Are bilingualism and/or biculturalism good for a person’s positive well being? A growing number of studies have shown different positive outcomes of being exposed to two cultures or speaking two languages respectively, but the benefits of being both bilingual and bicultural have rarely been investigated theoretically or empirically. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the main beneficial outcomes of bilingualism and biculturalism, and to integrate these benefits into a new conceptual framework： Positive Bilingualism and Biculturalism GEAR model. The (...) GEAR model suggests that the beneficial outcomes of bilingualism and biculturalism can be systematically classified into four positive dimensions (psychological Growth; cognitive Exploration; linguistic Awareness; social Reinforcement), in which there are dynamic interactions among these four dimensions. The hypothetical GEAR model provides an intricate theoretical approach to understand the potential benefits to an individual of experiencing more than one language and one culture in their life. The proposed model in this research offers a systematic framework for conducting future research to examine whether bilingualisms and biculturalism accrue benefits to the individual. (shrink)

To construct their first lexicon, infants must determine the relationship between native phonological variation and the meanings of words. This process is arguably more complex for bilingual learners who are often confronted with phonological conflict: phonological variation that is lexically relevant in one language may be lexically irrelevant in the other. In a series of four experiments, the present study investigated English–Mandarin bilingual infants’ abilities to negotiate phonological conflict introduced by learning both a tone and a non-tone language. In a (...) novel word learning task, bilingual children were tested on their sensitivity to tone variation in English and Mandarin contexts. Their abilities to interpret tone variation in a language-dependent manner were compared to those of monolingual Mandarin learning infants. Results demonstrated that at 12–13 months, bilingual infants demonstrated the ability to bind tone to word meanings in Mandarin, but to disregard tone variation when learning new words in English. In contrast, monolingual learners of Mandarin did not show evidence of integrating tones into word meanings in Mandarin at the same age even though they were learning a tone language. However, a tone discrimination paradigm confirmed that monolingual Mandarin learning infants were able to tell these tones apart at 12–13 months under a different set of conditions. Later, at 17–18 months, monolingual Mandarin learners were able to bind tone variation to word meanings when learning new words. Our findings are discussed in terms of cognitive adaptations associated with bilingualism that may ease the negotiation of phonological conflict and facilitate precocious uptake of certain properties of each language. (shrink)

Bilingual speakers have often been found to be superior in taking the perspective of another person. Also, females are commonly found to have enhanced perspective taking abilities compared with males, with male PT being generally more easily affected by external factors. The present study investigated whether bilingualism improves PT in males more strongly than in females. In total, 108 bilingual and 108 matched monolingual adults, with equal numbers of males and females, filled in the PT subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity (...) index. While monolinguals showed the typical result of females scoring higher on PT than males, scores of male and female bilinguals did not differ, with both bilingual groups scoring as high as female monolinguals. Thus, bilingualism enhanced self-reported PT only in males, suggesting that male PT can be enhanced through socialization. (shrink)