This study investigated whether L1-Korean L2-English speakers could use (in)definiteness to predict unmentioned (non-)unique referents. In previous studies on the topic, methodological considerations made it difficult to separate the effects of grammar from the effects of non-linguistic knowledge. We used a visual world paradigm eye-tracking task to resolve such issues and designed stimuli that focused only on (in)definiteness. Participants’ eye movements were recorded as they heard “Click on the/a blue circle.” L1 and advanced L2 speakers used definiteness information to predict unique referents before the critical noun (circle) was heard while indefinite articles were not utilized to the same extent. Intermediate L2 speakers relied heavily on color words, not articles, to locate a referent. The results imply that predicting a referent solely based on definiteness (without real-world knowledge) requires substantial advancement in L2 development, and indefinite articles do not predict non-unique referents as clearly as definite articles predict unique referents.

Increasing numbers of international students enter university education via English language bridging programs. Much research has overlooked the nature of second language reading development during a bridging program, focusing instead on the development of literacy skills of international students who already meet the language requirement for undergraduate admission. We report a longitudinal eye-movement study assessing English passage reading efficiency and comprehension in 405 Chinese-speaking bridging program students. Incoming IELTS reading scores were used as an index of baseline reading ability. Linear mixed-effects regression models fitted to global eye-movement measures and reading comprehension indicated that despite initial between-subjects differences, within-subject change at each ability level progressed at the same rate, following parallel growth trajectories. Therefore, there was significant overall reading progress during the bridging program, but no evidence that the gap between low and high ability readers either closed or widened over time.

Drawing on the adaptive control hypothesis, we examined whether older adults’ bilingual interactional contexts of conversational exchanges would predict important indices of executive functions (EF). We assessed participants’ engagement in each bilingual interactional context – single-language, dual-language, and dense code-switching – and their performance on a series of nonverbal EF measures. Sixty-nine healthy older adults (Mage = 70.39 years; ages 60–93) were recruited from local community centers. We found that the dense code-switching context was associated with enhanced overall EF, but not individual facets of EF (inhibitory control, shifting, and updating). These findings held true when we controlled for a host of covariates. Our findings shed light on aging bilinguals’ interactional contexts as crucial bilingual experiences that modulate overall EF. Given that bilingualism is a multidimensional construct, rather than a unidimensional variable, our study underscores the importance of more fine-grained operationalisation of bilingualism when studying its impacts on EF.

We investigate the role of awareness in learning non-salient grammar features in a second language during oral interaction. We conducted a learning experiment during which forty-eight adult Dutch-speaking advanced learners of German and a native German-speaking experimenter engaged in a scripted oral dialogue game. The experimenter and learner in turn produced sentences based on pictures eliciting German strong verbs with stem-vowel alternations, a morphosyntactic feature that represents a persistent learning difficulty. While learners in the implicit condition were merely instructed to focus on sentence meaning, learners in the explicit condition were encouraged to also pay attention to and learn from the target structure in the experimenter's input. Although the explicit group achieved higher accuracy scores overall, both groups had similar (absolute) learning gains, showing that oral input provided during interactive exchanges can lead to substantial learning not only under explicit, learning-targeted conditions, but also without an explicit directive to learn.

Previous research has provided evidence for cross-language phonological activation during visual word recognition. However, such findings mainly came from alphabetic languages, and readers’ familiarity with the two scripts might differ. The present study aimed to test whether such cross-language phonological activation can be observed in Chinese, a logographic script, without the confounding factor of script familiarity as readers read the same script in different languages. Cantonese–Mandarin bilinguals were tested in an eye-tracking experiment in which they were instructed to read sentences silently. A target word in the sentence was replaced by either a homophone in both Cantonese and Mandarin, a homophone in Cantonese or in Mandarin only, or an unrelated character. The results showed that native Cantonese readers could activate phonological representations of L1 and L2 while reading Chinese sentences silently. However, the degree to which they relied on phonological decoding in L1 and L2 varied in the two languages.

