This questionnaire is being used in bilinguals in Montreal, in Quebec, who speak English and French, in Finland (for Finnish-Swedish bilinguals), France and India. Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells warns that “bilingualism depends on the sociolinguistic situation of every area in which it occurs. For instance, the situation of Catalan in Catalonia is not the same it was sixty years ago; the Basque Country does not have so many language-switch situations because Euskera is not as widely spoken as Catalan, and Belgium, due political issues, does not have the same situation for French and Flemish”.
Un cop feta aquesta puntualització, lʼestudi determina diversos factors que fan que lʼindividu canviï de llengua. El primer és la competència que cada parlant té de cada una de les llengües. Quan la persona bilingüe parla català de vegades fa servir alguna paraula en castellà perquè no troba la paraula idònia en català, i a lʼinrevés. Un segon factor és el context en què es parla: la persona amb qui es parla o el tema de què es tracti fan que sʼutilitzi una llengua o lʼaltra. Finalment, hi ha els canvis inconscients dʼuna llengua a lʼaltra, que no es poden explicar ni per motius lingüístics ni sociolingüístics.Bearing this issue in mind, the study determines several factors that make people switch languages. The first one is the skills s/he has speaking each of those languages. When the bilingual person speaks in Catalan s/he sometimes uses some word in Spanish because s/he cannot find the right word in Catalan, and vice-versa. A second factor is the context: the other speaker or the topic of conversation forces one language or the other. Last, there are unaware language switches, which cannot be explained neither with linguistics nor sociolinguistic reasons.
According to Rodríguez-Fornells, “these unintentional changes can be related to a lack of brain cognitive control. We switch languages automatically without any reason”. The cognitive control is one of our most important skills and makes reference to the ability of controlling our behaviours, predicting mistakes, planning actions and stop them if necessary, and makes us aware of changes and conflicts in our surroundings. Therefore, this requires a system that is constantly monitoring our behaviour and its effect in our environment. In some cases, language switches are not noticed and a possible hypothesis for this is that they can be related to cognitive control aspects.
Bilingualism and cognition
The group led by Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells in IDIBELL studies whether the knowledge and use of a second language can boost cognitive skills, in which ways the brain can change and whether it can be positive or not as a neurorehabilitation strategy, among other issues.
Rodríguez-Fornells says that, “according to some authors, language switches seen in some groups -for instance, between siblings in bilingual families- can be negative regarding the richness of a language but other experts regard this as the ability to switch languages very fast, being positive -even creative for some- and it could transfer to other cognitive functions and make the brain more flexible in its cognitive control”.
Among those who see this behaviour as positive, Rodríguez-Fornells highlights the group of the researcher Ellen Byalstock, who published some articles “that suggest that having a second language can be a cognitive storage which allows us having more resources to face ageing or disease processes”.
En tot cas, adverteix lʼinvestigador, «encara estem començant a estudiar els efectes del bilingüisme en el cervell humà i cal tenir en compte que segons les llengües, les societats i lʼentorn polític el bilingüisme és dʼuna manera o dʼuna altra i cal esperar que això tingui efectes diferencials en el desenvolupament del cervell en els infants».In any case, warns the researcher, “We are still studying the effects of bilingualism on the human brain and should bear in mind that depending on the languages, societies and political surroundings, bilingualism can change and we should wait so that this has differential effects on the brain development on kids”.
Article: Rodríguez-Fornells, A.; Krämer, U. M.; Lorenzo-Seva, U.; Festman, J.; Münte, T. F. «Self-assessment of individual differences in language switching». Frontiers in Psichology, 10, January 2012. Doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00388.
