Cognitive Processes of Bilinguals

直到最近，认知科学忽视了这样一个事实，即世界上大多数人 在美国，越来越多的人会说双语。在过去的十年里，这种情况 已经发生了显著的变化。现在人们认识到，学习和使用不仅仅是 一种语言是一种自然的认知环境。不仅研究人员对 双语为认知原则的普遍性提供了至关重要的证据， 但它也提供了一个重要的工具来揭示认知内部的制约 建筑。尽管熟练的双语者很少犯在说英语时的错误 错误的语言或认为他们正在用另一种语言阅读文本 词汇识别和口语中词汇通达的认知研究 生产表明，关于这两种语言的信息都很活跃，至少是短暂的 即使是高技能的任务，如阅读和口语。缺乏一种简单的 在使用两种语言中的一种时关闭另一种语言的机制表明 熟练的双语者拥有一种复杂的方法来控制他们的表现。为 正因为如此，双语已经成为心理学家们希望 模型开发系统，它们之间的竞争，以及 执行控制。这项拟议的研究的目标是使用行为和 识别允许跨语言竞争的因素的神经认知方法 在双语者的每一种语言的演讲计划中都解决了问题。具体目标是 计划中的研究是为了确定在演讲计划中有多大程度的活动 每种语言，双语的形式如何调节这一活动，以及什么语境 语言的习得和使用减少了跨语言竞争。拟议的研究将有助于提供有关多种语言的重要基础知识，将有助于 在一个日益多样化的社会中的教育和健康问题，其中许多学习者面临着任务 通过儿童时期的最早阶段来学习说第二语言。这项研究也将有助于 通过培训比认知科学中典型的更多样化的学生群体来实现科学基础设施 和认知神经科学，并通过促进国际科学合作。

Until recently, cognitive science ignored the fact that most people of the world, and an increasing number of people in the US, are bilingual. In the past ten years this situation has changed markedly. There is now an appreciation that learning and using more than one language is a natural circumstance of cognition. Not only does research on bilingualism provide crucial evidence regarding the universality of cognitive principles, but it also provides an important tool for revealing constraints within the cognitive architecture. Although proficient bilinguals rarely make the error of speaking words in the wrong language or thinking that they are reading text in a language other than the one intended, recent cognitive research on lexical access in word recognition and in spoken production suggests that information about both languages is active, at least briefly, in even highly skilled tasks such as reading and speaking. The absence of a simple mechanism to switch off one of the two languages when using the other suggests that skilled bilinguals possess a sophisticated means of controlling their performance. For this reason, bilingualism has become an important tool for psychologists who wish to model developing systems, the competition between them, and the consequences for executive control. The goal of the proposed research is to use behavioral and neurocognitive methods to identify factors that permit cross-language competition to be resolved in the planning of speech in each of the bilingual's languages. The specifc aims of the planned research are to determine how far into speech planning there is activity of each language, how the form of bilingualism modulates this activity, and what contexts of language acquisition and use reduce cross-language competition. The proposed research will contribute important foundational knowledge about multilingualism that will inform educational and health issues in an increasingly diverse society in which many learners are faced with the task of learning to speak a second language past the earliest stages of childhood. The research will also contribute to the infrastructure of science by training a more diverse group of students than is typical in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience and by fostering international scientific collaboration.