Visuospatial perspective-taking in conversation and the role of bilingual experience

Little is known about how listeners use spatial perspective information to guide comprehension. Perspective-taking abilities have been linked to executive function in both children and adults. Bilingual children excel at perspective-taking tasks compared to their monolingual counterparts (e.g., Greenberg, Bellana, & Bialystok, 2013), possibly due to the executive function benefits conferred by the experience of switching between languages. Here we examine the mechanisms of visuo-spatial perspective-taking in adults, and the effects of bilingualism on this process. We report novel results regarding the ability of listeners to appreciate the spatial perspective of another person in conversation: While spatial perspective-taking does pose challenges, listeners rapidly accommodated the speaker’s perspective, in time to guide the on-line processing of the speaker’s utterances. Moreover, once adopted, spatial perspectives were enduring, resulting in costs when switching to a different perspective, even when that perspective is one’s own. In addition to these findings, direct comparison of monolingual and bilingual participants offer no support for the hypothesis that bilingualism improves the ability to appreciate the perspective of another person during language comprehension. In fact, in some cases adult bilinguals have significantly more difficulty with perspective-laden language.

[1]  Ellen Bialystok,et al.  Cardinal Limits: Evidence from Language Awareness and Bilingualism for Developing Concepts of Number. , 1997 .

[2]  Sarah Brown-Schmidt,et al.  The rapid use of gender information: evidence of the time course of pronoun resolution from eyetracking , 2000, Cognition.

[3]  Christine Fennema-Notestine,et al.  Bilingualism affects picture naming but not picture classification , 2005, Memory & cognition.

[4]  D H Brainard,et al.  The Psychophysics Toolbox. , 1997, Spatial vision.

[5]  Bruce D. McCandliss,et al.  Testing the Efficiency and Independence of Attentional Networks , 2002, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[6]  A. Ardila,et al.  Stroop effect in Spanish–English bilinguals , 2002, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

[7]  J. Rieser.  Access to knowledge of spatial structure at novel points of observation. , 1989, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[8]  Juan Carlos Bustamante,et al.  Bridging language and attention: Brain basis of the impact of bilingualism on cognitive control , 2010, NeuroImage.

[9]  P. D. Eimas,et al.  Studies on the categorization of speech by infants , 1983, Cognition.

[10]  M. Kuhn,et al.  An empirical investigation of self-attitudes. , 1954 .

[11]  G. Loftus.  On interpretation of interactions , 1978 .

[12]  Doris Aaronson,et al.  Long-term language attainment of bilingual immigrants: Predictive variables and language group differences , 2002 .

[13]  Sunny Shin,et al.  Do 15-Month-Old Infants Understand False Beliefs ? , 2005 .

[14]  B. Keysar,et al.  The Effect of Culture on Perspective Taking , 2007, Psychological science.

[15]  Jennie E. Pyers,et al.  The Source of Enhanced Cognitive Control in Bilinguals , 2008, Psychological science.

[16]  N. Epley,et al.  Reflexively mindblind: Using theory of mind to interpret behavior requires effortful attention , 2010 .

[17]  Ellen Bialystok,et al.  The relationship between bilingualism and the development of cognitive processes in problem solving , 1998, Applied Psycholinguistics.

[18]  Albert Costa,et al.  On the bilingual advantage in conflict processing: Now you see it, now you don’t , 2009, Cognition.

[19]  N. Phillips,et al.  Ageing and bilingualism : Absence of a “ “ bilingual advantage ” ” in Stroop interference in a nonimmigrant sample , 2011 .

[20]  Ellen Bialystok,et al.  Components of executive control with advantages for bilingual children in two cultures , 2009, Cognition.

[21]  K. Rayner,et al.  Frequency drives lexical access in reading but not in speaking: the frequency-lag hypothesis. , 2011, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[22]  Michael F. Schober,et al.  Spatial Dialogue between Partners with Mismatched Abilities , 2009, Spatial Language and Dialogue.

[23]  付伶俐.  打磨Using Language,倡导新理念 , 2014 .

[24]  P. Bloom.  Précis of How Children Learn the Meanings of Words , 2001, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[25]  F. Craik,et al.  Cognitive control and lexical access in younger and older bilinguals. , 2008, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[26]  L. Moses,et al.  Individual differences in inhibitory control and children's theory of mind. , 2001, Child development.

[27]  Michael C. Anderson,et al.  Inhibiting Your Native Language , 2007, Psychological science.

[28]  H. Markus,et al.  “Who Am I?” The Cultural Psychology of the Conceptual Self , 2001 .

