Subventions et des contributions :

Subvention ou bourse octroyée s'appliquant à plus d'un exercice financier. (2017-2018 à 2022-2023)

My program of research investigates cognitive aspects of bilingual language processing. The goal is to understand how bilinguals represent, process, and learn their two languages. Bilingualism is a highly relevant topic to Canadian society. We are an officially English-French bilingual country, but we also have many citizens (20% in the 2011 census) whose mother tongue is neither English nor French, especially in our largest cities. One of the biggest challenges facing most of our newest residents is to learn English or French so that they can function in their new communities. Because of the prevalence and importance of bilingualism in Canada, it is essential that we understand what is happening in the mind of the bilingual as they speak and read in each of their languages, and understand the factors related to the ability to successfully communicate in more than one language.
Specifically, my research will address three topics in bilingualism. One series of studies will investigate word reading. The aim of the research is to understand how a bilingual’s first language influences their reading in a second language and vice versa. A second series of studies will examine how a bilingual understands the meanings of pairs of words that are translations of each other but not entirely equivalent in meaning. These subtle differences across languages pose a challenge to learners of a second language and to translation computer programs. The third series of studies will investigate whether success at learning a new language is predicted by an individual’s statistical learning ability. There are large individual differences in second language learning outcomes, but the source of these differences has been elusive. A recent proposal is that that a person’s general capacity to pick up on statistical structure in the environment is related to second language learning, but it has not yet been well tested.
The research will involve not only English-French bilinguals, but also individuals who know English and one of several other languages. The goal is to extend our understanding of bilingualism, which now is based primarily on individuals who know English and one of a small number of Western European languages, to individuals whose languages differ in the writing system that they use, and to languages that are associated with different cultural contexts. This will help ensure that our theories of bilingual language processing capture the important characteristics of all bilinguals. The work will use state of the art methods in the study of language processing, including eye tracking and event-related potentials. The research program will provide a better understanding of the challenges associated with learning and using two languages, and the factors related to success.