We examined the influence of bilingualism on task switching by inspecting various markers for task-switching costs. English monolinguals and Korean–English bilinguals completed a modified Dimensional Change Card Sort task based on a nonverbal task-switching paradigm. We found advantages for Korean–English bilinguals in terms of smaller single-task (pure-block) switch costs and greater reactivation benefits than those of English monolinguals. However, bilingual advantages in mixing costs were relatively weak, and the two groups did not differ on local switch costs. Notably, when we approximated the cue-based priming effect in single-task (pure) blocks, we found no evidence that the locus of bilingual advantages in task-switching performance is attributable to a basic cue-priming effect. Taken together, our results suggest that bilingualism is conducive to task switching via facilitation in control processing, including inhibition of proactive interferences and efficient adaptation to abstract task-set reactivation.

This study investigates how second language (L2) listeners match an unexpected accented form to their stored form of a word. The phonetic-to-lexical mapping for L2 as compared to L1 regional varieties was examined with early and late Italian-L2 speakers who were all L1-Australian English speakers. AXB discrimination and lexical decision tasks were conducted in both languages, using unfamiliar regional accents that minimize (near-merge) consonant contrasts maintained in their own L1-L2 accents. Results reveal that in the L2, early bilinguals’ recognition of accented variants depended on their discrimination capacity. Late bilinguals, for whom the accented variants were not represented in their L2 lexicon, instead mapped standard and accented exemplars to the same lexical representations (i.e., dual mapping: Samuel & Larraza, 2015). By comparison, both groups showed the same broad accommodation to L1 accented variants. Results suggest qualitatively different yet similarly effective phonetic-to-lexical mapping strategies both for L2 versus L1 regional accents.

Speech perception involves both conceptual cues and perceptual cues. These, individually, have been shown to guide bilinguals’ speech perception; but their potential interaction has been ignored. Explicitly, bilinguals have been given perceptual cues that could be predicted by the conceptual cues. Therefore, to target the perceptual-conceptual interaction, we created a restricted range of perceptual cues that either matched, or mismatched, bilinguals’ conceptual predictions based on the language context. Specifically, we designed an active speech perception task that concurrently collected electrophysiological data from Spanish–English bilinguals and English monolinguals to address the extent to which this cue interaction uniquely affects bilinguals’ speech sound perception and allocation of attentional resources. Bilinguals’ larger MMN-N2b in the mismatched context aligns with the Predictive Coding Hypothesis to suggest that bilinguals use their diverse perceptual routines to best allocate cognitive resources to perceive speech.

Pavlenko urges the community of language researchers to modify their conceptions of the mental lexicon, based on findings from bilingualism and emotions. She makes a compelling case. While reading her article, one can temporarily forget that in contemporary practice, emotion is not regarded as relevant to the theoretical question of the structure of the mental lexicon.

The main fact that is currently known about the nature of masked L2-L1 noncognate translation priming effects in the lexical decision task is simply that those effects are significant in some studies but not in others. In an effort to better understand these effects, we examined the data pattern for very proficient Japanese–English bilinguals using RT distributional analyses. We also examined the impacts of prime and target frequency on the priming effect. Significant priming was present even on the fastest trials, becoming larger on slower trials. Nonetheless, priming effects were generally constant across prime and target frequency with the only exception being when very high frequency L2 primes were used. In that situation, priming and target frequency were negatively related, a result that essentially produced the observed pattern of increasing priming on slower trials. Implications of these results and potential reasons for the presence/absence of L2-L1 priming effects are discussed.

Memory is an integral part of language processing. Given this, a better understanding of how people learn, represent and process language requires considerations of the principles of memory that support language comprehension. Cunnings’ paper (Cunnings, 2016) does just this. The core of his proposal is that second language (L2) processing that is non-target like can be explained in terms of memory operations rather than by invoking a shallow processor (cf. Clahsen & Felser, 2006).

Bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA) has been considered a possible mechanism of contact-induced change in several recent studies (Siegel, 2008, p. 117; Satterfield, 2005, p. 2075; Thomason, 2001, p. 148; Yip & Matthews, 2007, p.15). There is as yet little consensus on the question, with divergent views regarding both BFLA at the individual level and the implications for language change at the community level.

Among bilinguals, language-related variables such as first and second language proficiency and balance may be related to important cognitive and academic outcomes, but approaches to characterizing these variables are inconsistent, particularly among at-risk samples of children. The current study employed comprehensive language assessment of English and Spanish language skills and contrasted various approaches to the characterization of language among at-risk ELs in middle school (N = 161). Specifically, we contrasted variable-centered and person-centered approaches, and convergence between objective and self-report measures. Findings support a two-factor structure of English and Spanish language skills in this population, three profiles of students (balanced, moderately unbalanced-higher Spanish, and very unbalanced-higher English), convergence between variable-centered and person-centered approaches, and mixed support for subjective indices of usage. Results provide a foundation from which to examine the roles of L1 and L2 proficiency as well as balance in important cognitive and academic outcomes in this at-risk and understudied population.