[29]  Yuhong V. Jiang,et al.  Inhibition Accompanies Reference-Frame Selection , 1998 .

[30]  A. Ardila,et al.  Verbal Fluency and Repetition Skills in Healthy Older Spanish-English Bilinguals , 2000, Applied neuropsychology.

[31]  M. Tanenhaus,et al.  The role of perspective in identifying domains of reference , 2008, Cognition.

[32]  L. Kaufman,et al.  Handbook of perception and human performance , 1986 .

[33]  Paul Boersma,et al.  Praat: doing phonetics by computer , 2003 .

[34]  Jeffrey M. Zacks,et al.  Transformations of visuospatial images. , 2005, Behavioral and cognitive neuroscience reviews.

[35]  K. Paap,et al.  There is no coherent evidence for a bilingual advantage in executive processing , 2013, Cognitive Psychology.

[36]  F. Craik,et al.  Bilingual Minds , 2009, Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society.

[37]  Ellen Bialystok,et al.  Bilingualism as a contributor to cognitive reserve: Evidence from brain atrophy in Alzheimer’s disease , 2012, Cortex.

[38]  J. Morton,et al.  Bilinguals show an advantage in cognitive control – the question is why , 2009 .

[39]  Á. Kovács.  Early bilingualism enhances mechanisms of false-belief reasoning. , 2009, Developmental science.

[40]  Angela Y. Lee,et al.  “I” Value Freedom, but “We” Value Relationships: Self-Construal Priming Mirrors Cultural Differences in Judgment , 1999 .

[41]  A. Allport,et al.  Bilingual Language Switching in Naming: Asymmetrical Costs of Language Selection , 1999 .

[42]  D. Barr,et al.  The Egocentric Basis of Language Use , 1998 .

[43]  N. Epley,et al.  Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment. , 2004, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[44]  William S. Horton,et al.  Conversational Common Ground and Memory Processes in Language Production , 2005 .

[45]  Albert Costa,et al.  Bilingualism aids conflict resolution: Evidence from the ANT task , 2008, Cognition.

[46]  E. Bialystok.  Global-local and trail-making tasks by monolingual and bilingual children: beyond inhibition. , 2010, Developmental psychology.

[47]  Douglas M. Bates,et al.  Linear mixed model implementation in lme4 , 2013 .

[48]  A. Papafragou.  Mindreading and Verbal Communication , 2002 .

[49]  Paul Bloom,et al.  The Curse of Knowledge in Reasoning About False Beliefs , 2007, Psychological science.

[50]  A. Desrochers,et al.  English performance of proficient bilingual adults on the Boston Naming Test , 2002 .

[51]  S. Glucksberg,et al.  Reasoning about other people's beliefs: bilinguals have an advantage. , 2012, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[52]  T. Gollan,et al.  Semantic and letter fluency in Spanish-English bilinguals. , 2002, Neuropsychology.

[53]  Yiya Chen,et al.  Let’s you do that: Sharing the cognitive burdens of dialogue , 2007 .

[54]  I. Fischler,et al.  Memory in a monolingual mode: When are bilinguals at a disadvantage? , 1987 .

[55]  Kara D. Federmeier,et al.  Timed picture naming: Extended norms and validation against previous studies , 2003, Behavior research methods, instruments, & computers : a journal of the Psychonomic Society, Inc.

[56]  H. Triandis,et al.  Multimethod probes of individualism and collectivism. , 1990 .

[57]  Matthew D. Hilchey,et al.  Are there bilingual advantages on nonlinguistic interference tasks? Implications for the plasticity of executive control processes , 2011, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[58]  J. Morton,et al.  What did Simon say? Revisiting the bilingual advantage. , 2007, Developmental science.

[59]  E. Donchin,et al.  Optimizing the use of information: strategic control of activation of responses. , 1992, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[60]  A. Mcwhinnie,et al.  Bode’s Rule and Folded Sequences , 1976, The Fibonacci Quarterly.

[61]  F. Craik,et al.  Bilingualism: consequences for mind and brain , 2012, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[62]  Christine A. Gunlogson.  Third-Person Object Prefixes in Babine-Witsuwit'en , 2001, International Journal of American Linguistics.

[63]  Andrew R. A. Conway,et al.  A controlled-attention view of working-memory capacity. , 2001, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[64]  H. Wimmer,et al.  Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception , 1983, Cognition.

[65]  E. Bialystok.  Cognitive Complexity and Attentional Control in the Bilingual Mind , 1999 .

