHER 2017. He said, she said: effects of bilingualism on cross-talker word recognition in infancy. Journal of Child Language, p. 1.
    Flores, Ilse Casaletto, Kaitlin B. Marquine, Maria J. Umlauf, Anya Moore, David J. Mungas, Dan Gershon, Richard C. Beaumont, Jennifer L. and Heaton, Robert K. 2017. Performance of Hispanics and Non-Hispanic Whites on the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery: the roles of ethnicity and language backgrounds. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, Vol. 31, Issue. 4, p. 783.
    YANG, HWAJIN and YANG, SUJIN 2017. Are all interferences bad? Bilingual advantages in working memory are modulated by varying demands for controlled processing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Vol. 20, Issue. 01, p. 184.
    Bosman, Anna M. T. and Janssen, Marije 2017. Differential relationships between language skills and working memory in Turkish–Dutch and native-Dutch first-graders from low-income families. Reading and Writing,
    Ratiu, Ileana Hout, Michael C. Walenchok, Stephen C. Azuma, Tamiko and Goldinger, Stephen D. 2017. Comparing visual search and eye movements in bilinguals and monolinguals. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, Vol. 79, Issue. 6, p. 1695.
    Birchenough, Julia M. H. Davies, Robert and Connelly, Vincent 2017. Rated age-of-acquisition norms for over 3,200 German words. Behavior Research Methods, Vol. 49, Issue. 2, p. 484.
    Whyatt, Bogusława 2017. Non-professional Interpreting and Translation. Vol. 129, Issue. , p. 45.
    XIE, ZHILONG and DONG, YANPING 2017. Contributions of bilingualism and public speaking training to cognitive control differences among young adults. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Vol. 20, Issue. 01, p. 55.
    KERRIGAN, LUCY THOMAS, MICHAEL S. C. BRIGHT, PETER and FILIPPI, ROBERTO 2017. Evidence of an advantage in visuo-spatial memory for bilingual compared to monolingual speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Vol. 20, Issue. 03, p. 602.
    BONIFACCI, PAOLA BARBIERI, MARGHERITA TOMASSINI, MARTA and ROCH, MAJA 2017. In few words: linguistic gap but adequate narrative structure in preschool bilingual children. Journal of Child Language, p. 1.
    Li, Le Abutalebi, Jubin Emmorey, Karen Gong, Gaolang Yan, Xin Feng, Xiaoxia Zou, Lijuan and Ding, Guosheng 2017. How bilingualism protects the brain from aging: Insights from bimodal bilinguals. Human Brain Mapping, Vol. 38, Issue. 8, p. 4109.
    Smokowski, Paul R. Bacallao, Martica and Evans, Caroline B. R. 2017. Encyclopedia of Adolescence. p. 1.
    BARBOSA, POLIANA NICOLADIS, ELENA and KEITH, MARGAUX 2017. Bilingual children's lexical strategies in a narrative task. Journal of Child Language, Vol. 44, Issue. 04, p. 829.
    KRIZMAN, JENNIFER BRADLOW, ANN R. LAM, SILVIA SIU-YIN and KRAUS, NINA 2017. How bilinguals listen in noise: linguistic and non-linguistic factors. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Vol. 20, Issue. 04, p. 834.
    Liberman, Zoe Woodward, Amanda L. Keysar, Boaz and Kinzler, Katherine D. 2017. Exposure to multiple languages enhances communication skills in infancy. Developmental Science, Vol. 20, Issue. 1, p. e12420.
    Jessner, Ulrike 2017. Language Awareness and Multilingualism. p. 19.
    Anderson, John A.E. Saleemi, Somayya and Bialystok, Ellen 2017. Neuropsychological assessments of cognitive aging in monolingual and bilingual older adults. Journal of Neurolinguistics, Vol. 43, Issue. , p. 17.
    Penn, Claire Barber, Nancy and Fridjhon, Peter 2017. Early recovery profiles of language and executive functions after left hemisphere stroke in bilingualism. Aphasiology, Vol. 31, Issue. 7, p. 741.
    Download full list
    ×
  • Get access
    Add to cart $25.00
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    Log in Register Recommend to librarian

Bilingualism: The good, the bad, and the indifferent*

  • ELLEN BIALYSTOK (a1)
Abstract

The present paper summarizes research showing that bilingualism affects linguistic and cognitive performance across the lifespan. The effect on linguistic performance is generally seen as a deficit in which bilingual children control a smaller vocabulary than their monolingual peers and bilingual adults perform more poorly on rapid lexical retrieval tasks. The effect on cognitive performance is to enhance executive functioning and to protect against the decline of executive control in aging. These effects interact to produce a complex pattern regarding the effect of bilingualism on memory performance. Memory tasks based primarily on verbal recall are performed more poorly by bilinguals but memory tasks based primarily on executive control are performed better by bilinguals. Speculations regarding the mechanism responsible for these effects are described.

