Effects of individual differences in bilingual experience on cognitive control
This project is financially supported by the Economic and Social Research Council UK and investigates the relationship between individual differences in language learning, usage and proficiency within bilingual speakers with performance on cognitive control tasks, brain structure and brain functions.
In the last 10-20 years increasing evidence has emerged that speaking another language might be beneficial for our brain health. It appears to improve a collection of general cognitive abilities, such as the ability to focus selectively on relevant information (‘inhibition’) or the ability to switch between thoughts or rules (‘switching’) - abilities often referred to as executive functions. However, while the majority of findings support a cognitive benefit of bilingualism, there are inconsistent findings.
The main objective of the proposed research therefore is to better understand precisely under which circumstances the acquisition of a second language leads to its cognitive benefits.
Team members
Andrea Krott, PhD
Principal investigator
Vincent DeLuca, PhD
former postdoctoral fellow
now Associate Professor at UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Jianzgan Ni
research assistant
Felix Carter, PhD
former postdoctoral fellow, now at University of Bristol
Consuelo Vidal Gran, PhD
research assistant
Publications
DeLuca, V., Voits, T., Ni, J., Carter, F., Foyzul, R., Mazaheri, A., Krott, A.*, Segaert, K.*(accepted). Mapping individual aspects of bilingual experience to adaptations in brain structure. Cerebral Cortex.
Carter, F., DeLuca, V., Segaert, K., Mazaheri, A., & Krott, A. (accepted). Functional neural architecture of cognitive control mediates the relationship between individual differences in bilingual experience and behaviour. NeuroImage.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.06.510955v1
Markiewicz, R., Mazaheri, A. & Krott, A. (2023). Bilingualism can cause enhanced conflict monitoring and occasional delayed responses in a flanker task. European Journal of Neuroscience, 57 (1), 129-147. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.15863
DeLuca, V., Segaert, K., Mazaheri, A., & Krott, A. (2020). Understanding bilingual brain function and structure changes? U bet! A unified bilingual experience trajectory model. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 56, 100930. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2020.100930
Presentations
Does language learning make us smarter? (Brain Awareness week at Birmingham, 15th-21st March 2021)