Past events: Virginia Valian. Hypothesis: Nothing improves higher cognitive functions

What: Hypothesis: Nothing improves higher cognitive functions

Where: BCBL Zoom Room # 2 (online talk) (If you would like to attend to this meeting reserve at info@bcbl.eu)

Who: Virginia Valian, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Hunter College - CUNY, US.

When:  Monday,  Nov 20th at 12:00 Noon.

Can adults improve their higher cognitive functions?  For example, might speaking more than one language lead to improvement in resolving conflicting stimuli or in switching from one task to another or in managing attention?  Some experiments suggest that managing two languages has wide cognitive benefits, while other experiments find no benefits from bilingualism (or from working memory training, musical training, or other skill training) for higher cognitive functions.  Perhaps it is not possible to improve higher cognition, but only to improve how it is applied, task by task.  One deploys higher cognitive processes for specialized purposes but does not improve those processes, only the skills for which the processes are deployed.