Copyright
COPYRIGHT: © Cambridge University Press 2008
Corresponding author
Address for correspondence: Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canadaellenb@yorku.ca
Footnotes
Hide All
*

The research reported in this chapter was funded by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR). The paper is based on a plenary address given at the International Symposium on Bilingualism, University of Hamburg, 30 May – 2 June 2007.

Footnotes
References
Hide All
Abutalebi J. & Green D. (2007). Bilingual language production: The neurocognition of language representation and control. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 20, 242–275.
Bialystok E. (1986). Factors in the growth of linguistic awareness. Child Development, 57, 498–510.
Bialystok E. (1988). Levels of bilingualism and levels of linguistic awareness. Developmental Psychology, 24, 560–567.
Bialystok E. (1999). Cognitive complexity and attentional control in the bilingual mind. Child Development, 70, 636–644.
Bialystok E. (2006). Effect of bilingualism and computer video game experience on the Simon task. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60, 68–79.
Bialystok E., Craik F. I. M. & Freedman M. (2007). Bilingualism as a protection against the onset of symptoms of dementia. Neuropsychologia, 45, 459–464.
Bialystok E., Craik F. I. M., Grady C., Chau W., Ishii R., Gunji A. & Pantev C. (2005). Effect of bilingualism on cognitive control in the Simon task: Evidence from MEG. NeuroImage, 24, 40–49.
Bialystok E., Craik F. I. M., Klein R. & Viswanathan M. (2004). Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: Evidence from the Simon task. Psychology and Aging, 19, 290–303.
Bialystok E., Craik F. I. M. & Luk G. (2008). Cognitive control and lexical access in younger and older bilinguals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 34, 859–873.
Bialystok E. & Feng X. in press. Language proficiency and its implications for monolingual and bilingual children. In Durgunoglu A. (ed.), Challenges for language learners in language and literacy development. New York: Guilford Press.
Bialystok E. & Feng X. in preparation. Effect of variation in executive control for working memory performance in monolinguals and bilinguals. Ms., York University.
Bialystok E. & Majumder S. (1998). The relationship between bilingualism and the development of cognitive processes in problem-solving. Applied Psycholinguistics, 19, 69–85.
Bialystok E. & Martin M. M. (2004). Attention and inhibition in bilingual children: Evidence from the dimensional change card sort task. Developmental Science, 7, 325–339.
Bialystok E. & Senman L. (2004). Executive processes in appearance–reality tasks: The role of inhibition of attention and symbolic representation. Child Development, 75, 562–579.
Bialystok E. & Shapero D. (2005). Ambiguous benefits: The effect of bilingualism on reversing ambiguous figures. Developmental Science, 8, 595–604.
Carlson S. M. & Meltzoff A. N. (2008). Bilingual experience and executive functioning in young children. Developmental Science, 11, 282–298.
Chee M. W. L. (2006). Dissociating language and word meaning in the bilingual brain. Trends in Cognitive Science, 10, 527–529.
Costa A. (2005). Lexical access in bilingual production. In Kroll & de Groot (eds.), pp. 308–325.
Costa A., Hernández M. & Sebastián-Gallés N. (2008). Bilingualism aids conflict resolution: Evidence from the ANT task. Cognition, 106, 59–86.
Craik F. I. M. (1983). On the transfer of information from temporary to permanent memory. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 302, 341–359.
Craik F. I. M. & Bialystok E. (2006). Cognition through the lifespan cognition: Mechanisms of change. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 131–138.
Crinion J. T., Turner R., Grogan A., Hanakawa T., Noppeney U., Devlin J. T., Aso T., Urayama S., Fukuyama H., Stockton K., Usui K., Green D. M. & Price C. J. (2006). Language control in the bilingual brain. Science, 312, 1537–1540.
Cromdal J. (1999). Childhood bilingualism and metalinguistic skills: Analysis and control in young Swedish–English bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 20, 1–20.
Dijkstra T. (2005). Bilingual visual word recognition and lexical access. In Kroll & de Groot (eds.), pp. 179–201.
Dijkstra T., Grainger J. & van Heuven W. J. B. (1999). Recognition of cognates and interlingual homographs: The neglected role of phonology. Journal of Memory and Language, 41, 496–518.
Elbert T., Pantev C., Wienbruch C., Rockstroh B. & Taub E. (1995). Increased cortical representation of the fingers of the left hand in string players. Science, 270, 305–307.
Emmorey K., Borinstein H. B., Thompson R. & Gollan T. H. (2008). Bimodal bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11, 1–18.
Fabbro F., Skrap M. & Aglioti S. (2000). Pathological switching between languages after frontal lesions in a bilingual patient. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 68, 650–652.
