Multilingualism

Impacts on the mind and brain

The Language and Social Background Questionnaire: Capturing Bilingualism on a Continuum

The LSBQ is a self-report questionnaire first described by Luk and Bialystok (2013). We updated the questionnaire and its description in Anderson et al., (2018), with a factor analysis. Our approach allows people who use the questionnaire to derive two factors describing (1) the extent of non-English language proficiency and use at home, and (2) non-English language use socially. A third factor captures English proficiency and use.

The LSBQ and scoring information can be downloaded here.

Anderson, J. A., Mak, L., Keyvani Chahi, A., & Bialystok, E. (2018). The language and social background questionnaire: Assessing degree of bilingualism in a diverse population. Behavior research methods, 50, 250-263.

Luk, G., & Bialystok, E. (2013). Bilingualism is not a categorical variable: Interaction between language proficiency and usage. Journal of cognitive Psychology, 25(5), 605-621.

Why Continuous Measures?

Continuous measures give us a greater chance of capturing effects that scale with experience. This allows us to convert noise and uncertainty (for example, whether a person is bilingual or monolingual if these distributions overlap) into signal.

Continuous measures also allow us to assess the degree of bilingualism - since bilingualism is not a categorical variable. This approach affords more power, the ability to capture nonlinear effects, and the ability to look at how various continuous measures of bilingualism interact since some may be better predictors in some circumstances than others.

Gullifer, J., & Anderson, J. A. (2023). Challenges of complexity, and possible solutions: a commentary on rethinking multilingual experience through a Systems Framework of Bilingualism by Titone and Tiv. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 26(1), 22-24.

Bilingualism as a Contributing Factor to Reserve

Cognitive Reserve: Bilingualism Buys Years of Cognitive Normalcy

Among people with a dementia diagnosis, bilinguals are on average, 2-5 years older than monolinguals suggesting that somehow, they manage to hold out for longer in the face of incipient neuropathology.

We ran a meta-analysis which examined both incidence (whether you eventually get dementia) and age of onset (how old you are when you get diagnosed), and showed that across 24 studies examining these effects, that bilingualism is protective and contributes to cognitive reserve protecting people from the cognitive decline associated with dementia.

Anderson, J. A., Hawrylewicz, K., & Grundy, J. G. (2020). Does bilingualism protect against dementia? A meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 27, 952-965.

Cognitive Reserve: Bilingualism Bolsters Cognitive Performance Despite Relatively Higher Atrophy

While bilinguals are afforded extra time, dementia pathology still progresses at a typical pace. This leads to the somewhat paradoxical finding that after matching for age, cognitive level, and diagnosis, many studies report bilinguals have more significant atrophy than monolinguals than one would expect given all other indicators.

...In fact, if we match