Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Foreword to the second edition
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Definitions and guiding principles
- 2 Dimensions and measurement of bilinguality and bilingualism
- 3 Ontogenesis of bilinguality
- 4 Cognitive development and the sociocultural context of bilinguality
- 5 Social and psychological foundations of bilinguality
- 6 Neuropsychological foundations of bilinguality
- 7 Information processing in the bilingual
- 8 Social psychological aspects of bilinguality: culture and identity
- 9 Social psychological aspects of bilinguality: intercultural communication
- 10 Societal bilingualism, intergroup relations and sociolinguistic variations
- 11 Bilingual education
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Glossary
- References
- Subject index
- Author index
6 - Neuropsychological foundations of bilinguality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Foreword to the second edition
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Definitions and guiding principles
- 2 Dimensions and measurement of bilinguality and bilingualism
- 3 Ontogenesis of bilinguality
- 4 Cognitive development and the sociocultural context of bilinguality
- 5 Social and psychological foundations of bilinguality
- 6 Neuropsychological foundations of bilinguality
- 7 Information processing in the bilingual
- 8 Social psychological aspects of bilinguality: culture and identity
- 9 Social psychological aspects of bilinguality: intercultural communication
- 10 Societal bilingualism, intergroup relations and sociolinguistic variations
- 11 Bilingual education
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Glossary
- References
- Subject index
- Author index
Summary
Despite the fact that the cerebral organisation of languages in the bilingual person has received a great deal of attention in the latter part of the twentieth century it is still difficult to determine if a bilingual's two languages share the same neural mechanisms. Some early research suggested that brain lateralisation (see Section 6.3) in bilinguals is not different from that occurring in monolinguals and that a bilingual's two languages share the same cerebral substrate (Penfield & Roberts, 1959); on the other hand, early evidence stemming from clinical work with polyglot aphasics has, since the nineteenth century, suggested that a cerebral organisation specific to the bilingual might exist (Minkowski, 1963). Experimental evidence with brain-intact bilinguals since the 1960s tends to support the shared-substrate hypothesis (for a review, see Vaid and Hall, 1991). However, from a more recent study using a refined brain-scanning technique with brain-intact bilinguals, it appears that certain linguistic characteristics are processed in separate anatomical sites for L1 and L2 by adulthood bilinguals but not by infancy bilinguals (Kim, Relkin, Lee & Hirsch, 1997; see also Section 6.3.2.4).
In the present chapter we discuss the state of the art of the neuropsychological aspects of bilinguality. Following a brief introduction to the problem of hemispheric preferences for language behaviour and a brief description of the most widely used techniques for assessing hemispheric preferences (Section 6.2) we review the empirical evidence on the neuropsychological development of bilinguals, obtained from brain-damaged and brain-intact bilinguals (Section 6.3). We pay special attention to neuropsychological differences between simultaneous and consecutive bilinguality. We then discuss the neuropsychological state of the bilingual signing person (Section 6.4).
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- Information
- Bilinguality and Bilingualism , pp. 135 - 161Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000