This study investigated whether lifelong bilingualism can be associated with enhanced executive control, particularly mental flexibility, and with a modulation of an age-related decline in these functions. We compared performance of middle-aged and elderly speakers of German and bilingual speakers of Dutch and Frisian in a cued task-switching paradigm. All bilinguals were fluent in the same, closely-related language pairs. Bilinguals incurred significantly lower switching costs than monolinguals, and elderly bilinguals were less affected by an age-related increase in switching costs than monolinguals. Bilinguals did not differ from monolinguals in the size of the mixing costs. Our findings suggest that lifelong bilingualism correlates with enhanced ability to shift between mental sets, as well as increased resistance to proactive interference. The fact that we found significant group differences – while some previous studies did not – may be attributable to the choice of our task and to the cognateness of the languages involved.

Do the lexical representations of the non-response language enter into lexical competition during speech production? This issue has been studied by means of the picture–word interference paradigm in which two paradoxical effects have been observed. The so-called CROSS-LANGUAGE IDENTITY EFFECT (Costa, Miozzo and Caramazza, 1999) has been taken as evidence against cross-linguistic lexical competition. In contrast, the so-called PHONO-TRANSLATION EFFECT (Hermans, Bongaerts, De Bot and Schreuder, 1998) has been interpreted as revealing lexical competition across languages. In this article, we assess the reliability of these two effects by testing Spanish–Catalan highly-proficient bilinguals performing a Stroop task. The results of the experiment are clear: while the cross-language identity facilitation effect is reliably replicated, the phono-translation interference effect is absent from the Stroop task. From these results, we conclude that we should be cautious when drawing strong conclusions about the presence of competition across languages based on the phono-translation effect observed in the picture–word interference paradigm.

Levy, Mc Veigh, Marful and Andreson (2007) found that naming pictures in L2 impaired subsequent recall of the L1 translation words. This was interpreted as evidence for a domain-general inhibitory mechanism (RIF) underlying first language attrition. Because this result is at odds with some previous findings and theoretical assumptions, we wanted to assess its reliability and replicate the experiment with various groups. Participants were first shown drawings along with their labels in the non-dominant language. Afterwards, they named 75% of these drawings in their first language or in their non-dominant language. Finally, participants’ memory of all L1 words was tested through the presentation of a rhyme-cue. Recall of L1 words was better after naming pictures in the non-dominant language compared to when the picture was not named at all. This result suggests that speaking a second language protects rather than harms the memory of our first language.

Interpreting is a complex bilingual task, placing high demands on both language control (i.e., source language not interfering in target language production) and processing control (i.e., multi-tasking carried out in concert under time pressure). On the basis of empirical evidence in the literature, we propose an attentional control model to account for both language control and processing control. Specifically, language control in interpreting is achieved by a structural framework of language-modality connections (established in interpreting training and stored as task schema), and by focused attention that helps build, strengthen and adapt the framework through monitoring, target enhancement, task disengagement, shifting, and working memory. In contrast, processing control in interpreting is achieved by divided attention via coordination and working memory, and by language processing efficiency that includes mastery of both languages and the appropriate use of interpreting strategies. Implications of this model for general bilingual language control are discussed.

A recent movement in cognitive neuroscience is the study of brain networks through functional and effective connectivity. The brain networks approach has already found its influences in the study of the neurobiology of language, but has yet to impact research in the neurocognition of bilingualism and second language. In this article, we briefly review some preliminary evidence in this emerging field and suggest that the understanding of the dynamic changes in brain networks enables us to capture second language learning success, thereby providing new insights into the neural bases of individual differences, neuroplasticity, and bilingualism.

This study investigated the occurrence of interactive alignment between bilingual interlocutors communicating in a shared second language (L2). Thirty university-level students from various language backgrounds completed two information-exchange tasks in L2 English. Excerpts from the beginning and end of the interactions were presented to ten native-speaking listeners who rated each interlocutor individually and both interlocutors as a team for speech and personality variables, including degree of alignment. Results revealed interactive alignment which encompassed different aspects of interlocutors’ speech and personality characteristics in each task. Theoretical and practical implications for alignment as a sociocognitive phenomenon in lingua franca contexts are discussed.

One hundred and seventy-two English-speaking 5- to 7-year-olds participated in a referential communication task where we manipulated the linguistic mention and the visual presence of a competitor alongside a target referent. Eighty-seven of the children were additionally exposed to a language other than English (bilinguals). We measured children's language proficiency, verbal working memory (WM), cognitive control skills, family SES, and relative amount of cumulative exposure and use of the home language for the bilinguals. Children's use of full Noun Phrases (NPs) to identify a target referent was predicted by the visual presence of a competitor more than by its linguistic mention. Verbal WM and proficiency predicted NP use, while cognitive control skills predicted both the ability to use expressions signalling discourse integration and sensitivity to the presence of a discourse competitor, but not of a visual competitor. Bilingual children were as informative as monolingual children once proficiency was controlled for.

