This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Takano, Y. Articles by Noda, A. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

A Temporary Decline of Thinking Ability During Foreign Language Processing

University of Tokyo

Akiko Noda

Waseda University

It was predicted that the use of a foreign language should cause a temporary decline of thinking ability because the heavier processing load imposed by a foreign language than by a native language should produce stronger interference with thinking to be performed concurrently. A divided-attention experiment with Japanese-English and English-Japanese bilinguals confirmed this prediction: performance in a thinking task (i.e., calculation) declined when a concurrent linguistic task (i.e., question-answering) had to be performed in their respective foreign languages. This decline is distinguished from foreign language processing difficulty per se because the thinking task involved no foreign language use. The decline was also observed in another divided-attention experiment employing a different type of thinking task, that is, spatial reasoning problems adopted from intelligence tests.

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Vol. 24, No. 4, 445-462 (1993)
DOI: 10.1177/0022022193244005


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?