Research on American-English (AE) vowel perception by Spanish–English bilinguals has focused on the vowels /i/-/ɪ/ (e.g., in sheep/ship). Other AE vowel contrasts may present perceptual challenges for this population, especially those requiring both spectral and durational discrimination. We used Event-Related Potentials (ERPs), MMN (Mismatch Negativity) and P300, to index discrimination of AE vowels /ɑ/-/ʌ/ by sequential adult Spanish–English bilingual listeners compared to AE monolinguals. Listening tasks were non-attended and attended, and vowels were presented with natural and neutralized durations. Regardless of vowel duration, bilingual listeners showed no MMN to unattended sounds, and P300 responses were elicited to /ɑ/ but not /ʌ/ in the attended condition. Monolingual listeners showed pre-attentive discrimination (MMN) for /ɑ/ only; while both vowels elicited P300 responses when attended. Findings suggest that Spanish–English bilinguals recruit attentional and cognitive resources enabling native-like use of both spectral and durational cues to discriminate between AE vowels /ɑ/ and /ʌ/.

Bilinguals engage in qualitatively different code-switching patterns (alternation, insertion, and congruent lexicalization) to different degrees, according to their engagement in different types of interactional contexts (single-language context, dual-language context, and dense code-switching context). Drawing on the adaptive control hypothesis, we examined whether bilinguals’ code-switching patterns would differentially shape multiple aspects of cognitive control (interference control, salient cue detection, and opportunistic planning). We found that a dense code-switching context, which predominantly involves insertion and congruent lexicalization, was positively associated with verbal opportunistic planning but negatively associated with interference control and salient cue detection. In contrast, a dual-language context, which predominantly involves alternation, was not associated with interference control or salient cue detection, but with significantly reduced response times for opportunistic planning. Our findings partially corroborate the theoretical predictions of the adaptive control hypothesis. Altogether, our study illustrates the importance of bilinguals’ disparate code-switching practices in shaping cognitive control outcomes.

Short-term memory (STM) is required for second language learning. However, it is not clear what components of STM are necessary for the acquisition and lexicalisation of new written words. Studies suggest that memory for serial order is a critical cognitive process in spoken word acquisition although correlated mechanisms such as executive control also play a role. In this study, bilingual Cantonese–English speakers who are learning written expert words in a non-native language were tested over a one year period in their first year of instruction. Written word lexicalisation was measured using lexical decision and spelling to dictation tasks. Results showed measures of executive control (Stroop performance) and serial order memory capacity predict recognition and recall of written expert words at different stages. Whereas serial order memory predicts improvements to lexical decision accuracy, executive control predicts spelling to dictation performance after one year. The conclusion is that STM processes do constrain written word lexicalisation in a second language. However, executive control and serial order memory capacity have differential effects during word lexicalisation.

This study investigated the influence of first language (L1) phoneme features and phonetic salience on discrimination of second language (L2) American English (AE) vowels. On a perceptual task, L2 adult learners of English with Spanish, Japanese or Russian as an L1 showed poorer discrimination of the spectral-only difference between /æ:/ as the oddball (deviant) among frequent /ɑ:/ stimuli compared to AE controls. The Spanish listeners showed a significant difference from the controls for the spectral-temporal contrast between /ɑ:/ and /ʌ/ for both perception and the neural Mismatch Negativity (MMN), but only for deviant /ɑ:/ versus /ʌ/ (duration decrement). For deviant /ʌ/ versus /ɑ:/, and for deviant /æ:/ versus /ʌ/ or /ɑ:/, all participants showed equivalent MMN amplitude. The asymmetrical pattern for /ɑ:/ and /ʌ/ suggested that L2 phonetic detail was maintained only for the deviant. These findings indicated that discrimination was more strongly influenced by L1 phonology than phonetic salience.

While heritage language phonology has attracted a great deal of attention, little is known about the development of heritage phonological grammars. This study examines the production of the Spanish trill /r/ by school-aged (9-10 years) and adult heritage speakers. Results showed that the adult heritage speakers produced the trill in a more target-like manner than the child heritage speakers, although half of them diverged from non-heritage native baselines reported in other studies. Further analysis of the distribution of trill variants suggests that heritage Spanish trill development occurs in the order of single lingual constriction → frication → multiple lingual constrictions. However, instead of abandoning variants of early stages, some adult heritage speakers kept them in their trill inventories, demonstrating increased variability. Our findings indicate that 9- to 10-year-old heritage speakers are still in the process of developing heritage phonological grammars and even during adulthood their grammars may not reach stability.

