Bilingualism Across the Lifespan: Factors Moderating Language Proficiency

About

Elena Nicoladis PhD is a professor in the psychology department at the University of Alberta in Edmonton Alberta Canada. She received her PhD in developmental psychology at McGill University. Her dissertation focused on the language choice of preschool FrenchEnglish bilingual children. Dr. Nicoladis's research focuses on several areas. One area focuses on language acquisition in bilingual children in particular how bilinguals use their two languages. The bilinguals in her studies include not only FrenchEnglish bilinguals but also bilinguals who speak other minority languages like Hindi and Chinese as well as English. Another area focuses on the relationship between language and thought in development including how language use and/or structure might affect children's thinking. A third area raises questions about how manual gestures are related to language use and development on the one hand and cognitive development on the other.  Simona Montanari PhD is an associate professor in the Department of Child and Family Studies at California State University Los Angeles. She received her PhD in linguistics from the University of Southern California specializing on early trilingual development. Her research which has focused on the acquisition of phonology lexicon morphosyntax and communicative competence in two or three languages has been published in the Journal of Child Language in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition and in the International Journal of Bilingualism among others. Dr. Montanari has also been involved in the creation and implementation of the first public Italian/English dual language program in the Glendale Unified School District (Los Angeles County) and has been studying its educational outcomes since its launch in 2009. At California State University Los Angeles Dr. Montanari teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on language development and second-language acquisition in childhood and she is currently involved in research on phonological development in SpanishEnglish dual language preschoolers. She also continues to work as a consultant for the Glendale Unified School District and has designed common-core-standards-aligned curricula for its Italian/English French/English and German/English dual-language programs.