studies

• Studies of foreign adoptees - Pallier et al 2003

  • Korean children adopted by French families - 3y to 10y
  • investigate effects of early bilingualism & later language attrition
• Studies of foreign adoptees - Pallier at al 2003 - findings

  • despite being exposed to Korean early in life - showed lower proficiency in Korean as grew older
  • = especially grammatical aspects
  • suggests early exposure may not prevent later language attrition
  • highlighting importance of ongoing language maintenance efforts for bilingual individuals.
• Studies of foreign adoptees - Bowers at al 2009

  • study effects of early language exposure on later language processing
  • adults exposed to Zulu or Hindu in childhood
  • no explicit knowledge in adulthood
  • Training on perception of phonemic distinctions - distinctions specific to Zulu/ Hindu
• Studies of foreign adoptees - Bowers at al 2009

  • only adults with prior language exposure showed significant improvements retaining - discriminate phonetic sounds in adulthood
  • early exposure may lead to long-lasting effects on language processing
  • = continued debate between crystallisation & interference hypothesis
• Experimental evidence against RHM - De Groot & Poot, 1997

  • investigated forward & backward translation processes in bilingual individuals
  • less fluent bilinguals = faster at forward translation (1st to 2nd) compared to backward translation (2nd to 1st)
  • finding = contradicted predictions of Revised Hierarchical Model = suggests translation processes not always follow hierarchical pattern proposed by RHM
• Experimental evidence against RHM - Bilingual stroop - Altarriba & Mathis, 1997

  • observed semantic interference & concept mediation in 2nd language during task
  • = suggests bilinguals experience interference from semantic information when processing L2
  • = supports idea of non-hierarchical processing in bilingual language tasks
• Experimental evidence against RHM - asymmetry

  • effects of asymmetry in translation may differ among bilinguals

  based on factors like

  • age of acquisition
  • relative proficiency

  effects may vary depending on task - such as

  • translation (production) or word recognition (comprehension)