Learning and processing of nonverbal symbolic information in bilinguals and monolinguals

Abstract

Bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals on word learning and on inhibition tasks that require competition resolution. Yet the scope of such bilingual advantages remains underspecified. We compared bilinguals and monolinguals on nonverbal symbolic learning and on competition resolution while processing newly-learned material. Participants were trained on 12 tone-to-symbol mappings, combining timbre, pitch, and duration of tones. During subsequent processing, participants viewed a display with four symbols, and were instructed to identify the symbol that matched a simultaneously-presented tone. On competition trials, two symbols matched the tone in timbre and pitch, but only one matched the tone on timbre, pitch, and duration. No learning differences emerged between 27 Spanish-English bilinguals and 27 English monolinguals, and more successful learners performed better on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary task. During the processing task, competition trials yielded responses with lower accuracies and longer latencies than control trials. Further, in both groups, more successful learning of tone-to-symbol mappings was associated with more successful retrieval during processing. In monolinguals, English receptive vocabulary scores also influenced retrieval efficiency during processing, with English/Spanish vocabulary less related to the novel processing task in bilinguals. Finally, to examine inhibition of competing stimuli, priming probes were presented after each tone-symbol processing trial. These probes suggested that bilinguals, and to a lesser extent monolinguals, showed residual inhibition of competitors at 200 ms post-target identification. Together, findings suggest that learning of novel symbolic information may depend in part on previous linguistic knowledge (not bilingualism per se), and that, during processing of newly-learned material, subtle differences in retrieval and competition resolution may emerge between bilinguals and monolinguals.

Direct and indirect effects of multilingualism on novel language learning: An integrative review

“…Their results imply that (at least part of) the multilingual advantage is rooted in better access to the recently learned words because the training procedure ensured the same level of learning across groups. A similar pattern emerged in a recent study by Blumenfeld and Adams (2014). In that study, no difference was observed between Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals on a nonverbal sound-to-symbol mapping task, which required mapping of tones to symbols based on pitch, timbre, and duration.…”

“…Such effects have been documented in both adults (Bogulski et al (in p r e p a r a t i o n ) ; K a u s h a n s k a y a & M a r i a n , 2 0 0 9 a ; Kaushanskaya et al, 2013;Wang & Saffran, 2014) and children (Kalashnikova et al, 2014;Kaushanskaya et al, 2014). Further, experience with cross-language competition that improves the ability to manage specific cross-language interference has been suggested for adults (Bartolotti & Marian, 2012;Blumenfeld & Adams, 2014;Bogulski et al (in preparation). Finally, changes in the weight given to cues in the learning environment (such as enhanced reliance on pragmatic cue) appear to transfer to the novel word learning task in children (Brojde et al, 2012).…”

“…Further, once this knowledge has been acquired, the speaker is required to develop fluent use of this knowledge in communicative settings. The studies reviewed above mostly focused on the first component (acquiring the knowledge) with little research done on processing of the newly acquired information (but see Bartolotti & Marian, 2012;Blumenfeld & Adams, 2014). Future investigations should examine whether multilingualism affects how the newly acquired material is integrated and used in more contextualized production and comprehension settings.…”

Predictors of Successful Learning in Multilingual Older Adults Acquiring a Majority Language

“…Previous findings suggest that bilingual learning advantages may be domain-specific and limited to linguistic context that had previously been encountered by the individual (e.g., Kaushanskaya and Rechtzigel, 2012;Antoniou et al, 2014;Blumenfeld and Adams, 2014;Hirosh and Degani, 2017). The current findings are consistent with this literature.…”

Second Language Experience Facilitates Statistical Learning of Novel Linguistic Materials

“…E. Potter, T. Wang, J. R. Saffran / Cognitive Science 41 (2017) Another possibility is that the improvements stemmed from the process of learning a new language, not specifically from the sound properties of Mandarin. Knowledge of multiple languages has been proposed to have many cognitive benefits including enhanced implicit learning (e.g., Bartolotti et al, 2011;Klein, 1995;Kov acs & Mehler, 2009), cognitive control (e.g., Bialystok, 1999;Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 1998;Green, 1998;Green & Abutalebi, 2013), flexibility (e.g., Blumenfeld & Adams, 2014;Liu & Kager, 2014Prior & MacWhinney, 2010), and selective attention (e.g., Bialystok, 2001; Sebasti an-Gall es, Albareda-Castellot, Weikum, & Werker, 2012). However, there is currently a great deal of debate about both the existence of a domain-general "bilingual advantage," and if there is such an advantage, how it relates to individuals' linguistic experiences (e.g., Duñabeitia et al, 2014;Hilchey & Klein, 2011;Kaushanskaya & Prior, 2015;Paap & Greenberg, 2013;Yang, Hartanto, & Yang, 2016).…”