To investigate how orthography and semantics interact during bilingual visual word recognition, Dutch–English bilinguals made lexical decisions in two masked priming experiments. Dutch primes and English targets were presented that were either neighbour cognates (boek – BOOK), noncognate translations (kooi – CAGE), orthographically related neighbours (neus – NEWS), or unrelated words (huid - COAT). Prime durations of 50 ms (Experiment 1) and 83 ms (Experiment 2) led to similar result patterns. Both experiments reported a large cognate facilitation effect, a smaller facilitatory noncognate translation effect, and the absence of inhibitory orthographic neighbour effects. These results indicate that cognate facilitation is in large part due to orthographic-semantic resonance. Priming results for each condition were simulated well (all r's >.50) by Multilink+, a recent computational model for word retrieval. Limitations to the role of lateral inhibition in bilingual word recognition are discussed.

We investigated cross-modal influences between speech and sign in hearing bimodal bilinguals, proficient in a spoken and a sign language, and its consequences on visual attention during message preparation using eye-tracking. We focused on spatial expressions in which sign languages, unlike spoken languages, have a modality-driven preference to mention grounds (big objects) prior to figures (smaller objects). We compared hearing bimodal bilinguals’ spatial expressions and visual attention in Dutch and Dutch Sign Language (N = 18) to those of their hearing non-signing (N = 20) and deaf signing peers (N = 18). In speech, hearing bimodal bilinguals expressed more ground-first descriptions and fixated grounds more than hearing non-signers, showing influence from sign. In sign, they used as many ground-first descriptions as deaf signers and fixated grounds equally often, demonstrating no influence from speech. Cross-linguistic influence of word order preference and visual attention in hearing bimodal bilinguals appears to be one-directional modulated by modality-driven differences.

Research examining the cognitive consequences of bilingualism has increasingly relied on continuous measures to capture the degree and nature of bilingual experience, using such variables as proficiency, age of acquisition, and language environments. One such measure, language entropy, indexes the social diversity of contexts in which each language is used. The construct was developed in a particular bilingual context, Montréal, Canada. The present study investigated the extent to which it also applies to a context in which social language use is substantially different from that of Montréal – namely, Toronto, Canada. Following the procedures in the original study, participants were assigned an entropy score and performed the AX-Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT). Performance was associated with self-rated language proficiency, but unlike the results from Montréal, was not associated with entropy scores. Therefore, differences in the language context influence whether language entropy is related to behavioral performance on a cognitive task.

In this two-part study, we conducted both cross-sectional and longitudinal investigations on the relative weights of experiential, cognitive, and sociopsychological factors in adult L2 speech learning. In the cross-sectional phase (Study 1), speech was elicited from 73 Japanese speakers of English via a picture description task, and rated for accentedness and comprehensibility. These scores were linked to scores on a range of tests designed to measure aptitude, motivation, and anxiety. The results showed that comprehensibility was exclusively linked to experiential variables (e.g., the amount of L2 use outside classrooms), while accentedness was linked to phonemic coding ability and anxiety. In the longitudinal phase (Study 2), we tracked the same participants' L2 comprehensibility and accentedness development when they received four weeks of explicit pronunciation instruction. According to the results of pre- and post-tests, participants significantly improved the comprehensibility and accentedness of their speech regardless of cognitive and sociopsychological differences.

Previous research has shown that using foreign languages reduces cognitive biases. Here, we investigate whether this foreign-language effect extends to self-related cognition – in particular, the self-positivity bias, which refers to automatic association of oneself with positive information and has a facilitation role in maintaining mental health. We applied event-related brain potentials and oscillations in the implicit association test where Chinese–English bilinguals responded to category words (self vs. others) and attribute words (positive vs. negative) in either their native language Chinese or their foreign language English. In response to Chinese words, a self-positivity bias occurred, indexed by a positive D-score in reaction times as well as by smaller N200, larger P3-like/LPC responses, and lower alpha desynchronization when self words were associated with positive relative to negative traits. However, the bias was diminished in the English context. Overall, our findings provide important implications for language choices when self-protective mechanisms should be enhanced.

