Doctoral Dissertation Research: A neurolinguistic investigation on bilingual advantages at learning an additional language

这篇论文测试的是双语的成年人(在孩提时代学习了两种语言)是否比只会一种语言的成年人更擅长学习外语。之前的研究表明，双语者在某些任务上比单一语言者更有优势，包括创造性思维和解决问题。最近，研究人员还声称，双语者在学习另一种语言方面比单语者更好，但这一假设尚未得到系统的检验。这个项目将通过让双语成年人学习一门他们还不知道的语言--实际上是一种人工语言，他们在设计上不可能接触到这种语言--来检验这一假设的优势，并将他们的表现与相同学习条件下的单语成年人的表现进行比较。参与者的语言熟练程度以及他们在处理语言时大脑活动的测量将在两个点上进行测试，一次是在学习早期(低水平)，另一次是在培训结束时(高水平)。该项目还将通过将课堂学习与沉浸环境中的学习进行比较来评估获得人工语言的环境的效果。一半的双语参与者将在类似课堂的条件下进行训练，而这一组的另一半将在类似沉浸式的条件下接受培训。已经收集的单语组的相应数据表明，当单语学习者达到高度熟练时，他们的大脑模式看起来与大多数语言的母语者相似，特别是对那些接受过浸入式培训的人来说。这表明，只会说一种语言的外语学习者在他们的大脑学习和处理语言的方式上确实可以变得像母语人士一样。双语者的数据将被收集起来，并与单语者的数据进行比较。双语在习得新语言方面的假设优势表明，双语参与者在学习人工语言方面将比单语者更快、更准确。研究还预测，他们的大脑模式将更类似于母语人士处理母语句子时的典型模式。由于在当今的全球经济中，学习外语对世界各地许多人的生活做出了重要贡献，而且熟练掌握外语对政府的安全需求也至关重要，因此该项目的发现可能会对教育、政策和安全产生更广泛的影响。

This dissertation project tests whether adults who are bilingual (who learned two languages as children) are better at learning a foreign language than are monolingual adults. Previous research suggests that bilinguals have an advantage over monolinguals at some tasks, including creative thinking and problem solving. Recently, researchers have also claimed that bilinguals are better than monolinguals at learning another language, but this hypothesis has not yet been tested systematically. This project will examine this hypothesized advantage by having bilingual adults learn a language that they don't already know--one that is, in fact, an artificial language, which by design they could not already have been exposed to--and comparing their performance to that of monolingual adults under the same learning conditions. The proficiency that participants attain in the language, as well as measures of their brain activity while they process the language, will be tested at two points, once early on during learning (at low proficiency) and once at the end of training (at high proficiency). The project will also evaluate the effect of the context in which the artificial language is acquired by comparing learning in a classroom to learning in an immersion context. Half of the bilingual participants will train under classroom-like conditions; whereas the second half of this group will receive training under immersion-like conditions. The corresponding data for the monolingual group, which has already been collected, indicates that by the time monolingual learners reach high proficiency, their brain patterns look similar to those of native speakers of most languages, particularly for those who underwent immersion-like training. This suggests that monolingual foreign language learners can indeed become like native speakers in how their brains learn and process the language. The data from bilinguals will be collected and compared to the data from monolinguals. The hypothesized bilingual advantage in acquiring new languages predicts that the bilingual participants will be faster and more accurate than the monolinguals in learning the artificial language. It also predicts that their brain patterns will be even more similar to patterns that are typically found when native speakers process sentences in their own first language. Because learning foreign languages makes an important contribution to the lives of many people the world over in today's global economy, and because proficiency in foreign languages is also critical to the security needs of the government, findings from this project may have broader consequences for education, policy and security.