This chapter is a synthesis of the findings about the relationship between cognitive control and language. It provides a more holistic picture about this relationship with particular attention to the heterogeneity of the participants and the shortage of sufficiently sensitive, valid tasks. The discussion is centered around the need for more studies using an individual-differences approach and the ways this approach may be combined with experimental designs to provide a method within which variability in performance is viewed as key information. The findings suggest that we must broaden the language spectrum in our studies to include speakers of various languages at a variety of proficiency and ability levels. Additional focus is placed on the need for interprofessional collaborations among researchers across disciplines, as well as between researchers and practitioners and educators, in order to enhance our diagnostic and classification accuracy and to decrease the inconsistencies in findings across studies.

The effects of age on language and cognitive control development are examined in monolingual and bilingual speakers, in typically developing children, in early, and late talkers. Individual differences in language acquisition are linked to the development of other nonlinguistic cognitive abilities, brain maturation, and environmental factors. Particularly for the early years, developmental trends and converging and diverging cognitive-linguistic processes are identified. Developmental changes in error patterns, learning styles, and strategy use are analyzed between early and late bilingual speakers and between typically developing children and late talkers. Challenges related to the variability in both first language acquisition and second language learning are discussed and links between early language development and later academic performance are identified. Age-related changes in cognitive control functions and their interactions with language are discussed for speakers with different language abilities and proficiencies.

This chapter will explore a key problem with the current law’s approach – namely, that it is impossible to assess a person’s capacity to ‘use or weigh’ the information relevant to a decision without engaging with the values that underpin their decision. It will suggest that while some recourse to the person’s values is unavoidable, the current approach gives assessors ample room to invoke other values when assessing the person’s capacity, thus creating space for paternalistic judgments to go unchecked. Despite this risk, it will be claimed that in many of the cases in which this occurs, underpinning the assessment is in fact a concern that the values or beliefs that motivate a person’s decision have been affected by an illness or impairment, such that the decision reached is not one that the agent would have made, but for that disorder or impairment. The current law cannot account for this, and so assessors are forced to manipulate the test for capacity instead. While this prevents unnecessary harm, it has the effect of obscuring the value-laden and highly controversial claims that may underpin such decisions, which remain insulated from scrutiny or challenge.

This chapter describes how the quality and quantity of language input affects both children’s language ability and their cognitive control development. A nuanced exploration of the distinctions between input and intake as well as between input and exposure points to a complex pattern of interactions among these components and children’s communicative skills. The interactions among parental input, language environment, and the child’s age, as well as communicative abilities are bidirectional and affect children’s cognitive control skills, particularly working memory and interference control. The dynamic nature of caregiver – child interactions is also reflected in the manner parents adjust their language input based on their children’s communicative abilities. Parents of children with superior language skills used more elaborated language than did the parents of children with language delay, but those who participated in parental intervention increased the language and cognitive stimulation of their children.

Directed migrations supported the Luso-Brazilian government’s efforts to navigate the geopolitical challenges of the post-Napoleonic world. In order to correct the perceived dearth of population in the new seat of an exiled Portuguese Court, government officials went to great lengths to jumpstart migratory flows to Brazil. Peopling served many purposes, allowing the prince regent to cement royal authority through subsidies and concessions while responding to pressures to curtail slavery. Yet, as various groups made their way to Brazil, they lay bare the challenges in long-distance migrant conveyance as well as the diplomatic liabilities involved in directed migrations. The Luso-Brazilian government thus began to defer migration drives to private, mostly German, individuals gearing for profits. This chapter traces the emergence of a strategic exchange between the Joanine government in Rio and foreign petitioners who began to shape peopling as a profitable business sphere, which allowed the Luso-Brazilian administration to quell pressures stemming from Vienna and London, but opened the way for numerous unforeseen consequences.

A “spirit of association” took hold of Brazilian businessmen and lawmakers in the Regency period of the 1830s. This spirit manifested itself in the Rio Doce Company drive, which directly inspired Brazilians to launch the first homegrown colonization companies in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. This chapter traces the trajectory of these pioneering domestic enterprises and examines their operations and their meanings in the context of continuous logistical and political challenges both at home and abroad. Ultimately, these companies set a precedent in institutionalizing reception and conveyance mechanisms, lobbying successfully for pro-colonization policies, and collaborating with the Brazilian diplomatic corps to build a powerful international network of migrant recruitment overseas. Despite these companies’ broad appeal among quarreling elites, both faltered amid the financial crisis of 1837,. The colono trade they spurred in periodic overlap with the illegal slave trade, however, opened the door for continued undocumented migrations from the Azores.

The lessons learned from private colonization experiments in the 1830s drove Brazilian lawmakers back to the drawing board to devise policies that could both promote private colonization schemes and keep them under the government’s purview. A reinstated executive seized the reins of colonization as the royal household enthusiastically founded model colonies spearheaded by the young emperor and his sister. A small group of palatial figures, or áulicos, close to the emperor made this possible from key appointments including in the reactivated Council of State, which oversaw ad hoc colonization petitions. In parliament, the slow but steady evolution of land law bills further contributed to the Brazilian government’s resolve to exercise regulatory muscle. This process came to a head with the debacle of the Delrue contract – a colono-provisioning deal with a French firm that went sour when the Brazilian government discovered numerous irregularities in the payments claimed by Delrue. Ironically, the Delrue scandal empowered Vergueiro & Co., a São Paulo-based firm that would become a leading colono distributor within a decade, demonstrating that the colonization irradiated from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo, and not the other way around.