Most cognate research suggests facilitation effects in picture naming, but how these effects manifest in bilinguals after brain damage remains unclear. Additionally, whether this effect is captured in clinical measures is largely unknown. Using data from the Boston Naming Test, we examined the naming of cognates and noncognates, the extent of cognate facilitation produced, and the individual differences in bilingual language experience associated with naming outcomes in forty Spanish–English bilingual persons with aphasia (BPWA) relative to thirty-one Spanish–English healthy bilinguals (HB). Results suggest that naming performance in L1 and L2 in both groups is modulated by lexical frequency, bilingual language experience, and by language impairment in BPWA. Although the two groups showed similarities, they deviated in benefit drawn from the extent of phoneme/grapheme overlap in cognate items. HB showed an association between cognate facilitation and bilingual language experience, while cognate facilitation in BPWA was only associated with L2 language impairment.

Drawing on naturally-occurring bilingual speech from a well-defined codeswitching community in Southern Arizona, this study examined the influence of semantic gender (a.k.a. biological gender), analogical gender, and other-language phonemic cues in modulating gender assignment in Spanish–English codeswitched speech. Thirty-four Spanish–English early bilinguals completed a forced-choice elicitation task involving two codeswitching environments: Spanish determiner–English noun switches (Task 1) and English–Spanish switched copula constructions (Task 2). The results revealed that for human-denoting nouns, bilinguals assigned grammatical gender based on the presupposed sex of a noun's referent in both syntactic environments tested. As for inanimate nouns, bilinguals were more likely to assign masculine over feminine gender to such nouns in determiner–noun switches, but not in switched copula constructions. Other-language phonemic cues did not influence the assignment mechanism. A methodological implication is that the study replicated the codeswitching patterns observed in naturally-occurring bilingual speech from the same bilingual community.

This study compared late bilinguals’ pitch feedback control in L1 and L2 production using a frequency-altered feedback paradigm in which participants read target words while presented with unexpected pitch-shift in their voice feedback. Variables of language (L1 or L2) and perturbation magnitudes (0, 100, 200, or 400 cents) were manipulated. Behaviorally, participants produced larger magnitudes but longer latencies of vocal compensation in L2 than in L1 production, suggesting that L2 pitch feedback control has greater importance but lower efficiency. Event-related potential findings demonstrated that 400-cent shifts elicited greater N1 amplitudes than those in the 0-cent baseline condition in L1 production. This difference was non-significant in L2 production, implying different neural processing of unaltered feedback and externally-generated feedback in L1 and L2 production. Participants’ vocal compensation and P2 amplitudes were similarly modulated by pitch-shift in L1 and L2 production, implying a similar gating mechanism to correct internal and external errors.

Sentence reading involves constant competition between lexical candidates. Previous research with monolinguals has shown that the neighbours of a read word are inhibited, making their retrieval as a subsequent target more difficult, but the duration of this interference may depend on reading skills. In this study, we examined neighbour priming effects in sentence reading among proficient Norwegian–English bilinguals reading in their L2. We investigated the effects of the distance between prime and target (short vs. long) and the nature of the overlap between the two words (beginning or end), and related these to differences in individual cognitive skills. Our results replicated the inhibition effects found in monolinguals, albeit slightly delayed. Interference between form-related words was affected by the L2 reading skills and, crucially, by the phonological decoding abilities of the bilingual reader. We discuss the results in light of competition models of bilingual reading as well as episodic memory accounts.

This study investigated whether the deployment of cognitive control was modulated by the intra-sentential code-switching types during comprehension. L1-dominant Chinese–English bilinguals were administered a self-paced reading task in two reading contexts – namely, alternation context and dense code-switching context. We assessed language switch cost and reversed language dominance effect in the self-paced reading task and examined how these language control measures related to domain-general inhibition and monitoring capacities. The results showed a larger switch cost asymmetry in alternation context compared to dense CS context. In addition, bilinguals’ inhibition skills were associated with second language (L2) switch cost in alternation context, while monitoring tended to predict the language dominance effect in dense code-switching context. These findings suggest that alternation context exerts high requirement to reactive inhibition while dense code-switching context tends to induce proactive monitoring during comprehension. We conclude that intra-sentential code-switching types trigger different aspects of cognitive control during comprehension.