Fan J., McCandliss B. D., Sommer T., Raz A. & Posner M. I. (2002). Testing the efficiency and independence of attentional networks. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 340–347.
Feng J., Spence I. & Pratt J. (2007). Playing an action game reduces gender differences in spatial cognition. Psychological Science, 18, 850–855.
Feng X., Diamond A. & Bialystok E. (2007). Manipulating information in working memory: An advantage for bilinguals. Poster presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Boston, MA.
Fernandes M. A., Craik F. I. M., Bialystok E. & Kreuger S. (2007). Effects of bilingualism, aging, and semantic relatedness on memory under divided attention. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61, 128–141.
Folstein M. F., Folstein S. E. & McHugh P. R. (1975). “Mini-mental state”: A practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 12, 189–198.
Fratiglioni L., Paillard-Borg S. & Winblad B. (2004). An active and socially-integrated lifestyle in late life might protect against dementia. Lancet Neurology, 3, 343–353.
Goetz P. (2003). The effects of bilingualism on theory of mind development. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6, 1–15.
Gollan T. H. & Acenas L.-A. R. (2004). What is a TOT? Cognate and translation effects on tip-of-the-tongue states in Spanish–English and Tagalog–English bilinguals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 246–269.
Gollan T. H., Fennema-Notestine C., Montoya R. I. & Jernigan T. L. (2007). The bilingual effect on Boston Naming Test performance. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 13, 197–208.
Gollan T. H., Montoya R. I., Fennema-Notestine C. & Morris S. K. (2005). Bilingualism affects picture naming but not picture classification. Memory & Cognition, 33, 1220–1234.
Gollan T. H., Montoya R. I., Cera C. & Sandoval T. C. (2008). More use almost always means a smaller frequency effect: Aging, bilingualism, and the weaker links hypothesis. Journal of Memory and Language, 58, 787–814.
Gollan T. H., Montoya R. I. & Werner G. (2002). Semantic and letter fluency in Spanish–English bilinguals. Neuropsychology, 16, 562–576.
Green C. S. & Bavelier D. (2003). Action video game modifies visual selective attention. Nature, 423, 534–537.
Green D. W. (1998). Mental control of the bilingual lexico–semantic system. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1, 67–81.
Green D. W., Crinion J. & Price C. J. (2007). Exploring cross-linguistic vocabulary effects on brain structures using voxel-based morphometry. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 189–199.
Hernandez A. E., Bates E. & Avila L. X. (1996). Processing across the language boundary: A cross-modal priming study of Spanish–English bilinguals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22, 846–864.
Hernandez A. E., Dapretto M., Mazziotta J. & Bookheimer S. (2001). Language switching and language representation in Spanish–English bilinguals: An fMRI study. NeuroImage, 14, 510–520.
Hernandez A. E. & Li P. (2007). Age of acquisition: Its neural and computational mechanisms. Psychological Bulletin, 133, 638–650.
Kaplan E. F., Goodglass H. & Weintraub S. (1983). Boston Naming Test. Philadelphia, PA: Lea & Febiger.
Kaushanskaya M. & Marian V. (2007). Bilingual language processing and interference in bilinguals: Evidence from eye tracking and picture naming. Language Learning, 57, 119–163.
Kramer A. F., Bherer L., Colcombe S. J., Dong W. & Greenough W. T. (2004). Environmental influences on cognitive and brain plasticity during aging. Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 59, 940–957.
Kroll J. F., Bobb S. C. & Wodniecka Z. (2006). Language selectivity is the exception, not the rule: Arguments against a fixed locus of language selection in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9, 119–135.
Kroll J. R. & de Groot A. M. B. (eds.) (2005). Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.
Lu C.-H. & Proctor R. W. (1995). The influence of irrelevant location information on performance: A review of the Simon and spatial Stroop effects. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 2, 174–207.
Luk G., Pyers J., Emmorey K. & Bialystok E. (2007). The source of enhanced cognitive control in bilinguals: Evidence from bimodal bilinguals. Poster presented at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Long Beach, CA.
Maguire E. A., Gadian D. G., Johnsrude I. S., Good C. D., Ashburner J., Frackowiak R. S. & Frith C. D. (2000). Navigation-related structural changes in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of America, 97, 4398–4403.
Mahon M. & Crutchley A. (2006). Performance of typically-developing school-age children with English as an additional language (EAL) on the British Picture Vocabulary Scales II (BPVS II). Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 22, 333–353.
