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Longitudinal evidence for simultaneous bilingual language development with shifting language dominance, and how to explain it.

ABSTRACT: Theories of how language works have shifted from rule-like competence accounts to more skill-like incremental learning accounts. Under these, people acquire language incrementally, through practice, and may even lose it incrementally as they acquire competing mappings. Incremental learning implies that (1) a bilingual's abilities in their languages should depend on how much they practice each (not merely age of acquisition), and (2) using an L2 more could cause a bilingual to gradually 'unlearn' their L1. Using timed picture naming and vocabulary measures, we tracked 139 children for several years as they transitioned from mostly-Spanish homes to mostly-English schools. Following their increased English use, many became more proficient in English than Spanish around the third grade, demonstrating continual learning. But their Spanish also improved, showing that L1-attrition is not inevitable. Incremental learning explains both co-improvement and L1-attrition as consequences of experience-driven learning: improvement from continuing L1 use can offset competitive unlearning.

SUBMITTER: Oppenheim GM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10868877 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Longitudinal evidence for simultaneous bilingual language development with shifting language dominance, and how to explain it.

Oppenheim Gary M GM Griffin Zenzi Z Peña Elizabeth D ED Bedore Lisa M LM

Language learning 20200615 Suppl 2

Theories of how language works have shifted from rule-like competence accounts to more skill-like incremental learning accounts. Under these, people acquire language incrementally, through practice, and may even lose it incrementally as they acquire competing mappings. Incremental learning implies that (1) a bilingual's abilities in their languages should depend on how much they practice each (not merely age of acquisition), and (2) using an L2 more could cause a bilingual to gradually 'unlearn' ...[more]

PMID: 38362589

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Project description:The ability of bilingual individuals to manage two competing languages is assumed to rely on both domain-specific language control and domain-general control mechanisms. However, previous studies have reported mixed findings about the extent and nature of cross-domain generality. The present study examined the role of language dominance, along with bilingual language experience, in the relationship between word recognition and domain-general cognitive control. Two single-language lexical decision tasks (one in L1 and another in L2) and a domain-general flanker task were administered to bilinguals who live in the sociolinguistic context of a minority and a majority language, namely, Uyghur (L1) and Chinese (L2), respectively. The results showed a diversity in language dominance patterns with better performance in L2 than L1 in the recognition modality, even for participants who self-identified as globally being dominant in L1. This finding reflected all bilinguals' self-evaluation that their preferred language for reading was L2, suggesting that language dominance is dynamic, depending on what language modality is measured. Furthermore, it was found that an earlier onset age of L2 acquisition (but not recent exposure) and a higher across-modality dominance in L2 were related to faster L2 word recognition. When self-reported language dominance was operationalised as a grouping variable, it was further found that both across-modality L1- and L2-dominant bilingual participants demonstrated a significant relationship between L2 word recognition and domain-general monitoring control, while only L1-dominant bilinguals additionally tapped into inhibitory control, indexed by the flanker effect during L2 word recognition. These findings suggest that language dominance has an impact on the extent and nature of the overlap in control mechanisms across specific linguistic and domain-general cognitive domains and add evidence to a domain-general monitoring account of bilingual word recognition.

Project description:Bilingual children develop sensitivity to the language used by their interlocutors at an early age, reflected in differential use of each language by the child depending on their interlocutor. Factors such as discourse context and relative language dominance in the community may mediate the degree of language differentiation in preschool age children. Bimodal bilingual children, acquiring both a sign language and a spoken language, have an even more complex situation. Their Deaf parents vary considerably in access to the spoken language. Furthermore, in addition to code-mixing and code-switching, they use code-blending-expressions in both speech and sign simultaneously-an option uniquely available to bimodal bilinguals. Code-blending is analogous to code-switching sociolinguistically, but is also a way to communicate without suppressing one language. For adult bimodal bilinguals, complete suppression of the non-selected language is cognitively demanding. We expect that bimodal bilingual children also find suppression difficult, and use blending rather than suppression in some contexts. We also expect relative community language dominance to be a factor in children's language choices. This study analyzes longitudinal spontaneous production data from four bimodal bilingual children and their Deaf and hearing interlocutors. Even at the earliest observations, the children produced more signed utterances with Deaf interlocutors and more speech with hearing interlocutors. However, while three of the four children produced >75% speech alone in speech target sessions, they produced <25% sign alone in sign target sessions. All four produced bimodal utterances in both, but more frequently in the sign sessions, potentially because they find suppression of the dominant language more difficult. Our results indicate that these children are sensitive to the language used by their interlocutors, while showing considerable influence from the dominant community language.

Project description:Individuals with aphasia frequently show lexical retrieval deficits due to increased interference of semantically related competitors, a phenomenon that can be observed in tasks such as naming pictures grouped by semantic category. These deficits are explained in terms of impaired semantic control, a set of abilities that are to some extent dependent upon executive control (EC). However, the extent to which semantic control abilities can be affected in a second and non-dominant language has not been extensively explored. Additionally, findings in healthy individuals are inconclusive regarding the degree to which semantic processing is shared between languages. In this study, we explored the effect of brain damage on semantic processing by comparing the performance of bilingual individuals with aphasia on tasks involving semantic control during word production and comprehension. Furthermore, we explored whether semantic deficits are related to domain-general EC deficits. First, we investigated the naming performance of Catalan-Spanish bilinguals with fluent aphasia and age-matched healthy controls on a semantically blocked cyclic naming task in each of their two languages (Catalan and Spanish). This task measured semantic interference in terms of the difference in naming latencies between pictures grouped by the same semantic category or different categories. Second, we explored whether lexical deficits extend to comprehension by testing participants in a word-picture matching task during a mixed language condition. Third, we used a conflict monitoring task to explore the presence of EC deficits in patients with aphasia. We found two main results. First, in both language tasks, bilingual patients' performances were more affected than those of healthy controls when they performed the task in their non-dominant language. Second, there was a significant correlation between the speed of processing on the EC task and the magnitude of the semantic interference effect exclusively in the non-dominant language. Taken together, these results suggest that lexical retrieval may be selectively impaired in bilinguals within those conditions where semantic competition is higher, i.e.,- in their non-dominant language; this could possibly be explained by an excessive amount of inhibition placed upon this language. Moreover, lexico-semantic impairments seem to be at least somewhat related to conflict monitoring deficits, suggesting a certain degree of overlap between EC and semantic control.

Project description:Previous studies have shown that most English-speaking children with language difficulties show academic difficulties during their schooling. The present study aimed to describe the academic achievement of children speaking Spanish and Catalan with developmental language disorder (DLD) during their primary education and to predict their academic outcomes using several processing skills assessed at the beginning of their schooling. To this end, we followed 28 children during their schooling (6-12 years of age). Participants were divided into two groups, one with DLD (n = 14) and a control group (n = 14) paired by age, gender, socio-economic status (SES), family language (L1), and classroom. All participants were assessed through different processing skills with the Spanish version of the NEPSY at the beginning of their schooling (age 6): attention (visual attention, auditory attention, and response set), phonological awareness, verbal short-term memory (sentence repetition, and narrative memory), access to language (semantic verbal fluency and rapid naming), and language comprehension (comprehension of verbal commands). At the end of primary education, schools reported the official academic marks at the 1st cycle (6-8 years), 2nd cycle (8-10 years) and 3rd cycle (10-12 years). Direct scores of the processing skills and academic results were used for statistical analyses. Results showed that children with DLD had more frequent grade retention, and their academic marks were significantly lower than those of their peers in all the cycles and for all academic subjects with a high language dependency (all except physical education and mathematics). Those subjects with lower language dependence did not show significant differences (physical education and mathematics). Rapid naming accounted for most of the variance of academic outcomes, followed by phonological awareness, and language comprehension when both groups were taken together. Only rapid naming accounted for academic results in the DLD group and phonological awareness did so for the control group. In sum, children with DLD experienced more academic difficulties during their primary education. Those children (with and without DLD) who experienced difficulties not only with rapid naming but also with phonological awareness and oral language comprehension at the beginning of their schooling showed a higher probability of academic failure.

Dataset Information

Longitudinal evidence for simultaneous bilingual language development with shifting language dominance, and how to explain it.

Publications

Longitudinal evidence for simultaneous bilingual language development with shifting language dominance, and how to explain it.

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