ABSTRACT
Cognitive aging or cognitive gerontology is the discipline that addresses the growth and decline of mental processing in the latter two-thirds of the human lifespan. Language production and comprehension, especially as addressed by psycholinguistics, has been a consistent interest in the field, as a brief review of recent handbooks reveals (e.g. Bialystock & Craik, 2006; Craik & Salthouse, 2000; Park & Schwarz, 2000). Nevertheless, while considerable research exists on language and lifespan development, the vast majority of this work is focused exclusively on monolinguals, with a few notable exceptions (for review, see Schrauf, 2008). On the other hand, studies of bilingualism/multilingualism are more often cross-sectional and rarely longitudinal. To be sure, there are longitudinal studies of second language acquisition, focused almost exclusively on children and young adults, in both educational (for a review, see Ortega & Iberri-Shea, 2005) and informal environments (see especially the European Science Foundation project, e.g. Dietrich, Klein, & Noyau, 1995; Klein & Perdue, 1992). However, the duration of such studies is relatively short, lasting from a few months to up to 2 years, largely because the focus is on the short-term acquisition of particular language forms. Further, in studies of language attrition, at the other end of the developmental continuum, there is one truly longitudinal study of language attrition. De Bot and Clyne (1994) studied first language attrition among Dutch and German immigrants to Australia over a 16-year period across three data periods of observation (1971-1972, 1987, 1991-1992). Clearly there is a great deal of work to be done on the specifically longitudinal, lifespan study of multilingualism.
