Possíveis efeitos cognitivos do bilinguismo: o que pesquisadores nos dizem

Abstract

There are several questions about the benefits and perils of bilingualism that parents and education professionals ask themselves during early childhood and throughout a child's learning life. Many of these questions resist fears deriving from years prior to research in the area of the phenomenon highlighted in this paper. This bibliographic review aims to cover the scope of information, and to highlight the gaps that still need to be filled about the phenomenon of bilingualism. A minor objective in this paper, is to highlight gaps that still need to be filled in on the phenomenon. Three articles were chosen to satisfy the research objective, thus, only the necessary data for each article was taken into consideration. The first article is Early Childhood Bilingualism – Perils and Possibilities (Genesee, 2009), which discusses four myths about the phenomenon. Bilingualism: Consequences for Mind and Brain is the second article, (Bialystok, Craik and Luk, 2012), which exposes how bilingual adults brain’s functions. Finally, we have Bilingualism in Early Years: What Science Says, (Byers- Heinlein and Lew-Williams, 2012), which provide answers to six of the most asked questions by parents who wish to expose their children to bilingualism.