Psycholinguistic Aspects of Bilingualism, 7.5 ECTS

The course aims to provide knowledge about bilingualism and multilingualism at individual level from a psychological, neurolinguistic and cognitive perspective. Here the course covers models for bilingual language storage and language processing, and these are studied in the light of phenomena such as second language acquisition/learning, language choice, language separation, language loss (attrition) and language pathological phenomena (e.g. aphasia and dementia), learning age, maturity restrictions and critical period (s), as well as individual factors such as language aptitude and motivation. Cognition and bilingualism are treated with respect to the relationship between language and thought, conceptual transfer, and general cognitive skills (such as executive control).