Metalinguistic aspects of bilingual processing

2001 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 169-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Bialystok
Keyword(s):  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Syntactic Awareness ◽  
Alternate Conception ◽  
Bilingual Processing ◽  
And Control ◽  
Metalinguistic Ability

This chapter examines differences in metalinguistic development between monolingual and bilingual children in terms of three subcategories: word awareness, syntactic awareness, and phonological awareness. In each case, some studies have reported advantages for bilingual children, but equally, other studies have found either no difference between the groups, or, in some cases, monolingual advantages. In the discussion of each of these areas, the kinds of tasks for which bilingual and monolingual children perform differently are identified. In none of these three subcategories of metalinguistic awareness do bilingual children exhibit a uniform and consistent advantage over monolinguals. An alternate conception of metalinguistic ability is proposed in which two cognitive processes, analysis and control, are directly responsible for task performance. These processes are involved in all metalinguistic tasks but to different degrees. Re-examining the results in this way reveals that bilingual advantages occur reliably on tasks that make high demands on control but are not evident in tasks that make high demands on analysis. The implications of this pattern for metalinguistic ability are considered.

Metalinguistic contribution to reading comprehension: A comparison of Primary 3 students from China and Singapore

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 657-684
Author(s):  
Sun Baoqi ◽  
Guangwei Hu ◽  
Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Morphological Awareness ◽  
Home Language ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Regression Analyses ◽  
Syntactic Awareness

AbstractThis study examined the within- and cross-language metalinguistic contribution of three components of metalinguistic awareness (i.e., phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and syntactic awareness) to reading comprehension in monolingual Chinese-speaking children from Mainland China (n = 190) and English–Chinese bilingual children from Singapore (n = 390). Moreover, the effect of home language use on the relationship between metalinguistic awareness and reading performance was investigated. For monolingual children, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that after partialing out the effects of age, nonverbal intelligence, and oral vocabulary, syntactic awareness uniquely predicted 7%–13% of the variance in reading comprehension measures, whereas this relationship was not observed between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. For the bilingual children, within-language regression analyses revealed that English/Chinese morphological awareness and syntactic awareness both contributed significantly to English/Chinese reading measures over and above vocabulary and phonological awareness. Cross-linguistically, structure equation modeling results demonstrated that the bilingual children’s English and Chinese metalinguistic awareness were closely related and jointly supported reading comprehension in both languages, thus lending support to Koda’s transfer facilitation model. Furthermore, home language use was found to contribute to the bilingual children’s reading proficiency via its impact on metalinguistic awareness. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy and pedagogical implications that can be drawn from these findings.

Influences of bilingualism on metalinguistic development

1987 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Bialystok
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Components Analysis ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Metalinguistic Ability

The relationship between metalinguistic awareness and bilingualism is interpreted in terms of a framework which defines metalinguistic awareness as consisting of two processing components: analysis of linguistic knowledge, and control of linguistic processes. It is argued that bilingualism enhances only the latter of these processing components, so global assessments of metalinguistic ability by bilingual subjects are bound to lead to inconsistent results. Some studies are reported in which these two processing components are separated. Bilingual children are shown to be superior to monolingual children on measures of control of linguistic processes.

Early emergence of syntactic awareness and cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children’s judgments

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra Foursha-Stevenson ◽  
Elena Nicoladis
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Preschool Age ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Syntactic Awareness ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
French And English ◽  
Better Than

Bilingual children sometimes perform better than same-aged monolingual children on metalinguistic awareness tasks, such as a grammaticality judgment. Some of these differences can be attributed to bilinguals having to learn to control attention to language choice. This study tested the hypothesis that bilingual children, as young as preschool age, would score overall higher than monolingual children on a grammaticality judgment test. French–English bilingual preschoolers judged the acceptability of three constructions in French and English (i.e. adjective–noun ordering, obligatoriness of a determiner, and object pronoun placement). Their performance was compared with that of a group of age-matched English monolinguals. The results showed that the bilingual children scored higher than the monolingual children. These results demonstrate that syntactic awareness develops quite early for bilinguals. Additionally, the bilingual children demonstrated cross-linguistic influence of core syntactic structure in French, as their judgments were affected by English acceptability.

Verbal statistical learning: Prior knowledge impacts word identification but not metacognition

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laetitia Zmuda ◽  
Charlotte Baey ◽  
Paolo Mairano ◽  
Anahita Basirat
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Bayesian Approach ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
Transitional Probabilities ◽  
Fully Bayesian

It is well-known that individuals can identify novel words in a stream of an artificial language using statistical dependencies. While underlying computations are thought to be similar from one stream to another (e.g. transitional probabilities between syllables), performance are not similar. According to the “linguistic entrenchment” hypothesis, this would be due to the fact that individuals have some prior knowledge regarding co-occurrences of elements in speech which intervene during verbal statistical learning. The focus of previous studies was on task performance. The goal of the current study is to examine the extent to which prior knowledge impacts metacognition (i.e. ability to evaluate one’s own cognitive processes). Participants were exposed to two different artificial languages. Using a fully Bayesian approach, we estimated an unbiased measure of metacognitive efficiency and compared the two languages in terms of task performance and metacognition. While task performance was higher in one of the languages, the metacognitive efficiency was similar in both languages. In addition, a model assuming no correlation between the two languages better accounted for our results compared to a model where correlations were introduced. We discuss the implications of our findings regarding the computations which underlie the interaction between input and prior knowledge during verbal statistical learning.

Initial Impressions of Others

2012 ◽  
pp. 336-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
James S. Uleman ◽  
S. Adil Saribay
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Attribution Theory ◽  
Impression Formation ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Controlled Attention ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Cognitive Processes ◽  
The Many ◽  
And Control ◽  
Initial Impressions

“Initial impressions” bring together personality and social psychology like no other field of study—“personality” because (1) impressions are about personalities, and (2) perceivers’ personalities affect these impressions; and “social” because (3) social cognitive processes of impression formation, and (4) sociocultural contexts have major effects on impressions. To make these points, we first review how people explicitly describe others: the terms we use, how these descriptions reveal our theories about others, the important roles of traits and types (including stereotypes) in these descriptions, and other prominent frameworks (e.g., narratives and social roles). Then we highlight recent research on the social cognitive processes underlying these descriptions: automatic and controlled attention, the many effects of primes (semantic and affective) and their dependence on contexts, the acquisition of valence, spontaneous inferences about others, and the interplay of automatic and control processes. Third, we examine how accurate initial impressions are, and what accuracy means, as well as deception and motivated biases and distortions. Fourth, we review recent research on effects of target features, perceiver features, and relations between targets and perceivers. Finally, we look at frameworks for understanding explanations, as distinct from descriptions: attribution theory, theory of mind, and simulation theory.

Effect of feeding with bilberry fruit on the expression pattern of αCaMKII in hippocampal neurons in normal and diabetic rats

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Matysek ◽  
S. Mozel ◽  
R. Szalak ◽  
A. Zacharko-Siembida ◽  
K. Obszańska ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Hippocampal Neurons ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Expression Patterns ◽  
Memory Loss ◽  
Diabetic Rats ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Neuroprotective Effects ◽  
The Central Nervous System ◽  
And Control

