How are the two lexicons of a bilingual represented and how do they interact during language processing? These questions are central to bilingualism and have been the topics of a large number of studies. Dijkstra, Wahl, Buytenhuijs, van Halem, Al-jibouri, De Korte & Rekke (in press) put forward a model that tries to capture people's behavior in several tasks mostly involving reading, with the exception of word translation. A praise-worthy feature of the model is that it is computationally implemented following a local-connectionist architecture. The model is then used to quantitatively account for reaction time patterns on various tasks, with considerable success.

This study examined whether bilinguals automatically activate lexical options from both of their languages when performing a picture matching task in their dominant language (L1) by using event related potentials. English–French bilinguals and English monolinguals performed a picture-spoken word matching task with three conditions: match (BEACH-“beach”), unrelated mismatch (BEACH-“tack”), and L2 onset competitor mismatch (BEACH-“plaid”; plaid sounds like plage, the French word for beach). Critically, bilinguals, but not monolinguals, showed reduced N400s for L2-cohort vs. unrelated mismatches. The results provide clear evidence that when bilinguals identify pictures, they automatically activate lexical options from both languages, even when expecting oral input from only their dominant language. N400 attenuation suggests bilinguals activate but do not expect L2 lexical options.

Four bilingual speakers of Irish (Gaelic) and English, two men and two women, were audiorecorded as they produced narratives based on pictures from the Mercer Mayer book Frog, where are you? Order of narration was counterbalanced. The narratives were analyzed according to certain features of global and local structure originally identified in Berman and Slobin (1994). Differences within and across narratives emerged in the number of components included, the number of planning components explicitly marked for purpose, the marking of tense and aspect, and the use of extended aspectual categories. These variations were attributed to 1) the order in which the narrative was told (first-told versus second-told versions), 2) the language of the narrative (Irish versus English), and 3) the particular preferences of individual narrators.

We investigated whether fluent language production is associated with greater skill in resolving lexical competition during spoken word recognition and ignoring irrelevant information in non-linguistic tasks. Native English monolinguals and native English L2 learners, who varied on measures of discourse/verbal fluency and cognitive control, identified spoken English words from dense (e.g., BAG) and sparse (e.g., BALL) phonological neighborhoods in moderate noise. Participants were slower in recognizing spoken words from denser neighborhoods. The inhibitory effect of phonological neighborhood density was smaller for English monolinguals and L2 learners with higher speech production fluency, but was unrelated to cognitive control as indexed by performance on the Simon task. Converging evidence from within-language effects in monolinguals and cross-language effects in L2 learners suggests that fluent language production involves a competitive selection process that may not engage all domain-general control mechanisms. Results suggest that language experience may capture individual variation in lexical competition resolution.

This study investigates the phonetic outcome of mixed-language speech in Bengali and Indian English, towards understanding cross-language interaction in highly proficient bilinguals. We compare spectral properties of L2 vowels [æ] (common to L1, L2) and [ʌ] (absent in L1) in code-switched (mixed) vs. nonswitched productions. Results reveal asymmetrical shifts in both vowels during mixed productions, towards related L1 categories. We interpret this as a temporary increase in cross-language phonetic interaction during mixed-language use, leading to a shift towards L1 norms, evidencing transfer effects on L2 vowels. We elicit mixed productions through two tasks: cued picture-naming and code-switching, to assess if experimental paradigm independently influences the behavior under study. Results reveal parallel patterns, but small magnitude differences, across paradigms. We discuss these findings in light of recent proposals about asymmetries in short-term phonetic interaction, postulated discursive factors in code-switching, and the issue of comparability between paradigms in transfer studies.

If one asks how many languages there are, one can imagine at least three answers: one, over six billion, or 7,358.

In the recent swell of research on bilingualism and its consequences for the mind and the brain, there has been a warning that we need to remember that not all bilinguals are the same (e.g., Green & Abutalebi, 2013; Kroll & Bialystok, 2013; Luk & Bialystok, 2013). There are bilinguals who acquired two languages in early childhood and have used them continuously throughout their lives, bilinguals who acquired one language early and then switched to another language when they entered school or emigrated from one country to another, and others who only acquired a second language (L2) as an adult. Among these forms of bilingualism there are differences in both the context and amount of time spent in each language and differences in the status of the languages themselves. The L2 may be a majority language, spoken by almost everyone in the environment, or a minority language, spoken only by a few. The native or first language (L1) may also be the dominant language or may have been overtaken by the influence of the L2 given the circumstances imposed by the environment. Likewise, the L1 and L2 may vary in how similar they are structurally, whether they share the same written script, or whether one language is spoken and the other signed.

