1. The psycholinguistics of bilingualism

2. BEWARE! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person!
François Grosjean
BEWARE! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person!
François Grosjean

3. Psycholinguistics is the discipline that investigates and describes the psychological processes that make it possible for humans to master and use language.
Bilingualism (or more generally: Multilingualism) is the phenomenon of speaking and understanding two or more languages.
2012

5. Bilingualism-Cognitive Effects
Does being bilingual make you a smarter person?
Can learning a new language protect you from dementia?

6. Early assumption:Bilingualism is bad
-Sear (1923) : Bilingualism leads to confusion and mental retardation (IQ tests)
-Methodological problems
-Challenges of bilingual children

7. The sea change:Peal and Lambert (1962)
-IQ tests done on bilinguan (Eng-Fr) and monolingual (Eng) children
-Bilngual children outperformed monolinguals in linguistic and non linguistic tasks
-No big difference in spatial reasoning
-Big difference in logic and symbol manipulation

8. Metalinguistic abilities
-Bilinguals consciously experience the contrast between two or more languages
-This leads to greater awareness to language itself
-Awareness: You are aware of linguistic forms ,their structure,their meanings and their cross linguistic equivalents
-Exaple: A child commenting that French has –La and –Le,but English has only -The

9. The Sun-Moon Problem
When you hear an utterance ,can you focus separately on its form and on its meaning?

10. Does bilingualism advance early literacy? -cross linguistic similarity

11. Advantages of bilingualism across the lifespan
The Simon effect (Bilinguals)
-Become stronger in old age
-Delays Dementia (Alzheimers Disease)