Moving toward a neuroplasticity view of bilingualism, executive control, and aging
Moving toward a neuroplasticity view of bilingualism, executive control, and aging
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DOI：
10.1017/s0142716414000174
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发表时间：
2014-09-01
影响因子：
2.1
通讯作者：
Titone, Debra
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Baum, Shari;Titone, Debra
正常的衰老是知识增长和认知能力下降之间不可避免的竞赛。理解和促进成功衰老的关键是确定这些因素中哪些因素对特定的神经认知功能起主导作用。在这里，我们专注于人类的语言能力，健康的老年人同时处于不利地位。近年来，一个更有希望的认知老化的观点已经从工作中出现，表明与年龄相关的执行控制功能的下降被终身双语所缓冲。在本文中，我们选择性地回顾了目前已知的和未知的双语，执行控制和老化。我们的最终目标是推进这样的观点，即这些问题应该被重新定义为更普遍的神经可塑性的一个具体实例，特别是研究人员应该通过采用尊重问题复杂性的实验和统计方法来拥抱双语者之间的个体差异。在下文中，我们阐述了双语优势观点的理论假设和实证支持，回顾了我们对语言，认知控制和衰老的了解，然后强调了几个相对较少的研究，这些研究调查了老年人的双语语言处理，无论是他们自己还是与单语老年人相比。最后，我们提出了几项建议，该领域应该如何进行，以实现一个更多因素的双语观，强调简单的双语与单语组比较的神经可塑性的概念。
Normal aging is an inevitable race between increasing knowledge and decreasing cognitive capacity. Crucial to understanding and promoting successful aging is determining which of these factors dominates for particular neurocognitive functions. Here, we focus on the human capacity for language, for which healthy older adults are simultaneously advantaged and disadvantaged. In recent years, a more hopeful view of cognitive aging has emerged from work suggesting that age-related declines in executive control functions are buffered by life-long bilingualism. In this paper, we selectively review what is currently known and unknown about bilingualism, executive control, and aging. Our ultimate goal is to advance the views that these issues should be reframed as a specific instance of neuroplasticity more generally and, in particular, that researchers should embrace the individual variability among bilinguals by adopting experimental and statistical approaches that respect the complexity of the questions addressed. In what follows, we set out the theoretical assumptions and empirical support of the bilingual advantages perspective, review what we know about language, cognitive control, and aging generally, and then highlight several of the relatively few studies that have investigated bilingual language processing in older adults, either on their own or in comparison with monolingual older adults. We conclude with several recommendations for how the field ought to proceed to achieve a more multifactorial view of bilingualism that emphasizes the notion of neuroplasticity over that of simple bilingual versus monolingual group comparisons.