| 1. |
- Bylund, Emanuel, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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Does bilingualism come with linguistic costs? A meta-analytic review of the bilingual lexical deficit
- 2023
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Ingår i: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1069-9384 .- 1531-5320. ; 30:3, s. 897-913
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- A series of recent studies have shown that the once-assumed cognitive advantage of bilingualism finds little support in the evidence available to date. Surprisingly, however, the view that bilingualism incurs linguistic costs (the so-called lexical deficit) has not yet been subjected to the same degree of scrutiny, despite its centrality for our understanding of the human capacity for language. The current study implemented a comprehensive meta-analysis to address this gap. By analyzing 478 effect sizes from 130 studies on expressive vocabulary, we found that observed lexical deficits could not be attributed to bilingualism: Simultaneous bilinguals (who acquired both languages from birth) did not exhibit any lexical deficit, nor did sequential bilinguals (who acquired one language from birth and a second language after that) when tested in their mother tongue. Instead, systematic evidence for a lexical deficit was found among sequential bilinguals when tested in their second language, and more so for late than for early second language learners. This result suggests that a lexical deficit may be a phenomenon of second language acquisition rather than bilingualism per se.
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| 2. |
- Bylund, Emanuel, et al.
(författare)
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Revisiting the bilingual lexical deficit: The impact of age of acquisition
- 2019
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Ingår i: Cognition. - : Elsevier BV. - 0010-0277 .- 1873-7838. ; 182, s. 45-49
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Whereas the cognitive advantages brought about by bilingualism have recently been called into question, the so-called ‘lexical deficit’ in bilinguals is still largely taken for granted. Here, we argue that, in analogy with cognitive advantages, the lexical deficit does not apply across the board of bilinguals, but varies as a function of acquisition trajectory. To test this, we implement a novel methodological design, where the variables of bilingualism and first/second language status have been fully crossed in four different groups. While the results confirm effects of bilingualism on lexical proficiency and processing, they show more robust effects of age of acquisition. We conclude that the traditional view of the linguistic costs of bilingualism need to give way to a new understanding of lexical development in which age of acquisition is seen as a major determinant.
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| 3. |
- Cavalli-Björkman, Görel, 1941-, et al.
(författare)
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Blomsterspråk ...
- 2007
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 4. |
- Khachaturyan, Maria, et al.
(författare)
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What is a language error? A discussion
- 2022
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Ingår i: Apples - Journal of Applied Language Studies. - : Apples - Journal of Applied Language Studies. - 1457-9863. ; 16:3, s. 102-127
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Why are we so afraid of making mistakes? Students in language classes, speakers of non-standard varieties, professionals working abroad – we all share the anxiety of dropping the ball. But where does this anxiety come from? Why do we perceive certain linguistic features as errors in the first place? Is there any inherent faultiness in such features, or is a language error arbitrary? And if it is arbitrary, are errors less real? In this discussion, Maria Khachaturyan, Maria Kuteeva and Svetlana Vetchinnikova zoom in on the social life of variation in language and its uneasy relationship with our normative ideas. After that, Gunnar Norrman and Dmitri Leontjev give their comments. The discussion closes with replies by the first three authors.
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| 5. |
- Norrman, Anders, et al.
(författare)
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Predicting new cases of hypertension in Swedish primary care with a machine learning tool
- 2024
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Ingår i: Preventive Medicine Reports. - : Elsevier. - 2211-3355. ; 44
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Many individuals with hypertension remain undiagnosed. We aimed to develop a predictive model for hypertension using diagnostic codes from prevailing electronic medical records in Swedish primary care.Methods: This sex- and age-matched case-control (1:5) study included patients aged 30 -65 years living in the Stockholm Region, Sweden, with a newly recorded diagnosis of hypertension during 2010 -19 (cases) and individuals without a recorded hypertension diagnosis during 2010 -19 (controls), in total 507,618 individuals. Patients with diagnoses of cardiovascular diseases or diabetes were excluded. A stochastic gradient boosting machine learning model was constructed using the 1,309 most registered ICD-10 codes from primary care for three years prior the hypertension diagnosis.Results: The model showed an area under the curve (95 % confidence interval) of 0.748 (0.742 -0.753) for females and 0.745 (0.740 -0.751) for males for predicting diagnosis of hypertension within three years. The sensitivity was 63 % and 68 %, and the specificity 76 % and 73 %, for females and males, respectively. The 25 diagnoses that contributed the most to the model for females and males all exhibited a normalized relative influence >1 %. The codes contributing most to the model, all with an odds ratio of marginal effects >1 for both sexes, were dyslipidaemia, obesity, and encountering health services in other circumstances.Conclusions: This machine learning model, using prevailing recorded diagnoses within primary health care, may contribute to the identification of patients at risk of unrecognized hypertension. The added value of this predictive model beyond information of blood pressure warrants further study.
