Multiple sclerosis and bilingualism: some initial findings

Aveledo, F. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7736-1600, Higueras, Y., Marinis, T., Bose, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0193-5292, Pliatsikas, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7093-1773, Meldaña-Rivera, A., Martínez-Ginés, M. L., García-Domínguez, J. M., Lozano-Ros, A., Cuello, J. P. and Goicochea-Briceño, H. (2021) Multiple sclerosis and bilingualism: some initial findings. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 11 (4). pp. 551-577. ISSN 1879-9272 doi: 10.1075/lab.18037.ave

Abstract/Summary

It has been suggested that bilingualism is beneficial for executive control and could have positive long-term effects by delaying the onset of symptoms of degenerative diseases. This research investigates, for the first time, the impact of bilingualism on executive control (monitoring and inhibitory control) in individuals with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a neurodegenerative disease which commonly causes deficiencies in the cognitive system. Bilingual and monolingual adults, with and without an MS diagnosis, performed a flanker task with two degrees of monitoring demands (high monitoring vs. low monitoring). Results showed that bilingual MS patients had inhibitory control and monitoring abilities that were similar to healthy bilingual controls. In contrast, monolingual MS patients showed similar inhibitory control but significantly worse monitoring abilities compared to monolingual healthy controls. We propose that the similar behaviour between bilingual groups suggests that bilingualism might counteract cognitive deficits related to MS, especially with respect to monitoring. The high monitoring cost observed in monolingual patients seems related to underlying deficits in monitoring and possibly switching, executive control abilities commonly impaired in MS patients from early stages. Our findings provide some preliminary evidence for the cognitive reserve hypothesis in bilingual MS patients.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/83503
Identification Number/DOI	10.1075/lab.18037.ave
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN) Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Literature and Languages > English Language and Applied Linguistics Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Clinical Language Sciences
Uncontrolled Keywords	monitoring, flanker task, bilingual, monolingual, Multiple Sclerosis
Publisher	John Benjamins
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