**Author details**

bilingualism with Arabic being the dominant language, learned at an early stage in life and spoken in a wide variety of contexts, and English being more likely to be linked to formal education and peers' social networks. Thus, it is interesting that even unbalanced bilingualism permits the activation of opposing cultural schemas, each related to one of the languages that the speaker is currently using. It is reasonable to expect languages to preserve their functional utility and coexist as largely distinct entities in the speakers' minds if each language is attached to cultural norms and values relevant to the speaker's community. It is the task of future research to determine the extent to which the same pattern may be obtained with less proficient bilinguals. Similarly, it is an open question whether our findings may generalize to older participants, males, participants whose financial resources are less plentiful, and those who live in countries of the Arab world where industrialization has been accompanied by a more visible relaxation of traditional norms. For instance, it may be of interest to determine whether differences in the extent to which young adults of several Arab countries are connected to their families financially (i.e., monetary reliance), emotionally (i.e., need for family approval), and functionally (i.e., sharing of daily routines; [78]) translate into differences in self-efficacy beliefs, either general or related to specific domains of knowledge and practice. Lastly, important to note is that cultural differences, which are observed with explicit self-appraisal measures, tend to be less likely to be observed with implicit measures, such as the Implicit Association Test [79]. Thus, results reflected in explicit self-appraisal measures, such as ours, may be merely inflated by self-presentation practices and concerns [80] or be the undiluted expression of such practices and concerns. Methodological issues besides the explicit versus implicit nature of the assessment measure will also need to be considered in future research (e.g., comparisons involving bilingual individuals or different groups of

The research mentioned in this chapter is based on discussions conducted by an interdisciplinary group of researchers, including besides the authors, Dr. Siddiqua Aamir, Ms. Khadijah Aldabbagh, Ms. Mona M. A. al-Mqbas, Ms. Houda Debbabi, Dr. Amani K. Hamdan, Dr. Huda Mulhem, and Mrs. Ebtesam Ahmad Tallouzi. We thank all collaborators for sharing their valuable insights into the complexities of the phenomena that we have explored empirically. We also thank the students who provided reliable data as well as helpful commentaries and observations that comprise the indispensable pillars of our inquiry into the human mind

Maura A. E. Pilotti and Khadija El Alaoui, College of Sciences and Human Studies, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, P.O. Box 1664, Al Khobar 31952, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to either author.

monolingual individuals).

112 Multilingualism and Bilingualism

**Acknowledgements**

in diverse cultures.

**Notes**

Maura A. E. Pilotti\* and Khadija El Alaoui

\*Address all correspondence to: maura.pilotti@gmail.com

Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia
