We investigated the impact of a short intensive language course on attentional functions. We examined 33 participants of a one-week Scottish Gaelic course and compared them to 34 controls: 16 active controls who participated in courses of comparable duration and intensity but not involving foreign language learning and 18 passive controls who followed their usual routines. Participants completed auditory tests of attentional inhibition and switching. There was no difference between the groups in any measures at the beginning of the course. At the end of the course, a significant improvement in attention switching was observed in the language group (p < .001) but not the control group (p = .127), independent of the age of participants (18–78 years). Half of the language participants (n = 17) were retested nine months after their course. All those who practiced Gaelic 5 hours or more per week improved from their baseline performance. In contrast, those who practiced 4 hours or fewer showed an inconsistent pattern: some improved while others stayed the same or deteriorated. Our results suggest that even a short period of intensive language learning can modulate attentional functions and that all age groups can benefit from this effect. Moreover, these short-term effects can be maintained through continuous practice.

Recent studies, using predominantly visual tasks, indicate that early bilinguals outperform monolinguals on attention tests. It remains less clear whether such advantages extend to those bilinguals who have acquired their second language later in life.We examined this question in 38 monolingual and 60 bilingual university students. The bilingual group was further subdivided into early childhood, late childhood and early adulthood bilinguals. The assessment consisted of five subtests from the clinically validated Test of Everyday Attention (TEA). Overall, bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on auditory attention tests, but not on visual search tasks. The latter observation suggests that the differences between bilinguals and monolinguals are specific and not due to a generally higher cognitive performance in bilinguals.Within the bilingual group, early childhood bilinguals showed a larger advantage on attention switching, late childhood/early adulthood bilinguals on selective attention. We conclude that the bilingual advantage extends into the auditory domain and is not confined to childhood bilinguals, although its scope might be slightly different in early and late bilinguals.

Purpose: To test the proposal that the tense deficit that has been demonstrated for children with specific language impairment (SLI) in other languages is also found in child Spanish and that low performance on tense-related measures can distinguish Spanish-speaking children with SLI from those without.Method: The authors evaluated evidence from existing spontaneous production, elicited production, and grammaticality judgment studies of finiteness in child Spanish. They measured the relationship of 7 spontaneous speech measures with previous receptive and expressive measures of finiteness and performed a discriminant function analysis, using tense as the target variable, to classify monolingual child Spanish (n= 55) as representing SLI or as typically developing (TD).Results: Spontaneous speech measures correlated with the results of previous receptive and expressive measures of child Spanish that show a tense deficit. The SLI group was shown to have statistically lower scores than the TD group on 6 of 7 spontaneous speech measures. Multiple discriminant functions, including tense measures by themselves and in combination with spontaneous speech measures, were shown to provide fair to good sensitivity and specificity in the classification of children as having SLI vs. TD.Conclusion: The findings support the contention that the tense-marking deficit is a plausible clinical marker of SLI for Spanish-speaking children.

While much of the literature on bilingualism and cognition focuses on group comparisons (monolinguals vs bilinguals or language learners vs controls), here we examine the potential differential effects of intensive language learning on subjects with distinct language experiences and demographic profiles. Using an individual differences approach, we assessed attentional performance from 105 university-educated Gaelic learners aged 21–85. Participants were tested before and after beginner, elementary, and intermediate courses using tasks measuring i.) sustained attention, ii.) inhibition, and iii.) attention switching. We examined the relationship between attentional performance and Gaelic level, previous language experience, gender, and age. Gaelic level predicted attention switching performance: those in higher levels initially outperformed lower levels, however lower levels improved the most. Age also predicted performance: as age increased attention switching decreased. Nevertheless, age did not interact with session for any attentional measure, thus the impact of language learning on cognition was detectable across the lifespan.