Does bilingualism confer perspective-taking advantages in language use?

The bilingual advantage hypothesis proposes that being bilingual leads to benefits in cognitive abilities that are mediated by superior executive control. Bilingual children demonstrate accelerated mastery of basic cognitive skills such as inhibition control (Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008) and are thought to have cognitive advantages in a variety of domains (Bialystok, Craik, & Luk, 2012), including insights into the perspective of others, i.e., theory of mind (Kovacs, 2009). However, little is known about the long-term impacts of bilingualism on cognition, including whether bilingual children’s advantages in inhibitory control confer lasting advantages in adulthood, and whether these advantages extend to other domains. Here we examine the effects of bilingualism on adult cognition, focusing on perspective-taking in language processing, a domain which is thought to place particular demands on the executive control system. We conclude that the results of two experiments comparing perspective-taking abilities in monolingual and bilingual adults offer no support for the hypothesis that bilingualism improves the ability to appreciate the perspective of another person during language comprehension. In fact, bilinguals seem to have more difficulty interpreting spatial language.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Ryskin, Rachel

Contributors dc:contributor

• Brown-Schmidt, Sarah

• bilingualism
• spatial
• perspective-taking
• language
• eye-tracking
• executive function

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2012 Rachel Ryskin

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/42199

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/42199