Adult foreign language acquisition is challenging, and the degree of success varies among individuals. Anatomical differences in brain structure prior to training can partly explain why some learn more than others. We followed a sample of conscript interpreters undergoing intense language training to study learning-related changes in white-matter microstructure (FA, MD, RD and AD) and associations between differences in brain structure prior to training with acquired language proficiency. No evidence for changes in white matter microstructure relative to a control group was found. Starting values of RD, AD and MD were positively related to final test scores of language proficiency, corroborating earlier findings in the field and highlighting the need for further study of how initial brain structure influences and interacts with learning outcomes.

We investigated conceptual representations for translation word pairs in bilinguals who learned their languages in different cultural contexts. Mandarin–English bilinguals were presented with a word, and then a picture, and decided if they matched. Both behavioural and ERP data were collected. In one session, words were in English and in another they were the Mandarin translations. Critical pictures matched the prior word and were either biased to Chinese or Canadian culture. There was an interaction of test language and picture type in RT and errors in the behavioural data, and in five components in the ERP data, indicating that the task was easier when the culture depicted in the picture was congruent with the language of the preceding word. These findings provide evidence that the specific perceptual experiences that bilinguals encounter when learning words in each language have an impact on the semantic features that are activated by those words.

Languages differ in the preferences for the interpretation of the scope relation between negation and a quantifier. This study investigates the understudied issue of how interpretive preferences associated with a quantifier scope in learners’ L1 and L2 affect their scope interpretations in L3 acquisition. Based on the current models of L3 acquisition, we tested which language, L1 or L2, exerts a stronger effect on the L3 acquisition of quantifier scope. To this end, the study involved two groups of multilingual children (11–13 years old) with different L1s (Chinese or Russian) but with the same L2 (Korean) and L3 (English). The participants completed truth-value judgment tasks designed to investigate their interpretation patterns for English sentences with negation and a quantifier (e.g., Tom did not cut all the trees). The results showed that both groups preferred the L3 interpretation similar to that preferred in their L2, but not in their L1, suggesting a potential L2 influence on L3 acquisition. The study evaluates L3 acquisition theories in light of these results.

Previous research suggests that child HSs’ performance in offline linguistic tasks is typically worse than their age-matched monolingual peers and is modulated by linguistic and child-level factors. This study examined the comprehension and production of three Mandarin non-canonical structures in 5- to 9-year-old Mandarin–English heritage children and Mandarin-speaking monolingual children, including an online processing task. Results showed that heritage children had different performance in production and offline comprehension across structures compared to monolinguals. In online processing, they showed sensitivity to different cues similarly to monolinguals but took longer to revise initial misinterpretations. Within heritage children, we found that presence of morphosyntactic cues facilitated performance across tasks while cross-linguistic influence was only identified in production and offline comprehension but not in online processing. Additionally, input quantity predicted their production and offline comprehension accuracy of non-canonical structures, whereas age modulated their production. Lastly, online processing was not modulated by age nor input.

Spanish speakers tend to perceive an illusory [e] preceding word-initial [s]-consonant sequences, e.g., perceiving [stið] as [estið] (Cuetos, Hallé, Domínguez & Segui, 2011), but this illusion is weaker for Spanish speakers who know English, which lacks the illusion (Carlson, Goldrick, Blasingame & Fink, 2016). The present study aimed to shed light on why this occurs by assessing how a brief interval spent using English impacts performance in Spanish auditory discrimination and lexical decision. Late Spanish–English bilinguals’ pattern of responses largely matched that of monolinguals, but their response times revealed significant differences between monolinguals and bilinguals, and between bilinguals who had just completed tasks in English vs. Spanish. These results suggest that late bilinguals do not simply learn to perceive initial [s]-consonant sequences veridically, but that elements of both their phonotactic systems interact dynamically during speech perception, as listeners work to identify what it was they just heard.

In her keynote paper, Valian (2014) provides a comprehensive review of the literature that examines whether bilingual individuals outperform monolingual participants on various executive processing tasks. The author acknowledges that numerous factors contribute to the outcomes, such as variations in participants’ profile, differences in target functions, as well as variants of tasks and procedures. She also says in her review that, on the one hand, researchers use different tasks to measure similar functions; while, on the other hand, each of these tasks target somewhat different aspects of executive processing. The most widely used tasks, such as the Stroop or flanker tasks, measure several components of executive functions simultaneously.

