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

Maria Garraffa,Antonella Sorace,Bernadette O'Rourke,Mateo Obregon

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.570587

Abstract

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.

Highlights

There has been an increased interest in bilingualism research due to the significant rise of the number of speakers of more than one language
This study investigated young Gaelic-English adult bilinguals and especially New speakers, who acquire the language in immersion education and have no exposure at home
Did we find that both Gaelic Home Speakers’ and New Speakers’ cognitive and linguistic skills were comparable to those of Monolingual Speakers, but a positive correlation was found for complex structures and ability to focus in the context of an active distractor both on cognitive and linguistic tasks

Summary

Introduction

There has been an increased interest in bilingualism research due to the significant rise of the number of speakers of more than one language. One of the main reasons for the lack of intergenerational transmission of minority languages is their low prestige status, and consequent perceived lack of usefulness, compared to globally spoken languages. This discrepancy is mirrored in bilingualism research, which has largely focused on widely spoken languages (but see Gorter and Cenoz, 2011; Garraffa et al, 2015; for reviews of studies on minority languages). The present study contributes to bridging the gap in research on bilingualism in minority language speakers by investigating the linguistic and cognitive skills of Gaelic-English young adults attending a Gaelic-medium school (“new speakers,” who have no Gaelic at home and have acquired Gaelic at school) and comparing monolingual English speakers living in the same area with both native speakers of Gaelic and new speakers of Gaelic

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Conclusion