People who use both spoken and sign languages may achieve better results in tasks requiring executive control and visuospatial attention than monolinguals and bilingual users of spoken languages, according to research conducted at the Jagiellonian University.
There is a lively discussion in the world of science about the benefits of the ability to use two languages in controlling executive functions, e.g. planning, decision-making, problem solving and task performance.
The often observed advantage of bilingual people is explained by the fact that 'management' of two spoken languages provides a kind of 'training' of general cognitive control mechanisms, i.e. the mind's ability to regulate its own states and processes.
So far, research on this issue has focused mainly on bilingual people using spoken languages. However, it is not clear whether this hypothesis can be extended to the so-called bimodal bilingualism, i.e., using both spoken and sign language, similar to Ruby, the protagonist of the film CODA, “who was the only hearing person in her family.”
Scientists from the Institute of Psychology (Professor Dariusz Asanowicz, Professor Zofia Wodniecka, Klaudia Tondos) and the Institute of Pedagogy (Justyna Kotowicz, PhD) of the Jagiellonian University, together with Paweł Rutkowski, PhD, from the University of Warsaw, examined the impact of bimodal bilingualism on executive control and visuospatial attention. They published a paper on the topic in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
Ninety adults took part in the study. They were divided into three groups of 30: hearing “children of deaf parents,” using Polish Sign Language (PSL) and spoken Polish (bimodal bilingual participants); native speakers of Polish for whom English was a second language (unimodal bilingual participants); and people who speak one spoken language.
Participants completed two computer tasks that required focusing on a central stimulus while ignoring distracting stimuli. Reaction time and accuracy were measured in various experimental conditions to estimate the effectiveness of attention and executive control functions.
According to the study, distracting stimuli led to slower reaction times and lower accuracy, but spoken-language bilinguals performed better than monolingual participants.
“However, the most important result of this study is the observation that bimodal bilingual participants also achieved better results than monolingual people. Moreover, the effects in this group were stronger and more consistent than in unimodal bilinguals,” Professor Dariusz Asanowicz said.
Bimodal bilinguals also showed specific effects in visuospatial processing compared to the other groups, suggesting that their visual attention may cover a larger area and be more sensitive to peripheral stimuli.
“Our findings suggest that bimodal bilingualism may provide an advantage compared to unimodal bilingualism and monolingualism. Lifelong bimodal bilingualism may also be an effective form of training, supporting specific aspects of both executive control and visuospatial attention,” Justyna Kotowicz said.
The researchers caution that, given the difficulties in cross-sectional studies of individual differences and comparisons between unimodal and bimodal bilingualism, further empirical research is needed before definitive conclusions can be drawn. (PAP)
PAP - Science in Poland, Ewelina Krajczyńska-Wujec
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