In the present study we challenge the generally accepted view based primarily on L1 data that surface linguistic information decays rapidly during reading and that only propositional information is retained in memory. In two eye-tracking experiments, we show that both L1 and L2 adult readers retain verbatim information of a text. In particular, the reading behaviour of L2 German learners revealed that they were sensitive to both lexical (synonyms) and syntactic (active/passive alternation) substitutions during a second reading of the texts, while L1 exhibited only reduced sensitivity to the lexical substitutions. The results deliver an important piece of evidence that complies with several current processing (e.g., Shallow Structure Hypothesis), acquisition (Declarative/Procedural Model) and cognitive (e.g., Fuzzy Trace Theory) approaches and adds a new dimension to their empirical and theoretical basis.

The Gradient Symbolic Computation (GSC) model presented in the keynote article (Goldrick, Putnam & Schwarz) constitutes a significant theoretical development, not only as a model of bilingual code-mixing, but also as a general framework that brings together symbolic grammars and graded representations. The authors are to be commended for successfully integrating a theory of grammatical knowledge with the voluminous research on lexical co-activation in bilinguals. It is, however, unfortunate that a certain conception of bilingualism was inherited from this latter research tradition, one in which the contrast between native and non-native language takes a back seat.

Goldrick, Putnam and Schwarz (Goldrick, Putnam & Schwarz) argue that code-mixing in bilingual production involves not only combining forms from both languages but also – crucially – integrating grammatical principles with gradient mental representations. They further propose an analysis of a particular case of intrasentential code mixing – doubling constructions – framed within the formalism of Gradient Symbolic Computation. This formalism, in their view, is better suited to accounting for code mixing than other generative language models because it allows the weighting of constraints both in the choice of particular structures within a single language and in blends of structures in code-mixed productions.

This paper explores the link between the metaphoric structure TIME IS SPACE and time perception in bilinguals. While there appear to be fundamental commonalities in the way humans perceive and experience time regardless of language background, language-specific spatiotemporal metaphors can give rise to differences between populations, under certain conditions. Little is known, however, about how bilinguals experience time, and the specific factors that may modulate bilingual temporal processing. Here, we address this gap by examining L1 Spanish – L2 Swedish bilinguals in a psychophysical task. Results show that duration estimation of dynamic spatial configurations analogous to L2-specific temporal metaphors is modulated by L2 proficiency. In contrast, duration estimation of spatial configurations analogous to the L1 metaphorical expressions appears to be modulated by the age of L2 acquisition. These findings are discussed in terms of associative learning and cognitive restructuring in the bilingual mind.

In the present study, we examined the effect of speaker certainty on word-learning performance in English-speaking monolingual (MAge = 6.40) and Spanish–English bilingual (MAge = 6.58) children. No group differences were observed when children learned novel words from a certain speaker. However, bilingual children were more willing to learn novel words from an uncertain speaker than their monolingual peers. These findings indicate that language experience influences how children weigh cues to speaker credibility during learning and suggest that children with more diverse linguistic backgrounds (i.e., bilinguals) are less prone to prioritizing information based on speaker certainty.

We investigated L1 and L2 frequency effects in the sharing of syntax across languages (reflected in cross-linguistic structural priming) using an artificial language (AL) paradigm. Ninety-six Dutch speakers learned an AL with either a prepositional-object (PO) dative bias (PO datives appeared three times as often as double-object [DO] datives) or a DO dative bias (DOs appeared three times as often as POs). Priming was assessed from the AL to Dutch (a strongly PO-biased language). There was weak immediate priming for DOs, but not for POs in both bias conditions. This suggests that L1, but not AL, frequency influenced immediate priming. Furthermore, the DO bias group produced 10% more DOs in Dutch than the PO bias group, showing that cumulative priming was influenced by AL frequency. We discuss the different effects of L1 and AL frequency on cross-linguistic structural priming in terms of lexicalist and implicit learning accounts.

This paper reports three studies of bilingual lexical processing, using the semantic competitor priming (SCP) method of Lee and Williams (2001). Study 1 found a trend of within-language SCP effect for Chinese–English bilinguals with both higher and lower levels of vocabulary knowledge. There was also a cross-language SCP effect, but this was restricted to bilinguals with a lower level of vocabulary knowledge. Study 2 found a cross-language SCP effect for Chinese learners of English in the classroom context. Study 3 found both within- and cross-language SCP effects for bilinguals with study-abroad experience as well as Chinese–English classroom learners who had a higher working memory capacity. Those findings are interpreted in terms of a dynamic view of bilingual language selection.