Conferência Linguistic typology as a factor of bilingual advantage in metacognitive performance

Leona Polyanskaya

Investigadora Coordenadora da FPCE-UC (ERC: TypoMetaLing I Effect of linguistic experience on metacognition in language tasks and transfer to non-linguistic behavior)

Metacognition is the ability to monitor and evaluate one's own cognitive performance. Simultaneous acquisition of multiple linguistic systems hones many cognitive processes related to phonological memory and attention, which may affect the conscious awareness of what is being learned and the ability to evaluate cognitive performance in the tasks that activate the same neuro-cognitive mechanisms that are brought to bear when natural language is processed. We assessed the effect of bilingualism on metacognitive processing in the artificial language learning task, in 2 experiments varying in task difficulty. We found bilingual advantage in metacognitive performance, with no differences between groups in cognitive performance. However, bilinguals do not constitute a homogeneous population, and it was unclear which aspects of bilingualism affect metacognition. Further, we tested the hypothesis that simultaneous acquisition and use of typologically different languages is the main driving factor of bilingual advantage in metacognitive efficiency. We ran 4 experiments to compare metacognition of Basque-Spanish bilinguals (typologically different languages), Catalan-Spanish bilinguals (typologically similar languages), and Spanish monolinguals in an artificial language learning task in visual and auditory modalities on linguistic and non-linguistic material. The hypothesis was confirmed in the auditory modality for linguistic stimuli; no between-domain transfer of metacognitive abilities was observed at the individual level.