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Bilingualism and the BrainIntelligence is supposed to reside it the brain. Languages are supposed to be there also. But where? There have been many investigations of how the human system works and it can be shown that one side of the brain is more specialised for language and the other
for spatial tasks. Left-handed people are better at some spatial tasks - it used to be said that many tennis stars were left-handed - maybe there is some advantage in their spatial awareness. However, the big question is how the language is stored in the brain. Are there two systems or is there only just one? In this idea the two languages are learned separately and so there is no direct effect of bilingualism(see the first Figure above). There is a sharing of the general meaning of things and it is possible to think in an abstract way. However, the way the languages work is separately. Another possibility is that the languages share most aspects of processing but are different at the level of use only (see second Figure). So people learn languages by matching up the components of the process. Sometimes they are not aware of which language they are using. When languages are learned at the same time (for example, in young children) then the processes are shared. This means that the child is confused at the beginning about which language to use but gradually begins to identify ways in which the languages can be separated[1].
This idea has important implications when we think about education.
[1] We can see this in hearing children in deaf families. In one current research project in the Centre, the findings show that young hearing children will at times use signs with hearing people and mix speech with deaf people. Older hearing children are more able to separate out BSL and English. |
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