Event Details

This event is co-organised by the Multilingualism&Cognition Research Group, the Heritage Language 2 Consortium (HL2C), and UiT’s C/LaBL Brain Domain. We are delighted to welcome Prof. Debra Titone (McGill University) as our invited speaker in our joint seminar series.

Title: Reading-to-Comprehend and Reading-to-Think in Multilingual Adults: Where is the Dividing Line?

Abstract

Every day, we reason and make decisions based on what we read in a first or second language. Research in cognitive and neural sciences explores the mechanisms of reading (e.g., decoding words, sentences, and discourse) and thinking (e.g., inferencing, reasoning, decision making), but less commonly the full range of processes all together. Relatedly, recent work on the "Foreign Language Effect" has raised the possibility that multilingual people make decisions differently when reading in a second language compared to their first, or that multilingual experiences modulate decision-making, regardless of the language used. However, the underlying mechanisms are not well understood, as few studies have directly examined how reading processes link to goal-driven decisions. In this talk, I highlight ongoing work that investigates how multilingual adults read-to-think in their first and second languages across different domains. These include texts that require inferencing (e.g., logical, mentalizing, and ironic inferences) and texts requiring moral reasoning and decision making.

*Join online on Teams

*Catch up on past talks!

You can watch recordings of previous seminars on our YouTube channel: @Multilingualism-Lancaster. If you haven’t already, subscribe to stay updated on new content!

We look forward to seeing you at the seminar!