Montanari, S., & Nicoladis, E. (2016). Concluding remarks and future directions. In E. Nicoladis & S. Montanari (Eds.), Language and the human lifespan series. Bilingualism across the lifespan: Factors moderating language proficiency (pp. 325-330). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/14939-018
Research on bilingualism has come a long way from the early, oft-cited work by Ronjat (1913) and Leopold (1939–1949) in the first half of the 20th century. This volume illustrates how research on bilingualism has evolved throughout the past decades. For example, studies have been extended to subjects across the lifespan, from infancy (and even the prenatal period), to childhood, to adulthood, and to old age. Moreover, as societies have become increasingly more mobile and multilingual, issues related to educating young bilingual children as well as the consequences of bilingualism on literacy have become key topics. New areas of investigations have also emerged to explore how the bilingual experience shapes cognitive and emotional processes in different stages of life. Taken together, the chapters in this book underscore the breadth of the research on bilingualism today, as well as the complexity of studying this topic without considering the host of factors that characterize bilingualism. This chapter summarizes the book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)