title: Ambiguous benefits: the effect of bilingualism on reversing ambiguous figures.
abstract: Two studies are reported in which monolingual and bilingual children, approximately 6 years old, attempted to identify the alternative image in a reversible figure. In both studies, bilingual children were more successful than monolinguals in seeing the other meaning in the images. In the first study, there was no relation between the ability to reverse the interpretation and performance on the children's embedded figures task, a task that superficially appeared to involve similar processes. The second study replicated this finding but showed that performance was strongly related to success in the post-switch phase of the dimensional change card sort task. In both cases, the meaning of an image must be reassigned, and bilinguals were better in both these tasks.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ellenb@yorku.ca
authors.forename: Ellen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bialystok
authors.forename: Dana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Shapero
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D003210:Concept Formation; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011340:Problem Solving; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012660:Semantics; D014796:Visual Perception