MC/HL2C Seminar: Ellen Bialystok, How language experience modifies mind and brain
Wednesday 26 February 2025, 2:00pm to 3:30pm
Venue
Microsoft TeamsOpen to
Postgraduates, StaffRegistration
Registration not required - just turn upEvent Details
This event is co-organized by the Multilingualism and Cognition Research Group and the Heritage Language 2 Consortium (HL2C).
How language experience modifies mind and brain
Ellen Bialystok (York University, Toronto)
Research over the past 30 years has revealed a connection between bilingual experience and language processing as well as a more surprising connection between bilingual experience and nonverbal cognitive performance and brain structure and function. The standard explanation for all these effects is to connect them and argue that the need to select one of the jointly-activated language options during bilingual language use, presumably by inhibiting the non-target option, enhances inhibitory processes that are then transferred to nonverbal tasks. However, this transfer view cannot account for much of the evidence for bilingual effects on mind and brain. I will propose an alternative to the transfer view that is based on the adaptation of attention systems to a bilingual environment that places constant pressure on attention.
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Speaker
York University, Toronto
Ellen Bialystok is a Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology and Walter Gordon Research Chair of Lifespan Cognitive Development at York University, and Associate Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute of the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care. She is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her research uses behavioral and neuroimaging methods to examine the effect of bilingualism on cognitive processes across the lifespan.
Contact Details
| Name | Patrick Rebuschat |