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| 6. |
- Norrman, Gunnar, 1981-
(författare)
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Age and Constraints on Language Learning : First Language Retention and Second Language Acquisition in International Adoptees
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates the influence of age of acquisition on the long-term second language development of international adoptees. Because age of acquisition typically coincides with the onset of bilingualism, the study of maturational age effects in second language acquisition has been empirically and conceptually entangled with changes in language input and use. For international adoptees, however, because the adoptive language is acquired under similar linguistic conditions as non-adopted peers – albeit at a later age of acquisition – questions of age and second language acquisition can be investigated without confounding influences of bilingualism. Study I presents the theoretical argument that, because of the delay in acquisition, the language development of international adoptees should be regarded as a special case of second language acquisition. Furthermore, consistent with the contemporary study of second language acquisition, the effects of this delay should be investigated through ultimate attainment observed in adults. Study II shows that adults in Sweden who had been adopted from Spanish-speaking countries, and Spanish-Swedish bilinguals with the same age of acquisition (3-8 years), have greater difficulty in perceiving Swedish vowel distinctions that do not exist in Spanish compared to native Swedish speakers. This suggests that age of acquisition is a decisive factor for speech perception in a second language. In Study III, Chinese-Swedish adoptees are found to deviate from native Swedish speakers in their production of Swedish vowels that are phonologically identical in Chinese, but not in vowels that are distinctive in both languages. While these results are consistent with predictions based on assumptions of transfer and interference in bilingual speakers, they cannot be explained based on these premises. Instead, the results suggest that early language-specific experiences will affect the pronunciation of vowels in the second language regardless of whether the native language is in use or not. In Study IV, the neural underpinnings of the behavioral results are investigated electrophysiologically, using EEG. This study shows that adult adoptees retain increased neural sensitivity to a native Chinese lexical tone contrast without any exposure to the language for over 15 years. This is reflected in a fast neural response stemming from the auditory cortex and is indexed by the mismatch negativity event-related potential. This suggests that native language sensitivity is not only retained, but is continuously involved in the moment-to-moment processing of speech sounds. Neural oscillations furthermore reveal the involvement of inhibitory processes to attenuate this sensitivity. Finally, positive correlations between neural responses to the native and the adoptive language show that native language retention is not in itself an impediment for second language acquisition. The results from these three studies show how language-specific experiences lead to irreversible specialization in the brain, which will affect the long-term acquisition of a second language. This finding invites a re-evaluation of the hypothesis of a critical period for second language acquisition, based on the notions of probabilistic epigenesis and flexible behavioral adaptation following experience-based functional neural reorganization in early childhood.
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| 7. |
- Norrman, Gunnar, et al.
(författare)
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Irreversible specialization for speech perception in early international adoptees compensated by inhibitory control in adulthood
- 2022
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Ingår i: Cerebral Cortex. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1047-3211 .- 1460-2199. ; 32:17, s. 3777-3785
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In early childhood, the human brain goes through a period of tuning to native speech sounds but retains remarkable flexibility, allowing the learning of new languages throughout life. However, little is known about the stability over time of early neural specialization for speech and its influence on the formation of novel language representations. Here, we provide evidence that early international adoptees, who lose contact with their native language environment after adoption, retain enhanced sensitivity to a native lexical tone contrast more than 15 years after being adopted to Sweden from China, in the absence of any pretest familiarization with the stimuli. Changes in oscillatory brain activity showed how adoptees resort to inhibiting the processing of defunct phonological representations, rather than forgetting or replacing them with new ones. Furthermore, neurophysiological responses to native and nonnative contrasts were not negatively correlated, suggesting that native language retention does not interfere with the acquisition of adoptive phonology acquisition. These results suggest that early language experience provides strikingly resilient specialization for speech which is compensated for through inhibitory control mechanisms as learning conditions change later in life.
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| 8. |
- Norrman, Gunnar, et al.
(författare)
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Long-term language development in international adoptees
- 2016
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Ingår i: Starting Over – The Language Development in Internationally-Adopted Children. - Amsterdam : John Benjamins Publishing Company. - 9789027244086 - 9789027267290 ; , s. 125-146
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The linguistic development of internationally adopted children has been studied extensively for several decades. Whereas this research has mainly concerned toddlers and pre-school children during their first years after adoption, school-age children, and adolescents, there is currently scarce empirical evidence on the long-term linguistic development in adults with adoption background. While studies of infants and pre-school children generally show fast and positive short-term progress in linguistic development, medium-term studies (4–10 years after adoption) describe adoptees as still “lagging behind” their non-adopted peers. This chapter reviews the studies to date on long-term outcomes in the linguistic development of adoptees. What happens after more than ten years of exposure and into adulthood? From the review, we conclude that slight differences between adopted and non-adopted L1 speakers of a language often remain into adulthood. In addition, the limited evidence that exists to date suggests that adults who at a young age emigrated with their families to the L2 environment, and therefore continued to develop their L1, exhibit similar levels of L2 proficiency as internationally adopted adults. However, more research is required to further substantiate and generalize the conclusions that are made on the basis of our review.
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| 9. |
- Norrman, Gunnar, et al.
(författare)
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The irreversibility of sensitive period effects in language development : evidence from second language acquisition in international adoptees
- 2016
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Ingår i: Developmental Science. - : Wiley. - 1363-755X .- 1467-7687. ; 19:3, s. 513-520
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The question of a sensitive period in language acquisition has been subject to extensive research and debate for more than half a century. While it has been well established that the ability to learn new languages declines in early years, the extent to which this outcome depends on biological maturation in contrast to previously acquired knowledge remains disputed. In the present study, we addressed this question by examining phonetic discriminatory abilities in early second language (L2) speakers of Swedish, who had either maintained their first language (L1) (immigrants) or had lost it (international adoptees), using native speaker controls. Through this design, we sought to disentangle the effects of the maturational state of the learner on L2 development from the effects of L1 interference: if additional language development is indeed constrained by an interfering L1, then adoptees should outperform immigrant speakers. The results of an auditory lexical decision task, in which fine vowel distinctions in Swedish had been modified, showed, however, no difference between the L2 groups. Instead, both L2 groups scored significantly lower than the native speaker group. The three groups did not differ in their ability to discriminate non-modified words. These findings demonstrate that L1 loss is not a crucial condition for successfully acquiring an L2, which in turn is taken as support for a maturational constraints view on L2 acquisition.
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| 10. |
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