Published in: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Volume 21, Issue 2, 427-433
Abstract
“Using multiple languages may confer distinct advantages in cognitive control, yet it is unclear whether bilingualism is associated with better implicit statistical learning, a core cognitive ability underlying language. We tested bilingual adults on a challenging task requiring simultaneous learning of two miniature grammars characterized by different statistics. We found that participants learned each grammar significantly better than chance and both grammars equally well. Crucially, a validated continuous measure of bilingual dominance predicted accuracy scores for both artificial grammars in a generalized linear model. The study thus demonstrates the first graded advantage in learning novel statistical relations in adult bilinguals.”
Written by: Luca Onnis, Win Ee Chun, Matthew Lou-Magnuson
For full text: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728917000529