Bilingualism and Flexibility in Word Processing

        Multiple processes underlie an individual's ability to process language and discriminate between different words. Simmons et al. aim to test the effectiveness of the Language and Situated Stimulation (LASS) theory on the central roles in conceptual processing in the article "fMRI evidence for word association and situated stimulation in conceptual processing". The researchers assembled a group of participants without neurological impairments to perform two scanning sessions in the study: localized tasks and property generation tasks. Localized tasks comprised of word association and situation generation. The ten participants in the study were tested with 60 cue words. Simmons and colleagues predicted activation of the left hemisphere language areas (i.e. Broca's area) during the word association localized tasks.

      Activation of the bilateral posterior areas related to episodic memory and mental imagery was expected to be seen during the situated simulation task (Simmons et al., 2008).The results of the study showed that activation in the brain for conceptual processing overlapped with the situation generation and word association tasks (2008). This suggests that conceptual processing uses multiple forms of representation, which underlie knowledge (2008). An important thought to consider is whether bilingual or multilingual individuals would perform similarly or differently on the tasks, and if similarity in word cues present a difficulty for individuals who must translate between different languages.

      In the article, "Language Mediated Concept Activation in Bilingual Memory Facilitates Cognitive Flexibility", Kharkhurin aims to investigate language mediated concept activation (LMCA) in bilingual Russian-English individuals and monolingual Russian individuals. Participants were assessed on the divergent thinking traits through the Abbreviated Torrance Tests for Adults, and their LMCA with the translingual priming (TLP) test. Much of recent research has been focusing on the cognitive processes that underlie the link between bilinguals and creativity (Kharkhurin, 2017). Additionally, divergent thinking, although argued to not be equivalent to creative thinking, is related to creative problem-solving abilities as a result of activation of multiple mental representations, which are stored in conceptual memory (2017). Kharkhurin suggests that bilingual memory stimulates divergent thinking because of the activation of multiple conceptual representations.

      Results of the experiment showed that bilingual participants performed better than their monolingual counterparts on the divergent thinking trait of flexibility, and the TLP effect could explain that pattern (2017). Additionally, greater TLP effect was seen in bilinguals with higher proficiency in English in comparison to their counterparts (2017). Connections between lexical and conceptual representations in bilingual memory are impacted by an individual's age of language acquisition and his/her language proficiency.

     Language switching is seen in bilinguals and has been argued to affect several executive control tasks, as discussed by Bruin in the article, "Not All Bilinguals Are the Same: A Call for More Detailed Assessments and Descriptions of Bilingual Experiences". Research by Prior and Gollan has shown that individuals who engage in non-verbal task switching daily will show less non-verbal task-switching costs than monolingual individuals, but bilinguals who did not engage in task-switching were no different than monolinguals in their performance (Bruin, 2019). Language switching is also related to inhibitory control in specific language contexts, which could be helpful when bilinguals translate and discriminate between words that are similar across languages.

 Work Cited

Bruin, A. D. (2019). Not All Bilinguals Are the Same: A Call for More Detailed Assessments

           and Descriptions of Bilingual Experiences. Behavioral Sciences, 9(3), 33. doi:           

          10.3390/bs9030033

Kharkhurin A. V. (2017). Language Mediated Concept Activation in Bilingual Memory 

           Facilitates Cognitive Flexibility. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 1067. 

           https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01067

Simmons, W. K., Hamann, S.B., Harenski, C.L., Hu, X. P., & Barsalou, L. W. (2008). fMRI 

            evidence for word association and situated simulation in conceptual processing. 

            Journal of Physiology-Paris, 102(1-3), 106-119. doi: 10.1016/j.jphysparis.2008.03.0

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