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Language and Cognition in Gaelic-English Young Adult Bilingual Speakers: A Positive Effect of School Immersion Program on Attentional and Grammatical Skills

The present study investigates linguistics and cognitive effects of bilingualism with a minority language acquired through school medium education. If bilingualism has an effect on cognition and language abilities, regardless of language prestige or opportunities of use, young adult Gaelic-English s...

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Autores principales: Garraffa, Maria, Obregon, Mateo, O’Rourke, Bernadette, Sorace, Antonella
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7641633/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33192860
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.570587
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author Garraffa, Maria
Obregon, Mateo
O’Rourke, Bernadette
Sorace, Antonella
author_facet Garraffa, Maria
Obregon, Mateo
O’Rourke, Bernadette
Sorace, Antonella
author_sort Garraffa, Maria
collection PubMed
description The present study investigates linguistics and cognitive effects of bilingualism with a minority language acquired through school medium education. If bilingualism has an effect on cognition and language abilities, regardless of language prestige or opportunities of use, young adult Gaelic-English speakers attending Gaelic medium education (GME) could have an advantage on linguistic and cognitive tasks targeting executive functions. These will be reported, compared to monolingual speakers living in the same area. Furthermore, this study investigates whether there is a difference in Home Speakers of Gaelic (speakers who had acquired the language at home) compared to New Speakers of this language, i.e., whether an immersive context-as the one offered in medium education- compensates for not being native. A group of 23 monolingual English young adult speakers was compared with a group of 25 bilingual speakers attending a GME school since 5 years old. Participants were tested on comprehension of a set of sentences with incremental complexity in English, on their capacity to inhibit a distractor using the Test of Everyday attention (TEA) and on their performance in a Digit Span task. A tendency for a better performance on more complex linguistics and cognitive tasks was reported in bilinguals compared to monolinguals with a further advantage for New Speakers compared to Home Speakers. The study supports the idea that being bilingual in a minority language is as beneficial as speaking any other combination of languages. An immersive context of acquisition can be a good ground for developing advantages on both linguistics and cognitive tasks, with a further advantage for New speakers of the language.
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spelling pubmed-76416332020-11-13 Language and Cognition in Gaelic-English Young Adult Bilingual Speakers: A Positive Effect of School Immersion Program on Attentional and Grammatical Skills Garraffa, Maria Obregon, Mateo O’Rourke, Bernadette Sorace, Antonella Front Psychol Psychology The present study investigates linguistics and cognitive effects of bilingualism with a minority language acquired through school medium education. If bilingualism has an effect on cognition and language abilities, regardless of language prestige or opportunities of use, young adult Gaelic-English speakers attending Gaelic medium education (GME) could have an advantage on linguistic and cognitive tasks targeting executive functions. These will be reported, compared to monolingual speakers living in the same area. Furthermore, this study investigates whether there is a difference in Home Speakers of Gaelic (speakers who had acquired the language at home) compared to New Speakers of this language, i.e., whether an immersive context-as the one offered in medium education- compensates for not being native. A group of 23 monolingual English young adult speakers was compared with a group of 25 bilingual speakers attending a GME school since 5 years old. Participants were tested on comprehension of a set of sentences with incremental complexity in English, on their capacity to inhibit a distractor using the Test of Everyday attention (TEA) and on their performance in a Digit Span task. A tendency for a better performance on more complex linguistics and cognitive tasks was reported in bilinguals compared to monolinguals with a further advantage for New Speakers compared to Home Speakers. The study supports the idea that being bilingual in a minority language is as beneficial as speaking any other combination of languages. An immersive context of acquisition can be a good ground for developing advantages on both linguistics and cognitive tasks, with a further advantage for New speakers of the language. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-10-20 /pmc/articles/PMC7641633/ /pubmed/33192860 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.570587 Text en Copyright © 2020 Garraffa, Obregon, O’Rourke and Sorace. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Garraffa, Maria
Obregon, Mateo
O’Rourke, Bernadette
Sorace, Antonella
Language and Cognition in Gaelic-English Young Adult Bilingual Speakers: A Positive Effect of School Immersion Program on Attentional and Grammatical Skills
title Language and Cognition in Gaelic-English Young Adult Bilingual Speakers: A Positive Effect of School Immersion Program on Attentional and Grammatical Skills
title_full Language and Cognition in Gaelic-English Young Adult Bilingual Speakers: A Positive Effect of School Immersion Program on Attentional and Grammatical Skills
title_fullStr Language and Cognition in Gaelic-English Young Adult Bilingual Speakers: A Positive Effect of School Immersion Program on Attentional and Grammatical Skills
title_full_unstemmed Language and Cognition in Gaelic-English Young Adult Bilingual Speakers: A Positive Effect of School Immersion Program on Attentional and Grammatical Skills
title_short Language and Cognition in Gaelic-English Young Adult Bilingual Speakers: A Positive Effect of School Immersion Program on Attentional and Grammatical Skills
title_sort language and cognition in gaelic-english young adult bilingual speakers: a positive effect of school immersion program on attentional and grammatical skills
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7641633/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33192860
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.570587
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