Cognitive Reserve and Language Experience: Can Long-Term Use of Multiple Languages Protect Our Brains from the Effects of Aging?

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Cover image for research topic "Cognitive Reserve and Language Experience: Can Long-Term Use of Multiple Languages Protect Our Brains from the Effects of Aging?"
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Review
30 September 2020
Moderation-Mediation Effects in Bilingualism and Cognitive Reserve
Roberto R. Heredia
1 more and 
Luis A. Vega
A hypothetical mediation (bilingualism) and moderation (immigration, education, immigration × education; immigration × bilingualism × education, immigration × bilingualism, and bilingualism × education) model of bilingual cognitive reserve (cf. Fairchild and MacKinnon, 2009); working memory capacity (attention span), and general intelligence (cf. Martin et al., 2020).

We first provide a critical review of the existing findings on bilingualism as a contributor to cognitive reserve from moderator-mediator warranting cause-effect research conclusions. We next address the question of direct or indirect effects between bilingualism and neurocognitive protective factors influencing the associated age-related mental deficits. The existing findings support bilingualism as a predictor and as a moderator. Third, we propose cognitive reserve models of bilingualism describing analytical approaches that allow testing of these models and hypotheses related to path strength and causal relationships between predictors, moderators, and mediators. Lastly and most importantly, we suggest using large datasets available via open repositories. This can aid in the testing of theoretical models, clarifying the roles of moderators and mediators, and assessing the research viability of multi-causal paths that can influence cognitive reserve. Creating collaborative datasets to test these models would greatly advance our field and identify critical variables in the study of the bilingual aging brain.

8,601 views
4 citations
Conceptual Analysis
29 September 2020

For bilinguals, research suggests that both languages are constantly active and competing in the mind, even when only using one. However, this body of work has reported inconclusive results on the long-term effects of the constant parallel activation and use of more than one language on the brain. This has mostly been due to inconsistent comparisons between groups of bilinguals and monolinguals. Not all bilingualisms are the same. The investigation of the use of more than one language over a lifetime offers the opportunity to better understand the consequences of bilingualism on the brain. However, few studies have specifically looked at the long-standing effects of being an interpreter. In this paper, we review theories from the field of Translation and Interpreting Studies and provide a critical review of work that offers insight on the cognitive and neurocognitive effects that seem to arise from the unique, highly-cognitive-demanding practices experienced by interpreters.

5,197 views
12 citations
Hypothesis and Theory
03 September 2020
Cognitive Persistence and Executive Function in the Multilingual Brain During Aging
Susan Teubner-Rhodes
(A) Cognitive persistence modulates the relationship between ease of task and performance. Performance increases as the task becomes easier. Given equivalent task difficulty, individuals with higher levels of persistence have better performance. This effect is maximal at intermediate levels of task difficulty (circles). (B) Cognitive persistence modulates the relationship between cognitive ability and performance. Performance increases as cognitive ability increases, but high cognitive persistence can offset low cognitive ability. Specifically, an individual with relatively low cognitive ability but high persistence (orange circle) can achieve the same level of performance as individuals with higher ability but lower persistence (blue and gray circles).

Researchers have debated the extent to which the experience of speaking more than two languages induces long-term neuroplasticity that protects multilinguals from the adverse cognitive effects of aging. In this review, I propose a novel theory that multilingualism affects cognitive persistence, the application of effort to improve performance on challenging tasks. I review recent evidence demonstrating that the cingulo-opercular network, consisting of the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), supports cognitive persistence. I then show that this same network is involved in multilingual language control and changes with multilingual language experience. While both early and late multilinguals exhibit differences in the cingulo-opercular network compared to monolinguals, I find that early multilinguals have a pattern of decreased dACC activity and increased left IFG activity that may enable more efficient cognitive control, whereas late multilinguals show larger dACC responses to conflict that may be associated with higher cognitive persistence. I further demonstrate that multilingual effects on the cingulo-opercular network are present in older adults and have been implicated in the mitigation of cognitive symptoms in age-related neurodegenerative disorders. Finally, I argue that mixed results in the literature are due, in part, to the confound between cognitive persistence and ability in most executive function tasks, and I provide guidance for separating these processes in future research.

6,374 views
6 citations
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