scholarly journals Another bilingual advantage? Perception of talker-voice information

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUSANNAH V. LEVI
Keyword(s):  
Learning Task ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Bilingual Advantage ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Social Tasks ◽  
Processing Information ◽  
Voice Processing ◽  
Better Than

A bilingual advantage has been found in both cognitive and social tasks. In the current study, we examine whether there is a bilingual advantage in how children process information about who is talking (talker-voice information). Younger and older groups of monolingual and bilingual children completed the following talker-voice tasks with bilingual speakers: a discrimination task in English and German (an unfamiliar language), and a talker-voice learning task in which they learned to identify the voices of three unfamiliar speakers in English. Results revealed effects of age and bilingual status. Across the tasks, older children performed better than younger children and bilingual children performed better than monolingual children. Improved talker-voice processing by the bilingual children suggests that a bilingual advantage exists in a social aspect of speech perception, where the focus is not on processing the linguistic information in the signal, but instead on processing information about who is talking.

scholarly journals Developing phonological awareness: Is there a bilingual advantage?

2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELLEN BIALYSTOK ◽  
SHILPI MAJUMDER ◽  
MICHELLE M. MARTIN
Keyword(s):  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Complex Task ◽  
Phoneme Segmentation ◽  
Bilingual Advantage ◽  
The Third ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Segmentation Task ◽  
Better Than

Three studies are reported that examine the development of phonological awareness in monolingual and bilingual children between kindergarten and Grade 2. In the first study, monolingual and bilingual children performed equally well on a complex task requiring phoneme substitution. The second study replicated these results and demonstrated a significant role for the language of literacy instruction. The third study extended the research by including two groups of bilingual children and a range of phonological awareness and reading tasks. Spanish–English bilinguals performed better than English-speaking monolinguals on a phoneme segmentation task, but Chinese–English bilinguals performed worse. Other measures of phonological awareness did not differ among the three groups. The results are discussed in terms of a limit on the effect that bilingualism exerts on metalinguistic development.

Bilingual Advantage

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Huda Qalil Althobaiti ◽  
Eirini Sanoudaki ◽  
George Kotzoglou
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Investigation ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Bilingual Advantage ◽  
Mismatch Correction ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
First Time ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Language Pair

A finding that has not received much attention in the metalinguistic awareness literature is that bilingual children may be better at identifying gender mismatches between a subject and a predicate. This phenomenon is not well understood, nor has it been studied systematically. In the present study we present a systematic investigation of the phenomenon involving all three levels of metalinguistic awareness (identification of the mismatch, correction and explanation) in a language pair that has not been tested previously. We tested a group of six-year-old Arabic–English bilingual children in comparison with two monolingual control groups. Results reveal that bilinguals performed better than monolinguals at the correction level. The study reveals a bilingual advantage in this population for the first time, while enhancing our knowledge of the development of metalinguistic awareness.

scholarly journals Regular and Irregular Inflection in Different Groups of Bilingual Children and the Role of Verbal Short-Term and Verbal Working Memory

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Elma Blom ◽  
Evelyn Bosma ◽  
Wilbert Heeringa
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Parental Education ◽  
Digit Span ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Linguistic Distance

Bilingual children often experience difficulties with inflectional morphology. The aim of this longitudinal study was to investigate how regularity of inflection in combination with verbal short-term and working memory (VSTM, VWM) influences bilingual children’s performance. Data from 231 typically developing five- to eight-year-old children were analyzed: Dutch monolingual children (N = 45), Frisian-Dutch bilingual children (N = 106), Turkish-Dutch bilingual children (N = 31), Tarifit-Dutch bilingual children (N = 38) and Arabic-Dutch bilingual children (N = 11). Inflection was measured with an expressive morphology task. VSTM and VWM were measured with a Forward and Backward Digit Span task, respectively. The results showed that, overall, children performed more accurately at regular than irregular forms, with the smallest gap between regulars and irregulars for monolinguals. Furthermore, this gap was smaller for older children and children who scored better on a non-verbal intelligence measure. In bilingual children, higher accuracy at using (irregular) inflection was predicted by a smaller cross-linguistic distance, a larger amount of Dutch at home, and a higher level of parental education. Finally, children with better VSTM, but not VWM, were more accurate at using regular and irregular inflection.

Normative Data for Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices Scale in Yemen

2008 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
pp. 170-172
Author(s):  
Omar Khaleefa ◽  
Richard Lynn
Keyword(s):  
Sex Difference ◽  
Normative Data ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Standardization Sample ◽  
Better Than

Results are reported for a standardization sample of 986 6- to 11-yr.-olds for the Coloured Progressive Matrices in Yemen. Younger children performed better than older children relative to British norms, and there was no significant sex difference in means or variability. In relation to a British IQ of 100 ( SD=15), the sample obtained an average IQ of approximately 81.

Effect of Bilingualism on Multitasking: A Pilot Study

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 94-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Hsieh
Keyword(s):  
Executive Control ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Bilingual Advantage ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
A Cell ◽  
The Difference

Bilingual speakers rely on attentional and executive control to continuously inhibit or activate linguistic representations of competing languages, which leads to an increased efficiency known as “bilingual advantage”. Both monolingual and bilingual speakers were asked to perform multiple tasks of talking on a cell phone while simultaneously attending to simulated driving events. This study examined the effect of bilingualism on participants' performance during a dual-task experiment based on 20 monolingual and 13 bilingual healthy adults. The within-subject and between-subject comparisons were conducted on reaction times of a visual event detection task for (a) only driving and (b) driving while simultaneously engaged in a phone conversation. Results of this study showed that bilingual speakers performed significantly faster than monolingual speakers during the multitasking condition, but not during the driving only condition. Further, bilingual speakers consistently showed a bilingual advantage in reaction times during the multitasking condition, despite varying degrees on a bilingual dominance scale. Overall, experiences in more than one language yield bilingual advantage in better performance than monolingual speakers during a multitasking condition, but not during a single task condition. Regardless of the difference in bilingual proficiency level, such language experience reveals a positive impact on bilingual speakers for multitasking.

