Research, however, has not been conducted to specifically examine the relationships among bilingualism, critical thinking ability, and critical thinking disposition of baccalaureate nursing students.
We now have better measures of bilingualism and individuals' ability to read and write in non-English languages.
"When thinking about bilingualism or the ability to speak multiple languages (in addition to being multi-racial), I think about the benefits with regards to professional career trajectories and the ability to connect with a broader range of people".
Findings failed to provide sufficient evidence to support the existence of a relationship between either bilingualism and critical thinking ability, or between critical thinking disposition and critical thinking ability.
Four lines of research will be reviewed in the following sections, which have contributed to our understanding of the link between bilingualism and cognitive control abilities, i.e., the ability to flexibly adapt behavior to current demands by focusing on task-relevant information and behaviors over a period of time while dealing with interference and competition.
Scientists have long assumed that the "bilingualism advantage" — the enhanced ability to filter out important information among nonimportant material — stems from how bilingual people process language.
Finally, consider the cognitive benefits of bilingualism (such as improved ability to concentrate, increased brain efficiency or delay in dementia) that have been highlighted in many recent studies.
This skill, however, disappears in monolingual, but not bilingual, infants by the age of 8 months, suggesting that bilingualism enhances visual discrimination abilities in infancy (Sebastián-Gallés, Albareda-Castellot, Weikum, & Werker, 2012; Weikum et al., 2007).
Experiment 2 tested a group of bilinguals with the same native language as the English monolinguals of Experiment 1, to compare the impact of bilingualism on executive control abilities and lexical access speed.
As the monolingual and bilingual groups had a similar family SES background (Experiment 1) and similar family cultural identity (Experiment 2), these results point to a specific role for early bilingualism in accentuating children's developing ability to appreciate effective communicative responses.