Cunnings (2016) proposes that differences between native (L1) and second language (L2) sentence processing can best be explained in terms of susceptibility to effects of interference and an overreliance on discourse level cues during memory retrieval. Cunnings’ argument that difficulty in retrieval operations may provide a better explanation than a syntactic deficit account for explaining certain L1-L2 differences is convincing. However, the proposal for the ‘overuse’ of discourse is too broad and needs to be refined in terms of the specific contexts and conditions under which learners have difficulty. We also believe that difficulty with cue-based retrieval is still a characterization of the symptoms of differences between L1-L2 processing, and does not necessarily address the source of the variability.

Spanish–English bilinguals switched between naming pictures in one language and either reading-aloud or semantically classifying written words in both languages. When switching between reading-aloud and picture-naming, bilinguals exhibited no language switch costs in picture-naming even though they produced overt language switches in speech. However, when switching between semantic classification and picture-naming, bilinguals, especially unbalanced bilinguals, exhibited switch costs in the dominant language and switch facilitation in the nondominant language even though they never switched languages overtly. These results reveal language switching across comprehension and production can be cost-free when the intention remains the same. Assuming switch costs at least partially reflect inhibition of the nontarget language, this implies such language control mechanisms are recruited only under demanding task conditions, especially for unbalanced bilinguals. These results provide striking demonstration of adaptive control mechanisms and call into question previous claims that language switch costs necessarily transfer from comprehension to production.

When participants process a list of semantically strongly related words, the ones that were not presented may later be said, falsely, to have been on the list. This ‘false memory effect’ has been investigated by means of the DRM paradigm. We applied an emotional version of it to assess the false memory effect for emotional words in bilingual children with a minority language as L1 (their mother tongue) and a monolingual control group. We found that the higher emotionality of the words enhances memory distortion for both the bilingual and the monolingual children, in spite of the disadvantage related to vocabulary skills and of the socioeconomic status that acts on semantic processing independently from the condition of bilingualism. We conclude that bilingual children develop their semantic knowledge separately from their vocabulary skills and parallel to their monolingual peers, with a comparable role played by Arousal and Valence.

Mayberry and Kluender (Mayberry & Kluender) adopt interesting positions on a wide range of issues. Due to space limitations, we will focus on just two where our views differ: (i) the robustness of maturational constraints on second language acquisition (L2A), and (ii) the implications of a role for language aptitudes within the boundaries defined by sensitive periods (SPs).

Cunnings’ proposed theory can explain why second language (L2) learners have difficulty resolving certain types of dependencies (i.e., backward-looking dependencies) but not others (i.e., forward-looking dependencies). However, his theory should be more explicit about the mechanism underlying late L2 learners’ and native speakers’ different weightings of retrieval cues, and research framed within his theory should strive to tease apart age-of-acquisition effects from bilingualism effects.

Goldrick, Putnam and Schwarz (henceforth Goldrick et al.) base their computational account of code mixing on two premises, (1) that code mixing is subject to grammatical principles and (2) that “mental representations in bilingual speakers incorporate blends of structures from each language”. While there is copious evidence for the first premise, the second is far less well empirically supported. The authors imply that the second premise, the assumption of blend representations, is supported by Kroll & Gollan's (2014) review of speech planning in two languages, but this is not the case. Kroll & Gollan (2014:1) do indeed discuss evidence for the “parallel activation of the bilingual's two languages” but in terms of competition between alternatives rather than blended representations. The notion of blend is of course familiar to code-switching researchers from work on bimodal bilingual code mixing, as Goldrick et al. acknowledge, but here the term refers to “simultaneously produced English words and ASL signs” (Emmorey, Borinstein, Thompson & Gollan, 2008: 43).

Cunnings’ keynote article outlines a novel approach to native/non-native differences in on-line language comprehension by proposing that L2 speakers are more susceptible to cue-based retrieval interference than natives. Cue-based, parallel access approaches to processing have been prominent in monolingual studies for around 15 years now, but have barely been applied to L2/bilingual processing. We are particularly excited about the possibilities that this approach offers for understanding L1, L2 and bilingual processing, as well as individual differences. In this commentary, we focus on two issues: 1) whether the existing evidence for cue-based retrial mechanisms in L2 processing support a deficit model, as Cunnings seems to claim, and 2) how individual differences may explain both similarities and differences in L1 and L2 processing.