Brain Maturation and Cognitive Development, Petersen, Anne

This chapter will introduce the main theoretical and conceptual structure of the book and will offer a summary of the different chapters that follow. This chapter will introduce the reader to the main theme of the book and the various issues that are addressed. This chapter will also present the main theory of the book which will be fleshed out later.

Chapter 2. How the brain becomes bilingual: Evolution, adaptation and sustenance

This chapter will deal with the evolution of bilingualism in human language use from anthropological, neuroscience and cognitive perspectives. The chapter will show that during evolution and migration the brain adopted bilingualism for economic, cultural as well as cognitive reasons. The chapter will also discuss theories and facts related to language evolution from an evolutionary psychological perspective. The main purpose will be to show that current links between the practice of widespread bilingualism in different cultures and its cognitive consequences on the brain functions have evolutionary advantages.

Chapter 3. The psycholinguistic basis of bilingualism

This chapter will flesh out the various important psycholinguistic facts pertaining to bilingual language use to show that the extent and duration of language use leads to noticeable changes in other cognitive abilities. Data from both children and adult bilingualism will be discussed pertaining to the links between language switching and cognitive underpinnings.

Chapter 4. The multimodal basis of bilingual cognition

Recent evidence suggests that both linguistic and non-linguistic information interact dynamically to produce cognition. This chapter will present and discuss findings that indicate that bilinguals use both verbal and visual cues to process languages and participate in communication.

Chapter 5. Action control and cognition: The role of bilingualism

This chapter will defend the thesis that language use is primarily a work of cognitive action that humans constantly exert on their environment to produce successful cognition. For bilinguals, this is more complex since they have to tackle duality often and reduce conflict. The chapter will discuss important theories of attention and executive control that have influenced discussion on bilingualism and cognitive control. The chapter will approach the cognitive architecture of bilingual language use from the point of theories of action control. Both behavioral and neuroscience data will be presented. The chapter will show that both the psychological and psycholinguistic nature of action control influences the executive control system of the brain significantly and which in turn is manifested differently for monolinguals and bilinguals

Chapter 6: Tasks, theories, interpretations and controversies: The case of bilingual cognitive advantage

This chapter will offer a comprehensive account of different current theories and proposals on the possible influences of bilingualism on cognitive control. The chapter will discuss different tasks and methods that researchers have used to study both the psycholinguistic and cognitive aspects of bilingual language control and controversies. The chapter will show that observed advantages or null results on the issue of bilingual cognitive advantage is largely task dependent and is influenced by factors pertaining to individual cognitive profiles. This chapter will also deal with the various sides of the current controversies that relate to replication issues and issues related to factors that have not been controlled by researchers. The chapter will look into the issue of linguistic and cultural differences between bilingual samples that have been compared.

Chapter 7: The linguistic and non-linguistic interface in bilinguals

Human memory modeling is important from two perspectives. First, the precise fitting of the model to an individual's short-term or working memory may help in predicting memory performance of the subject in future. Second, memory models provide a biological insight to the encoding and recall mechanisms undertaken by the neurons present in active brain lobes, participating in the memorization process. This book models human memory from a cognitive standpoint by utilizing brain activations acquired from the cortex by electroencephalographic (EEG) and functional near-infrared-spectroscopic (f-NIRs) means.

Cognitive Modeling of Human Memory and Learning A Non-invasive Brain-Computer Interfacing Approach begins with an overview of the early models of memory. The authors then propose a simplistic model of Working Memory (WM) built with fuzzy Hebbian learning. A second perspective of memory models is concerned with Short-Term Memory (STM)-modeling in the context of 2-dimensional object-shape reconstruction from visually examined memorized instances. A third model assesses the subjective motor learning skill in driving from erroneous motor actions. Other models introduce a novel strategy of designing a two-layered deep Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) classifier network and also deal with cognitive load assessment in motor learning tasks associated with driving. The book ends with concluding remarks based on principles and experimental results acquired in previous chapters.

Examines the scope of computational models of memory and learning with special emphasis on classification of memory tasks by deep learning-based models Proposes two algorithms of type-2 fuzzy reasoning: Interval Type-2 fuzzy reasoning (IT2FR) and General Type-2 Fuzzy Sets (GT2FS) Considers three classes of cognitive loads in the motor learning tasks for driving learners

Cognitive Modeling of Human Memory and Learning A Non-invasive Brain-Computer Interfacing Approach will appeal to researchers in cognitive neuro-science and human/brain-computer interfaces. It is also beneficial to graduate students of computer science/electrical/electronic engineering.