Using event related brain potentials (ERPs), we examined the neurocognitive basis of phonological discrimination of phoneme /h/ in native English speakers and Francophone late second language (L2) learners, as a function of L2 proficiency and stimulus/task demands. In Experiment 1, native and non-native (L2 only) phonological contrasts were presented as syllables during a task that directed attention to phonological form. Phonological categorization was assessed with MMN, N2b and P3b effects. In Experiment 2, the same contrasts were presented as words/ pseudowords during a task that directed attention to semantics. Phonological discrimination was assessed with N400 pseudoword effects. High proficiency L2 learners displayed similar ERPs as native speakers in both experiments; low proficiency L2 learners showed discrimination of non-native contrasts in Experiment 1 (directed attention task) only. Thus, L2 phonological discrimination by late learners may depend on stimulus/task factors and occurs in a wider range of contexts as L2 proficiency improves.

The current project investigated the extent to which several lexical aspects of second language (L2) speech – appropriateness, fluency, variation, sophistication, abstractness, sense relations – interact to influence native speakers’ judgements of comprehensibility (ease of understanding) and accentedness (linguistic nativelikeness). Extemporaneous speech elicited from 40 French speakers of English with varied L2 proficiency levels was first evaluated by 10 native-speaking raters for comprehensibility and accentedness. Subsequently, the dataset was transcribed and analyzed for 12 lexical factors. Various lexical properties of L2 speech were found to be associated with L2 comprehensibility, and especially lexical accuracy (lemma appropriateness) and complexity (polysemy), indicating that these lexical variables are associated with successful L2 communication. In contrast, native speakers’ accent judgements seemed to be linked to surface-level details of lexical content (abstractness) and form (variation, morphological accuracy) rather than to its conceptual and contextual details (e.g., lemma appropriateness, polysemy).

This study compared the effectiveness of balanced and skewed input at facilitating the acquisition of the transitive construction in Esperanto, characterized by the accusative suffix -n and variable word order (SVO, OVS). Thai university students (N = 98) listened to 24 sentences under skewed (one noun with high token frequency) or balanced (equally-low token frequency) presentation following either inductive (rule not given) or deductive (rule given) instructions. In the testing phase, they heard 20 sentences (10 SVO, 10 OVS) with new nouns and identified the object. Only the group that received balanced input and deductive instructions detected the novel pattern.

In some contact situations between Spanish and English there is an acceleration of the process of the extension of estar that may be due to lack of access to the formal written standard, features of English in particular or general processes of simplification that result from the cognitive demands of bilingualism (Silva-Corvalán, 1994). In our large-scale analysis of data from a contextualized preference task collected in four areas of the lberian Peninsula where Spanish is in contact with a regional language (Basque, Catalan, Galician and Valencian) and in monolingual regions of Spain, we identify differences in the numbers of unanimous responses, and frequency and predictors of estar selection across populations. We show that more frequent selection of estar is not a characteristic of all bilingual groups, and several linguistic predictors of estar are common to all groups. Additionally, we find that more frequent selection of estar occurs in some varieties even among bilinguals with ample access to the formal standard.

There is no causal account of recovery patterns in bilingual aphasia. We propose that the causal mechanisms can be partially revealed by combining neuropsychological and neuroimaging methods. We briefly review the potentials and limitations associated with functional neuroimaging experiments on normal and neurologically impaired patients and then focus on the different levels of description required to reveal the causal basis of recovery patterns in bilingual aphasics. Finally, we suggest how functional imaging investigations might be meaningfully undertaken with bilingual aphasic patients. We illustrate our argument with respect to five different patterns of recovery and consider the theoretical and practical implications of such research.

This study aimed to investigate the capacity of coordinating comprehension and production processes and the role of phonological working memory in simultaneous interpreting. To this end we evaluated the Articulatory Suppression (AS) effect in three groups of participants, monolingual controls, students of interpreting and professional interpreters. Three variables were examined, the material to be studied (words, pseudo-words), the complexity of the articulations (simple, complex) and the articulatory rate (participants produced their speech at their own rate). Monolingual controls showed AS effect in all study conditions; students of interpreting showed AS effect in complex study conditions and professional interpreters showed AS effect only when they studied pseudo-words and produced complex articulations. These results suggest that coordinating comprehension and production processes in interpreters is mediated by the retrieval of lexical–semantic information and the distribution of the speech.