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.

scholarly journals Bilingual children show an advantage in controlling verbal interference during spoken language comprehension

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 490-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERTO FILIPPI ◽  
JOHN MORRIS ◽  
FIONA M. RICHARDSON ◽  
PETER BRIGHT ◽  
MICHAEL S.C. THOMAS ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Target Sentence ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Visual Modality ◽  
Auditory Modality ◽  
Interference Control ◽  
Bilingual Advantage ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Adult Participants

Studies measuring inhibitory control in the visual modality have shown a bilingual advantage in both children and adults. However, there is a lack of developmental research on inhibitory control in the auditory modality. This study compared the comprehension of active and passive English sentences in 7–10 years old bilingual and monolingual children. The task was to identify the agent of a sentence in the presence of verbal interference. The target sentence was cued by the gender of the speaker. Children were instructed to focus on the sentence in the target voice and ignore the distractor sentence. Results indicate that bilinguals are more accurate than monolinguals in comprehending syntactically complex sentences in the presence of linguistic noise. This supports previous findings with adult participants (Filippi, Leech, Thomas, Green & Dick, 2012). We therefore conclude that the bilingual advantage in interference control begins early in life and is maintained throughout development.

scholarly journals Spanish-English Bilingual Children’s Relative Use of English Tense and Agreement Morphemes

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina Potapova ◽  
Sonja L. Pruitt-Lord
Keyword(s):  
Best Practice ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Language Assessment ◽  
Language Ability ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Third Person

Best practice for bilingual speakers involves considering performance in each language the client uses. To support this practice for young clients, a comprehensive understanding of how bilingual children develop skills in each language is needed. To that end, the present work investigates relative use of English tense and agreement (T/A) morphemes—a skill frequently considered as part of a complete language assessment—in Spanish-English developing bilingual preschoolers with varying levels of language ability. Results indicate that developing bilingual children with both typical and weak language skills demonstrate greater use of copula and auxiliary BE relative to third person singular, past tense and auxiliary DO. Findings thus reveal a relative ranking of T/A morphemes in developing bilingual children that differs from that of English monolingual children, who demonstrate relatively later emergence and productivity of auxiliary BE. In turn, findings demonstrate the importance of utilizing appropriate comparisons in clinical practice.

scholarly journals Performance in Nonword Repetition Tasks among Mandarin- English Bilingual Children in Malaysia

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chai Ping Woon ◽  
Ngee Thai Yap ◽  
Hui Woan Lim
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Nonword Repetition ◽  
Developmental Trend ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Development Delay ◽  
Qualitative Measure ◽  
Larger Sample ◽  
Better Than

The nonword repetition (NWR) task has been used to measure children’s expressive language skills, and it has been argued to have potential as an early language delay/ impairment detection tool as the NWR task can be conducted rather easily and quickly to obtain a quantitative as well as a qualitative measure of children’s attention to lexical and phonological information. This paper reports the performance of two NWR tasks among thirty bilingual Mandarin-English preschoolers between the age of four through six. The study indicated that performance in the NWR tasks showed a developmental trend with older children performing better than younger children. Word length also had a significant effect on performance, possibly an effect from better short-term memory capacity as the child grew older. The children also performed better in the Mandarin NWR task compared to the English NWR task. These findings suggest potential clinical applications for diagnosis of children with language impairment or at risk of language development delay. However, further studies should improve on the tasks to verify its efficacy and to obtain norms for performance with a larger sample of children at various age groups.

scholarly journals Consolidation of reward memory during sleep does not require dopaminergic activation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Alizadeh Asfestani ◽  
V Brechtmann ◽  
J Santiago ◽  
J Born ◽  
GB Feld
Keyword(s):  
Learning Task ◽  
Reward Learning ◽  
Nocturnal Sleep ◽  
Double Blind ◽  
Dopaminergic Neurotransmission ◽  
Long Duration ◽  
Differential Retention ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Dopaminergic Activation

AbstractSleep enhances memories, especially, if they are related to future rewards. Although dopamine has been shown to be a key determinant during reward learning, the role of dopaminergic neurotransmission for amplifying reward-related memories during sleep remains unclear. In the present study, we scrutinize the idea that dopamine is needed for the preferential consolidation of rewarded information. We blocked dopaminergic neurotransmission, thereby aiming to wipe out preferential sleep-dependent consolidation of high over low rewarded memories during sleep. Following a double-blind, balanced, crossover design 20 young healthy men received the dopamine d2-like receptor blocker Sulpiride (800 mg) or placebo, after learning a Motivated Learning Task. The task required participants to memorize 80 highly and 80 lowly rewarded pictures. Half of them were presented for a short (750 ms) and a long duration (1500 ms), respectively, which enabled to dissociate effects of reward on sleep-associated consolidation from those of mere encoding depth. Retrieval was tested after a retention interval of 20 h that included 8 h of nocturnal sleep. As expected, at retrieval, highly rewarded memories were remembered better than lowly rewarded memories, under placebo. However, there was no evidence for an effect of blocking dopaminergic neurotransmission with Sulpiride during sleep on this differential retention of rewarded information. This result indicates that dopaminergic activation is not required for the preferential consolidation of reward-associated memory. Rather it appears that dopaminergic activation only tags such memories at encoding for intensified reprocessing during sleep.

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