To investigate whether the bilingual advantage is mediated by proficiency within bilinguals, the L2 performance in each bilingual group was compared using a median split of self-rated L2 proficiency below.
Comparing the high- and low-proficiency participants in each bilingual group, there were no differences in peak interference effects either in English Chinese (t(12.8) = 1.42, p =.18) or Chinese English (t(16.7) = 0.36, p =.72) bilinguals.
Consequently, the frequency of a word in each of the bilingual's languages effectively lags behind the frequency of the same word in a monolingual's language.
Second, the reduced frequency hypothesis proposes that words in each of a bilingual's languages are effectively used less than the same words in a monolingual speaker's language because monolinguals always use the same language to express themselves whereas bilinguals split their time between 2 or more languages.
In addition, in bilinguals activation of subcortical structures has been observed during word translation (Price et al. 1999).
Next, the monolinguals were compared to the bilingual L1 in each group to investigate the bilingual L1 lexical disadvantage hypothesis; and finally, the L1 and L2 were contrasted for the two groups of bilinguals to investigate the bilingual L2 lexical disadvantage hypothesis.
Informational letters, informed consent forms and questionnaires were available in different languages, and in each hospital we recruited bilingual research assistants to provide patients with oral translations.
About 160,000 of the city's 1.1 million schoolchildren are enrolled in either bilingual or E.S.L. classes, with roughly half the total in each program.
In bilingual telephone interviews, each expected to last about 25 minutes, 1,200 New Yorkers will provide background information about themselves (age, income, race, neighborhood, political attitudes and last encounter with the police) and then listen to the vignettes, which will be tested first in focus groups and vetted for authenticity by the police.
Today Liberty runs three literacy programs: one in English, and bilingual programs in Spanish and Chinese.
This common observation indicates that in the bilingual brain words from the different languages compete with each other.