[66]  Laura E. Matzen,et al.  Recreating Raven’s: Software for systematically generating large numbers of Raven-like matrix problems with normed properties , 2010, Behavior research methods.

[67]  S. Nieuwenhuis,et al.  How does bilingualism improve executive control? A comparison of active and reactive inhibition mechanisms. , 2008, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[68]  Julie C. Sedivy,et al.  Evidence of Perspective-Taking Constraints in Children's On-Line Reference Resolution , 2002, Psychological science.

[69]  E. Bialystok.  Levels of bilingualism and levels of linguistic awareness. , 1988 .

[70]  Peggy J. Goetz,et al.  The effects of bilingualism on theory of mind development , 2003, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.

[71]  M. Tanenhaus,et al.  The effects of common ground and perspective on domains of referential interpretation , 2003 .

[72]  F. Craik,et al.  Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: evidence from the Simon task. , 2004, Psychology and aging.

[73]  Chung-hye Han,et al.  Evidentiality in language and cognition , 2007, Cognition.

[74]  D. Barr.  Analyzing ‘visual world’ eyetracking data using multilevel logistic regression , 2008 .

[75]  R. E. Warren,et al.  Association, directionality, and stimulus encoding. , 1974 .

[76]  Stephanie D. Teasley,et al.  Perspectives on socially shared cognition , 1991 .

[77]  A. Meltzoff,et al.  Bilingual experience and executive functioning in young children. , 2008, Developmental science.

[78]  S. Brown-Schmidt,et al.  Beyond common and privileged: Gradient representations of common ground in real-time language use , 2012 .

[79]  E. Bialystok,et al.  Perspective-Taking Ability in Bilingual Children: Extending Advantages in Executive Control to Spatial Reasoning. , 2013, Cognitive development.

[80]  O. Mimura.  [Eye movements]. , 1992, Nippon Ganka Gakkai zasshi.

[81]  Catherine Marshall,et al.  Reference Diaries , 1978, TINLAP.

[82]  M. D’Esposito.  Working memory. , 2008, Handbook of clinical neurology.

[83]  M. Freedman,et al.  Bilingualism as a protection against the onset of symptoms of dementia , 2007, Neuropsychologia.

[84]  T. Salthouse,et al.  Decomposing adult age differences in working memory. , 1991 .

[85]  E. Kaplan,et al.  The Boston naming test , 2001 .

[86]  B. MacWhinney,et al.  A Bilingual Advantage in Task Switching * Anat Prior , 2010 .

[87]  A. Sorace,et al.  The role of age of onset and input in early child bilingualism in Greek and Dutch , 2011 .

[88]  Liane Wardlow.  Individual differences in speakers’ perspective taking: The roles of executive control and working memory , 2013, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[89]  Timothy P McNamara,et al.  Spatial memory and perspective taking , 2004, Memory & cognition.

[90]  T. Sandoval,et al.  Neuropsychological, Cognitive, and Theoretical Considerations for Evaluation of Bilingual Individuals , 2008, Neuropsychology Review.

[91]  Herbert H. Clark,et al.  Grounding in communication , 1991, Perspectives on socially shared cognition.

[92]  Anne H. Anderson,et al.  The Hcrc Map Task Corpus , 1991 .

[93]  Jeffrey M. Zacks,et al.  Two kinds of visual perspective taking , 2006, Perception & psychophysics.

[94]  Aziz M. Ulug,et al.  Parametric manipulation of conflict and response competition using rapid mixed-trial event-related fMRI , 2003, NeuroImage.

[95]  J. Paradis.  Individual differences in child English second language acquisition Comparing child-internal and child-external factors , 2011 .

[96]  C. Wolfson,et al.  Multilingualism (But Not Always Bilingualism) Delays the Onset of Alzheimer Disease: Evidence From a Bilingual Community , 2010, Alzheimer disease and associated disorders.

[97]  S. Brown-Schmidt,et al.  The role of executive function in perspective taking during online language comprehension , 2009, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[98]  Sarah Brown-Schmidt,et al.  Addressees distinguish shared from private information when interpreting questions during interactive conversation , 2008, Cognition.

[99]  D. Barr,et al.  Limits on theory of mind use in adults , 2003, Cognition.

[100]  E. Bialystok,et al.  Attention and inhibition in bilingual children: evidence from the dimensional change card sort task. , 2004, Developmental science.

[101]  V. Ferreira,et al.  What causes the bilingual disadvantage in verbal fluency?: The dual-task analogy , 2010 .

[102]  Elizabeth S. Nilsen,et al.  The relations between children’s communicative perspective-taking and executive functioning , 2009, Cognitive Psychology.