The present study provides insight into cross-language activation in hearing bimodal bilinguals by (1) examining co-activation of spoken words during processing of signs by hearing bimodal bilingual users of Dutch (their L1) and Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT; late learners) and (2) investigating the contribution of mouthings to bimodal cross-language activation. NGT signs were presented with or without mouthings in two sign-picture verification experiments. In both experiments the phonological relation (unrelated, cohort overlap or final rhyme overlap) between the Dutch translation equivalents of the NGT signs and pictures was manipulated. Across both experiments, the results showed slower responses for sign-picture pairs with final rhyme overlap relative to phonologically unrelated sign-picture pairs, indicating co-activation of the spoken language during sign processing, but no significant effect for sign-picture pairs with cohort overlap in Dutch. In addition, co-activation was not affected by the presence or absence of mouthings.

There exists insufficient eye-tracking evidence on the differences in emotional word processing between the first language (L1) and second language (L2) readers. This study conducted an eye-tracking experiment to investigate the emotional effects in L2 sentence reading, and to explore the modulation of L2 proficiency and individual emotional states. Adapted from Knickerbocker et al. (2015), the current study recorded eye movements at both early and late processing stages when late Chinese–English bilinguals read emotion-label and neutral target words in natural L2 sentences. Results indicated that L2 readers did not show the facilitation effects of lexical affective connotations during sentence reading, and they even demonstrated processing disadvantages for L2 emotional words. Additionally, the interaction effect between L2 proficiency and emotion was consistently significant for the measure of total reading time in positive words. Measurements of participants’ depressive and anxious states were not robustly correlated with eye movement measures. Our findings supplemented new evidence to existing sparse eye-tracking experiments on L2 emotion processing, and lent support to several theoretical frameworks in the bilingual research field, including the Emotional Contexts of Learning Theory, Lexical Quality Hypothesis and Revised Hierarchical Model.

Structural and functional brain adaptations in bilingual speakers are well documented in the neurolinguistic literature. However, far less is known about neural changes evidenced in multilingual speakers. This study investigates brain plasticity in a group of highly proficient multilinguals, fluent in four or more languages, compared to a group of monolinguals. An ROI analysis used to evaluate differences in core linguistic regions and regions associated with language control revealed robust decreases for multilinguals in grey matter thickness of two brain regions within the parietal lobe (i.e., precuneus and angular gyrus), involved in lexico-semantic processing, memory retrieval, and control maintenance. We discuss our findings in the context of emerging models characterizing trajectorial changes in brain structures associated with language experience. We consider how the demands of optimal functioning within multi-linguistic environments may foster cortical changes that manifest as decreased GM thickness in highly proficient multilingual compared to monolinguals.

Bilingualism is thought to confer advantages in executive functioning, thereby contributing to cognitive reserve and a later age of dementia symptom onset. While the relation between bilingualism and age of onset has been explored in Alzheimer's dementia, there are few studies examining bilingualism as a contributor to cognitive reserve in frontotemporal dementia (FTD). In line with previous findings, we hypothesized that bilinguals with behavioral variant FTD would be older at symptom onset compared to monolinguals, but that no such effect would be found in patients with nonfluent/agrammatic variant primary progressive aphasia (PPA) or semantic variant PPA. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found no significant difference in age at symptom onset between monolingual and bilingual speakers within any of the FTD variants, and there were no notable differences on neuropsychological measures. Overall, our results do not support a protective effect of bilingualism in patients with FTD-spectrum disease in a U.S. based cohort.

Ikizer and Ramirez-Esparza (2017) reported a study suggesting that bilingualism may have a positive impact on people's social skills. They found that a) bilinguals scored higher on a scale that is supposed to reveal social flexibility, and that b) they also report having social interactions more frequently than monolinguals. The authors relate this advantage in social flexibility to the need of exercising language switching in bilingual speakers. In this commentary, we argue that their arguments are not theoretically sound and that their observations are not compelling enough to reach this conclusion.