Marian V., Spivey M. & Hirsch J. (2003). Shared and separate systems in bilingual language processing: Converging evidence from eyetracking and brain imaging. Brain and Language, 86, 70–82.
Martin-Rhee M. M. & Bialystok E. (2008). The development of two types of inhibitory control in monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11, 1–13.
Mechelli A., Crinion J. T., Noppeney U., O'Doherty J., Ashburner J., Frackowiak R. S. & Price C. J. (2004). Structural plasticity in the bilingual brain. Nature, 431, 757.
Michael E. B. & Gollan T. H. (2005). Being and becoming bilingual: Individual differences and consequences for language production. In Kroll & de Groot (eds.), pp. 389–407.
Milner B. (1971). Interhemispheric differences in the localization of psychological processes in man. British Medical Bulletin, 27, 272–277.
Miyake A., Friedman N. P., Emerson M. J., Witzki A. H. & Howerter A. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 49–100.
Oller D. K. & Eilers R. E. (eds.) (2002). Language and literacy in bilingual children. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Perani D., Abutalebi J., Paulesu E., Brambati S., Scifo P., Cappa S. F. & Fazio F. (2003). The role of age of acquisition and language usage in early, high-proficient bilinguals: An fMRI study during verbal fluency. Human Brain Mapping, 19, 170–182.
Petrides M. & Milner B. (1982). Deficits on subject-ordered tasks after frontal- and temporal-lobe lesions in man. Neuropsychologia, 20, 249–262.
Polk T. A. & Farah M. J. (1998). The neural development and organization of letter recognition: Evidence from functional neuroimaging, computational modelling, and behavioural studies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95, 847–852.
Portocarrero J. S., Burright R. G. & Donovick P. J. (2007). Vocabulary and verbal fluency of bilingual and monolingual college students. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 22, 415–422.
Price C. J., Green D. W. & von Studnitz R. (1999). A functional imaging study of translation and language switching. Brain, 122, 2221–2235.
Ransdell S. E. & Fischler I. (1987). Memory in a monolingual mode: When are bilinguals at a disadvantage? Journal of Memory & Language, 26, 392–405.
Roberts P. M., Garcia L. J., Desrochers A., Hernandez D. (2002). English performance of proficient bilingual adults on the Boston Naming Test. Aphasiology, 16, 635–645.
Rodriguez-Fornells A., Van Der Lugt A., Rotte M., Britti B., Heinze H.-J. & Munte T. F. (2005). Second language interferes with word production in fluent bilinguals: Brain potential and functional imaging evidence. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 422–433.
Rogers C. L., Lister J. J., Febo D. M., Besing J. M. & Abrams H. B. (2006). Effects of bilingualism, noise, and reverberation on speech perception by listeners with normal hearing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 465–485.
Rosselli M., Ardila A., Araujo K., Weekes V. A., Caracciolo V., Padilla M. & Ostrosky-Solis, F. (2000). Verbal fluency and verbal repetition skills in healthy older Spanish–English bilinguals. Applied Neuropsychology, 7, 17–24.
Salthouse T. A. & Mitchell D. R. D. (1990). Effects of age and naturally occurring experience on spatial visualization performance. Developmental Psychology, 26, 845–854.
Staff R. T., Murray A. D., Deary I. J. & Whalley L. J. (2004). What provides cerebral reserve? Brain, 27, 1191–1199.
Stern Y. (2002). What is cognitive reserve? Theory and research application of the reserve concept. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 8, 448–460.
Stern Y., Habeck C., Moeller J., Scarmeas N., Anderson K. N., Hilton H. J., Flynn J., Sackeim H. & van Heertum, R. (2005). Brain networks associated with cognitive reserve in healthy young and old adults. Cerebral Cortex, 15, 394–402.
Sumiya H. & Healy A. F. (2004). Phonology in the bilingual Stroop effect. Memory & Cognition, 32, 752–758.
Valenzuela M. J. & Sachdev P. (2006). Brain reserve and dementia: A systematic review. Psychological Medicine, 36, 441–454.
Zelazo P. D., Frye D. & Rapus T. (1996). An age-related dissociation between knowing rules and using them. Cognitive Development, 11, 37–63.
Recommend this journal

Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this journal to your organisation's collection.

Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
  • ISSN: 1366-7289
  • EISSN: 1469-1841
  • URL: /core/journals/bilingualism-language-and-cognition
Please enter your name
Please enter a valid email address
Who would you like to send this to? *

CAPTCHA *

Skip to the audio challenge
×

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 384
Total number of PDF views: 3597 *
Loading metrics...

Abstract views

Total abstract views: 6097 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between September 2016 - 19th October 2017. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Cancel
Confirm
×