The Ginger Marcus Foreign Language Learning Speaker Series - Lecture

Dr. John W. Schwieter

 

Language Acquisition, Multilingualism, and Cognition Lab / Bilingualism Matters

Department of Psychology

Department of Languages and Literatures

Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

 

 

Photo of Dr. John W. Schwieter

 

 

Lecture: Tuesday, March 26, 2024, at 4 pm in Hurst Lounge

 

Cognitive and Neural Consequences

of Two (or more) Languages in One Mind

 

Individuals who have proficiency in more than one language can often name an object using more than one word. For instance, a Spanish-Czech speaker may call a cat either a gato or kočka. Yet, these words refer to the same animal. This multiple-word-to-one-concept mapping, along with many other factors and multilingual experiences, have important implications for language processing and the brain. This talk offers an overview of how words in different languages are represented and processed, and why multilingualism may lead to long-lasting, cognitive advantages.

 

 

*************************************************

 

 

 

*The Ginger Marcus Foreign Language Learning Speaker Series at Washington University in St. Louis is sponsored by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures; the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures; the Department of Jewish, Islamic and Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures; Applied Linguistics Program; the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.