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

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 博士的指导下为她的博士论文收集数据。目前的研究表明，在需要认知控制的任务上，双语者通常比单语​​者更有优势。过去的一些研究也发现了双语在单词学习领域的优势。然而，这些记录在案的双语好处在很大程度上是相关的，而人们对将语言使用映射到认知和学习的潜在机制知之甚少。一种可能性是，双语的所有已记录的好处都反映了双语者在任何年龄都必须进行的持续心理杂耍的影响，因为即使只需要一种语言，双语者的两种语言似乎都很活跃。或者，语言使用的不同方面可能映射到不同类型的认知后果。拟议的研究旨在揭示多种语言的使用如何影响语言学习以及其他领域的学习。计划中的实验将通过使用电生理测量来测试双语在外语词汇学习中的优势范围，这些测量可以提供早期学习时间过程的更敏感的指标，比较语言和非语言信息的学习，并确定在手语和口语的学习中是否可以看到双语的优势。这组实验的目标是确定外语词汇学习背后的认知机制，从而确定如何战略性地加强外语学习。这项资助的研究具有许多更广泛的意义。它将贡献有关多语言的重要基础知识，为许多学习者面临着在童年早期阶段之后学习第二语言的任务的社会中的教育问题提供信息。该研究还将通过包括本身双语的本科生以及促进加劳德特大学的科学合作（包括手语和口语），为培养日益多元化的语言科学家群体做出贡献。