From memory flexibility to cognitive flexibility: Examining precursors to bilingual advantages during early childhood

世界上三分之二的儿童是在说多种语言的家庭中长大的。与只学习一种语言的孩子相比，学习两种或两种以上语言的孩子表现出终身的认知优势。特别是，双语儿童表现出更高的认知灵活性，即根据任务要求的变化调整行为的能力，以及抑制对无关信息的注意的能力。认知灵活性是教育成功的关键。提出的研究将检验婴儿时期的记忆处理优势是否可以解释双语儿童在童年后期的认知灵活性提高。更好地理解双语如何以及为什么会增强认知灵活性，将使教育工作者能够制定教学策略，利用双语的保护性认知优势。这对于来自低收入家庭的双语儿童尤其重要，因为他们与中产阶级的单语同龄人相比，表现出了成就上的差距。记忆推理和记忆灵活性将在1岁和2岁的单语和双语儿童中进行测试，这些儿童将在3岁和5岁时进行认知灵活性测试。记忆灵活性指的是根据物体的功能而不是外观来识别物体之间相似之处的能力，这涉及到在不同线索之间转换的能力。当相互竞争的线索干扰记忆编码时，就会产生记忆干扰，减少干扰需要抑制相互冲突的线索。据预测，纵向分析将显示双语婴儿比单语婴儿具有更大的记忆灵活性和更少的记忆干扰，这将预测3岁和5岁时认知灵活性的增强。此外，PI致力于培养研究生和本科生，并将招收具有独特语言技能的双语学生；因此，该项目可能会培训在STEM领域代表性不足的少数民族学生。

Two-thirds of the world's children are raised in homes where multiple languages are spoken. Children who learn two or more languages exhibit what appear to be lifelong cognitive advantages relative to those who learn only one language. In particular, bilingual children show heightened cognitive flexibility, defined as the ability to adjust their behaviors in response to changes in task demands, and inhibit their attention to irrelevant information. Cognitive flexibility is critical to educational success. The proposed studies will examine whether advantages in memory processing during infancy can explain bilingual children's heightened cognitive flexibility later in childhood. A better understanding of how and why bilingualism enhances cognitive flexibility will allow educators to develop pedagogical strategies to capitalize on bilingualism's protective cognitive strengths. This may be especially important for bilingual children from low income families who show an achievement gap relative to their middle class, monolingual peers. Memory inference and memory flexibility will be tested in 1- and 2-year-old monolingual and bilingual children and these same children will be tested at 3- and 5-years on cognitive flexibility. Memory flexibility involves the ability to recognize similarities between objects based on how they function rather than how they look, which involves the ability to shift between cues. Memory interference occurs when competing cues disrupt memory encoding, and reduction of interference requires inhibition of conflicting cues. It is predicted that longitudinal analyses will show that bilingual infants have greater memory flexibility and less memory interference than monolinguals, which will predict enhanced cognitive flexibility at both 3 and 5 years. In addition, the PI is committed to training graduate and undergraduate students and will recruit bilingual students for their unique linguistic skills; the project is therefore likely to train minority students who are underrepresented in STEM fields.