Abstract

ANDRADE, Gabriel Sousa; CRISTIANO, Luana Breda; SECCO, Genner Mateus  and  TONI, Plínio Marco de. On bilingualism in elderly people by Ellen Bialystok: a review of the articles published between 2012-2018. Bol. - Acad. Paul. Psicol. [online]. 2020, vol.40, n.98, pp. 1-9. ISSN 1415-711X.

It is important to study the relation between bilingualism and cognition in elderly people because the cognitive reserve hypothesis has implications for the health of healthy elderly people, the ones with dementia and public health. Dr. Ellen Bialystok, main investigator of Lifespan, Cognition and Development Lab (York University, Canada) is one of the main researchers in this field and, because of her importance in the field, this research intended to review every data collection article related to the elderly that was published in a scientific journal by her in the years between 2012 and 2018, located in her lab's website. 13 articles that met the inclusion criteria were found, being them on different cognitive and neurophysiological aspects. The studies indicated significant neurophysiological differences between bilinguals and monolinguals and that there is evidence in favor of the cognitive reserve hypothesis in bilingual populations. Regarding working memory, a pattern was observed in which monolinguals showed advantage in verbal test based studies, while in non-verbal test based studies the bilinguals showed an advantage.

Keywords : bilingualism; cognition; dementia; cognitive reserve; developmental psychology.

        · abstract in Portuguese | Spanish     · text in Portuguese     · Portuguese ( pdf )