Research on the production of subject–verb number agreement in monolinguals suggests differences between and within languages in how it proceeds as a function of morphological richness. When agreement morphology is relatively rich, the influence of conceptual number over grammatical number is less than when it is relatively poor. Within the framework of Eberhard, Cutting and Bock's (2005) marking and morphing account of agreement production, this finding is explained by how number features from the syntax and the lexicon are reconciled. This study asks: (1) Can this account of differences in agreement production as a function of morphological richness be extended to the case of bilinguals? (2) Do age of acquisition and/or proficiency modulate whether these differences surface in bilinguals? Agreement production was examined in early and late English–Spanish, and late Spanish–English bilinguals of varying proficiency. Higher-proficiency bilinguals patterned similarly to monolinguals, supporting the extension of the marking and morphing account.

This self-paced reading study first tested the prediction that the garden path effect previously observed during the processing of subject–object ambiguities in native English would not obtain in a null subject language like Spanish. The investigation then further explored whether the effect would be evident among near-native readers of Spanish whose native language was a non-null subject language like English. Twenty-three near-native and 33 native readers of Mexican Spanish read sentences like Cuando el escultor acabó/volvió la obra tenía tres metros de altura “When the sculptor finished/came back the piece was three meters in height”. The results suggest that (i) Spanish differs from English for this type of processing and (ii) native and near-native processing can be guided by largely similar principles, at least where lexical information like verb transitivity is concerned.

To test the BIA+ and Multilink models’ accounts of how bilinguals process words with different degrees of cross-linguistic orthographic and semantic overlap, we conducted two experiments manipulating stimulus list composition. Dutch–English late bilinguals performed two English lexical decision tasks including the same set of cognates, interlingual homographs, English control words, and pseudowords. In one task, half of the pseudowords were replaced with Dutch words, requiring a ‘no’ response. This change from pure to mixed language list context was found to turn cognate facilitation effects into inhibition. Relative to control words, larger effects were found for cognate pairs with an increasing cross-linguistic form overlap. Identical cognates produced considerably larger effects than non-identical cognates, supporting their special status in the bilingual lexicon. Response patterns for different item types are accounted for in terms of the items’ lexical representation and their binding to ‘yes’ and ‘no’ responses in pure vs mixed lexical decision.

A longitudinal study of lexical development in very young French–English bilinguals is reported. The Computerized Comprehension Test (CCT) was used to directly assess receptive vocabulary and processing efficiency, and parental report (CDI) was used to measure expressive vocabulary in monolingual and bilingual infants at 16 months, and six months later, at 22 months. All infants increased their comprehension and production of words over the six-month period, and bilingual infants acquired approximately as many new words in each of their languages as the monolinguals did. Speed of online word processing was also equivalent in both groups at each wave of data collection, and increased significantly across waves. Importantly, significant relations emerged between language exposure, vocabulary size, and processing speed, with proportion of language exposure predicting vocabulary size at each time point. This study extends previous findings by utilizing a direct measure of receptive vocabulary development and online word processing.

This paper explores whether the poor mastery of morphosyntax exhibited by second language (L2) learners can be tied to difficulties with non-syntactic processing. Specifically, we examine whether problems with English regular and irregular past tense are related to poor L2 phonological ability and lexical access, respectively. In Experiment 1, L2 learners showed poorer past tense mastery than native English speakers in grammaticality judgment and production tasks. L2 phonological ability was positively correlated with correct performance on regular verbs and negatively with unmarked production. L2 lexical access was positively correlated with correct performance on irregular verbs, and negatively with overregularization production. Experiment 2 simulated these difficulties in native English speakers by placing them under phonological processing (noise) or lexical access (deadline) stress. Noise selectively impacted regular verbs in grammaticality judgment but impacted all verb types in production. Deadline pressure impacted irregular verbs while sparing regular verbs across both tasks. Thus, non-syntactic processing difficulties can have specific impacts on morphosyntactic performance in both non-native and native English speakers.

This study presents results from a cross-modal priming experiment investigating inflected verb forms of German. A group of late learners of German with Russian as their native language (L1) was compared to a control group of German L1 speakers. The experiment showed different priming patterns for the two participant groups. The L1 German data yielded a stem-priming effect for inflected forms involving regular affixation and a partial priming effect for irregular forms irrespective of stem allomorphy. By contrast, the data from the late bilinguals showed reduced priming effects for both regular and irregular forms. We argue that late learners rely more on lexically stored inflected word forms during word recognition and less on morphological parsing than native speakers.

This study investigates the differential effects of language attrition in two diverse linguistic domains: verb placement and object expression. Linguistic phenomena at the syntax – discourse interface, such as object expression, have been shown to be more vulnerable to attrition than narrow syntax properties, such as verb placement. This study aims to test this hypothesis by analysing spoken data from Portuguese–German bilinguals who have moved away from the dominant German environment. The results show that the speakers who have lost continued German input after the age of eleven years exhibit difficulties regarding object expression in German but do not reveal any relevant syntactic deficits in the domain of verb placement.