Doctoral Dissertation Research: Are bilinguals better learners? A neurocognitive investigation of the bilingual advantage

博士论文研究：双语者学习能力更好吗？

• 批准号: 1124051
• 负责人: Judith Kroll
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-08-15 至 2013-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1124051&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; bilinguals; better; Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; bilinguals; better

With National Science Foundation support, Ms. Cari Bogulski will collect data for her doctoral dissertation under the direction of Dr. Judith Kroll and Dr. Janet van Hell. Current research demonstrates that bilinguals are often advantaged relative to their monolingual counterparts on tasks that require cognitive control. A few past studies have also identified a bilingual advantage in the realm of word learning. However, these documented benefits of bilingualism are largely correlational, with little known about the underlying mechanisms that map language use to cognition and learning. One possibility is that all of the documented benefits of bilingualism reflect the effects of the constant mental juggling a bilingual at any age must exercise, as both of a bilingual's two languages appear to be active even when one language alone is required. Alternatively, different aspects of language use may map onto different types of cognitive consequences. The proposed research seeks to uncover the way that the use of multiple languages affects language learning as well as learning in other domains. The planned experiments will test the scope of the bilingual advantage in foreign language vocabulary learning by using electrophysiological measures that may provide a more sensitive index of the time course of early learning, compare the learning of linguistic and nonlinguistic information, and determine whether the bilingual advantage can be seen in the learning of a signed vs. spoken language. The goal of this set of experiments is to identify the cognitive mechanisms that underlie foreign vocabulary learning, and thus, to identify how learning a foreign language can be strategically enhanced.The funded research has a number of broader implications. It will contribute important foundational knowledge about multilingualism that will inform educational issues in a society in which many learners are faced with the task of acquiring a second language past the earliest stages of childhood. The research will also contribute to the training of an increasingly diverse group of language scientists by including undergraduate research students who are themselves bilingual and by fostering scientific collaboration at Gallaudet University to include signed as well as spoken languages.

在国家科学基金会的支持下，Cari Bogulski女士将在Judith Kroll博士和Janet Van Hell博士的指导下收集其博士学位论文的数据。当前的研究表明，双语者通常相对于需要认知控制的任务而言是优势的。过去的一些研究还确定了单词学习领域的双语优势。但是，这些被证明的双语的好处在很大程度上是相关的，对将语言用于认知和学习的基本机制知之甚少。一种可能性是，双语主义的所有有记录的好处都反映了在任何时代都必须锻炼双语的持续精神杂耍的效果，因为双语的两种语言中的两种语言似乎都很活跃，即使仅需要一种语言。另外，语言使用的不同方面可能会映射到不同类型的认知后果。拟议的研究试图揭示使用多种语言会影响语言学习以及在其他领域学习的方式。计划的实验将通过使用电生理学措施来测试外语词汇学习中双语优势的范围，这些措施可能会提供更敏感的早期学习时间过程，比较语言和非语言信息的学习，并确定在学习签名的学习中是否可以看到双语优势。这组实验的目的是确定基于外国词汇学习的认知机制，因此，确定如何在战略上增强学习外语的方式。资助的研究具有许多更广泛的含义。它将为多语言主义提供重要的基础知识，这将在一个社会中为教育问题提供依据，在这个社会中，许多学习者面临的任务是在童年的最早阶段获得第二语言。这项研究还将通过包括本科本身是双语的本科研究学生并培养加洛德大学的科学合作，包括签名和口语，从而为越来越多的语言科学家培训培训。