Findings of bilingual participants outperforming their monolingual counterparts in executive functioning tasks have been repeatedly reported in the literature (Bialystok, 2017). However, uncontrolled factors or imperfectly matched samples might affect the reliability of these findings. This study aims to take into account a range of relevant variables in combination with innovative analyses to investigate the performance of one unstudied language group, Greek–English bilingual children in the north of England, compared to monolingual control groups. Our battery of executive function tasks taps into inhibition, updating and shifting. We use k-means nearest neighbour methods to match the groups and factor analysis to determine language proficiency. We find that bilinguals’ accuracy is on a par with their monolingual peers – however, they are faster in inhibition and working memory tasks. Our study provides strong evidence for the presence of a bilingual advantage in these domains, while making important methodological contributions to the field.

This study opens a project that empirically investigates the Plurilingual Creativity paradigm. This paradigm expands the Multilingual Creative Cognition by making shifts in the conceptualization of the phenomena of multilingualism and creativity, respectively. We examined how multilingual and multicultural factors can contribute to divergent thinking. Online data collection included assessments of language repertoire, multicultural experience, intercultural competence, and divergent thinking. A series of regression analyses obtained evidence for the direct contribution of language repertoire, intercultural competence components and multicultural experience to divergent thinking. In addition, language repertoire was found to moderate the link between management of intercultural interaction and fluency, multicultural experience and both flexibility and originality in divergent thinking. These findings emphasize the importance of considering the contribution of plurilingual/pluricultural factors of language repertoire, multicultural experience, and intercultural competence to creativity. Thereby, these findings provide empirical support for the conceptual shift toward plurilingual creativity.

The study explores how native language (L1) lexical access is affected by immersion in a second-language (L2) environment, and by short-term reimmersion in the L1 environment. We compared the L1 picture-naming performance of Polish–English bilinguals living in the UK (migrants) against that of bilinguals living in Poland (controls). Each group was tested twice: the migrants while in the UK (L2 immersion) and after visiting Poland (L1 reimmersion); the controls twice in their L1 environment. Contrary to our expectations, there was no main effect of group, thus suggesting that L2 immersion per se does not impact L1 lexical access. Nevertheless, migrants benefitted from L1 reimmersion by showing faster naming latencies for high-frequency words after a short visit to their home country, probably due to more opportunities to encounter these words. Overall, the study shows that the cognitive system is sensitive to the language environment by quickly adapting the activation level of lexical items.

Differential affective processing has been widely documented for bilinguals: L1 affective words elicit higher levels of arousal and stronger emotionality ratings than L2 affective words (Pavlenko, 2012). In this study, we focus on two closely related Chinese languages, Mandarin and Cantonese, whose affective lexicons are highly overlapping, with shared lexical items that only differ in pronunciation across languages. We recorded L1 Cantonese – L2 Mandarin bilinguals’ pupil responses to auditory tokens of Cantonese and Mandarin affective words. Our results showed that Cantonese–Mandarin bilinguals had stronger pupil responses when the affective words were pronounced in Cantonese (L1) than when the same words were pronounced in Mandarin (L2). The effect was most evident in taboo words and among bilinguals with lower L2 proficiency. We discuss the theoretical implications of the findings in the frameworks of exemplar theory and models of the bilingual lexicon.

Language switching is often associated with language competition and switching costs. However, the underlying mechanisms might differ depending on context (free versus cued naming) and modality (production or comprehension). In this study, we assessed how response-stimulus intervals (RSI) influence language-switching costs. Longer RSIs might provide more time for interference from the previous trial to decay and result in smaller switching costs. Mandarin–English bilinguals completed two dual-language production tasks (Experiment 1: cued and voluntary picture naming) and one comprehension task (Experiment 2: animacy judgement) with a short RSI and a long RSI condition. While switching costs were present in all tasks, they were only influenced by RSI length in the cued-production task, with smaller switching costs in the long RSI condition. In contrast, RSI did not influence voluntary-production or comprehension costs. This suggests that bilinguals might apply language control differently to switch languages depending on the type of switching and modality.