Based on a detailed review of existing studies of high-proficiency second-language (L2) learners who acquired the L2 in adolescence/adulthood, Cunnings (Cunnings, 2016) argues that Sorace's (2011) Interface Hypothesis (IH) and Clahsen and Felser's (2006) Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH) do not explain the existing data as well as his memory-based approach which posits that memory-retrieval processes in the L1 and L2 do not pattern alike. Cunnings proposes that L1 and L2 processing differ in terms of comprehenders’ ability to retrieve from memory information constructed during sentence processing. He concludes that L2 processing is more susceptible to interference effects during retrieval, and, most relevantly for this commentary, that discourse-based cues to memory retrieval are more heavily weighted in L2 than L1 processing.

Bilinguals usually select the right language to speak for the particular context they are in, but sometimes the nontarget language intrudes. Despite a large body of research into language selection and language control, it remains unclear where intrusion errors originate from. These errors may be due to incorrect selection of the nontarget language at the conceptual level, or be a consequence of erroneous word selection (despite correct language selection) at the lexical level. We examined the former possibility in two language switching experiments using a manipulation that supposedly affects language selection on the conceptual level, namely whether the conversational language context was associated with the target language (congruent) or with the alternative language (incongruent) on a trial. Both experiments showed that language intrusion errors occurred more often in incongruent than in congruent contexts, providing converging evidence that language selection during concept preparation is one driving force behind language intrusion.

This study analyzes gender assignment in Spanish–Basque mixed nominal constructions with nouns in Basque (a language that lacks gender) and determiners in Spanish (a language that marks gender) by using a multi-task approach: (i) naturalistic data, (ii) an elicitation task, and (iii) an auditory judgment task. Naturalistic data suggest cross-language effects under which a morphological marker of Basque (-a determiner) is interpreted as a morphophonological expression of gender marking in Spanish. A preference for feminine determiners was observed in the judgment task, which differs from the masculine default trend observed in Spanish–English bilinguals (Jake, Myers-Scotton & Gross, 2002). Our results point to feminine gender as default in Spanish–Basque mixed DPs, indicating that the resources that bilinguals use for gender assignment can be different from those of monolinguals. We argue that this is an outcome of interacting processes which take place at the interfaces (lexicon, phonology, morphosyntax) of both languages, resulting in cross-language effects.

This study investigated the engagement of domain-general cognitive control during the comprehension of dense code-switching sentences. Stimulus-locked event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured while L1-dominant Chinese–English bilinguals read switch and non-switch sentences. The results of the reading task revealed language dominance effects on the N400, left anterior negativity (LAN) and late positive component (LPC). The language dominance effects at lexical level (i.e., on the N400 and LAN) were modulated by individual differences in monitoring capacity. In contrast, inhibition capacity predicted code-switching costs at the sentence level (i.e., for the LPC component). The results suggest that proactive monitoring and reactive inhibition affect different processing stages during the comprehension of dense code-switching sentences. These findings partially align with processing models of code-switching incorporating a dual control mode perspective and contribute new insight into the dynamic interplay between reactive and proactive control processes.

The present study investigated the influence of lexical links and conceptual mediation in number word translation. In four experiments, a semantic blocking paradigm was used with numerical stimuli and stimuli from other non-number categories. The performance of Spanish L1–English L2 bilinguals was examined in backward and forward translation (Experiment 1 and 3), in naming Arabic digits and pictures (Experiment 2A) and in reading L1 and L2 words (Experiment 2B). The blocked context produced a facilitatory effect for numerical stimuli in the lower range. This result contrasts with the interference effect observed for stimuli from non-number categories in translation and naming tasks. These results are interpreted to mean that the translation of number words, particularly those in the lower range of the numeric sequence, takes place with a large influence of the lexical connections. It supports the suggestions that the influence of processing routes depends on the type of items.

Dijkstra and van Heuven lucidly summarize the important research generated by the BIA model and provide an excellent case for the BIA+ model with its critical separation of the identification system from the task/decision system. A keynote article necessarily offers a selective exposition of the authors' thinking and so my remarks are an invitation to expand. My first question concerns the scope of the BIA+ model. My remaining questions broadly address a key feature of the BIA+ model – its ability to explain performance changes as a function of task demands