Abstract αCaMKII, widely occurring in the central nervous system, plays a significant role in cognitive processes. It is well known that diabetes is a risk factor that may trigger brain atrophy, cognitive dysfunction and finally lead to memory loss. Antioxidants richly present in bilberry fruits are believed to have significant effects on diabetes-related brain dysfunctions mainly due to their abilities to modulate neurotransmitter release that lead to reduction of the negative impact of free radicals on cognitive processes. The aim of the present research was to immunohistochemically investigate the expression patterns of αCaMKII in hippocampal neurons from non-diabetic, diabetic and diabetic rats fed with an extract of bilberry fruit. The obtained results show that in comparison to the control group, in diabetic rats hippocampal neurons immunoreactive (ir) to αCaMKII were swollen and the lengths of the neuronal fibres were reduced. Further study shows that in diabetic rats fed with bilberry fruit, αCaMKII-positive nerve fibres were significantly longer when compared to the groups of diabetic and control rats. Additionally, we observed statistically significant changes in the average larger diameter of αCaMKII-ir hippocampal neurons between groups of diabetic rats (with vs. without supplement of bilberry fruit). The results of the present work suggest that antioxidants present in bilberry fruits influence the morphology of and possibly exhibit beneficial and neuroprotective effects on hippocampal neurons during diabetes. It is likely that changes in the appearance of αCaMKII-expressed hippocampal neurons may reflect the diabetes-evoked rise in Ca2+ level in the cerebral nerve terminals. The present research extends our knowledge of preventive mechanisms for cognitive dysfunctions occurring in the brain during diabetes.

Phonological awareness in young second language learners

1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maggie Bruck ◽  
Fred Genesee
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Phoneme Awareness ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Bilingual Group ◽  
English Speaking

ABSTRACTEnglish-speaking children (N = 91) who were attending French schools (bilingual group) were given a battery of phonological awareness tests in kindergarten and in grade 1. At the time of kindergarten testing the mean age of the children was 5:9. Their performance was compared to age-matched English-speaking children (N = 72) attending English schools (monolingual group). The bilingual children showed heightened levels of phonological awareness skills in kindergarten in the area of onset-rime awareness. By grade 1, the pattern of group differences was more complex. The monolingual and bilingual children performed similarly on onset-rime segmentation tasks. The monolingual children had higher phoneme awareness scores than their French-schooled peers; this result is interpreted to reflect the role of literacy instruction on phoneme awareness development. In comparison, the bilingual children had higher syllable segmentation scores than their monolingual peers. This result is interpreted to reflect the role of second language input on phonological awareness.

scholarly journals Metacognition: A new cognitive paradigm

Psihologija ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milos Kankaras
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Functioning ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Thinking Processes ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
And Control ◽  
Metacognitive Experiences

This article reviews concept of metacognition, defined as: (a) knowledge about ones own cognitive activity, (b) strategies to monitor and regulate cognitive activity and behavior, and (c) subjective or metacognitive experiences which comes from some changes or temporary difficulties in cognitive functioning. While describing different conceptualizations of metacognition, its development, fields of application, relation with intelligence, and its constrictions and ambiguity, we attempt to present new and emerging metacognitive paradigm, which is, for a relatively short period, succeeded to improve, expand, and redefine wide range of theoretical and practical fields in psychology, on new and original way. How do we become conscious of our own cognitive processes? What role and significance that consciousness has, what is the functional level above thinking processes and how that level, which monitor and control cognitive activity, works. Metacognition is concept that presents, as so far, the most important insight in those human mind areas, which, although very important, remained on the margin of psychological investigations until now.

Unraveling What’s on Our Minds

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire M. Zedelius ◽  
Jonathan W. Schooler
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Positive Mood ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Different Types ◽  
And Behavior

Mind-wandering encompasses a variety of different types of thought, involving various different experiential qualities, emotions, and cognitive processes. Much is lost by simply lumping them together, as is typically done in the literature. The goal of this chapter is to explore the nuances that distinguish different types of mind-wandering. The chapter draws on research on mind-wandering as well as other literatures to gain a better understanding of how these different types of mind-wandering affect cognition and behavior. It specifically discusses the distinct effects of different types of mind-wandering on task performance, working memory, mood, and creativity. Finally, the chapter discusses the idea of deliberate engagement in particular types of mind-wandering as a way to achieve desirable outcomes, such as maintaining a positive mood, enhancing creativity, or aiding decision-making.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document