Workshop: Bilingualism and Executive Function: An Interdisciplinary Approach; CUNY Graduate Center-New York; May 18-19, 2015

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The Graduate Center of the City University of New York will host a workshop on the relation between bilingualism and cognition, with special emphases on executive functions and aging. A recent set of findings suggest that being bilingual confers cognitive advantages including a delayed onset for cognitive decline. The goal of this workshop is to explore explanations for how and why these advantages occur. There are a variety of different aspects of cognitive processing that may be enhanced by the experience of being bilingual and may therefore underlie reported advantages offered by bilingualism. Executive function in particular enables people to manage, integrate, regulate, coordinate, and supervise other cognitive processes, such as attention and visual perception. Bilingualism may be especially useful in enhancing some of those executive function capacities but may not be unique in providing those enhancements. Workshop participants will explore evidence for a single, high-level, description of how cognitive enhancement occurs versus many different underlying mechanisms that may each lead to enhanced executive function. This interdisciplinary collaborative forum will allow psychologists, neurologists, linguists, and neuroscientists to learn from each other and develop new approaches to this important area of research. The workshop will consist of five discussion panels and a poster session. Each panel will feature two invited experts and a discussant. The panelists will be experts from different disciplines broadly divided into bilingualism and executive function. The disciplines include cognitive psychology, linguistics, aging, and neuropsychology. A poster session will provide an opportunity for students and young investigators to communicate their work on this topic to the workshop participants. Together the participants will discuss theories and mechanisms that might connect bilingualism and executive function. Cognitive health, extending into old age, is of increasing importance as the population ages. Understanding the role of bilingualism in the context of other cognitively challenging activities will have implications for public policy and public health.