The present study explores the influence of individual differences in experience, perceptual acuity, and working memory on the development of both declarative and automatized aspects of L2 phonological vocabulary knowledge. A total of 486 Japanese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students took part in two vocabulary tests designed to measure declarative (meaning recognition) and automatized knowledge (lexicosemantic judgement task). Their performance was tied to the quantity and quality of their EFL experience, as well as their scores in auditory processing and working memory. While several significant, modest correlations between experience, aptitude, and vocabulary outcomes were observed, certain predictor variables were uniquely associated with either declarative or automatized vocabulary performance. Specifically, individuals with more extensive, typically language-focused EFL training and greater working memory demonstrated higher levels of declarative knowledge. Conversely, those who pursued extracurricular practice outside the classroom – exposing themselves to auditory materials and/or participating in study-abroad experiences – showed a more automatic execution of vocabulary knowledge.

In processing their two languages, bilinguals have to selectively attend to the target language and reduce interference from the non-target language. This experience may have specific cognitive consequences on Executive Functions (EF) through bilingual language processing. Some studies found cognitive consequences in executive functioning skills. However, other studies did not replicate these findings or found a bilingual disadvantage. The aim of this study was to test for the cognitive consequences of bilingualism in EF among a large number of young adults using a latent variable approach, to rule out non-EF task differences as an explanation for inconsistency across studies. Also, we were interested in testing the EF structure using the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) approach. The results did not support a cognitive consequence of bilingualism and also the EF structure was the same for both groups. We discuss other possible variables that might contribute to the mixed results across studies.

Bilinguals experience diminished emotion when using their foreign compared with their native language. The diminished emotion has been shown to lead to more lenient moral evaluations in a foreign language. Here we show that non-native speakers of English are less sensitive to emotional mitigating circumstances of a crime than native speakers, presumably because of the diminished experience emotion. This can lead non-native speakers to provide harsher, rather than more lenient, evaluations. Native and non-native speakers of English recommended sentence duration for crimes committed because of mitigating emotional circumstances (e.g., fraud to pay spouse's medical treatment) or for selfish reasons (e.g., buying luxury goods). Native English speakers differentiated more between the two types of scenarios than non-native speakers did. The study thus provides preliminary evidence that processing information in a foreign language can influence decisions, and that the directionality of the effect depends on the role of emotion in the context.

When describing motion events, English encodes Manner of motion in the verb and Path of motion in a satellite (s-framing). Brazilian Portuguese (BP), however, encodes Path in the verb and elaborates Manner adverbially (v-framing). This study investigates at what stages of L2 proficiency L2BP and English learners’ acceptability ratings converge with those of L1 speakers when rating sentences with Manner elaborated in the verb (Manner-verb) or in an adverb: a prepositional phrase (Manner-prep) or subordinate clause (Manner-AdvClause). Participants (n = 176) consisted of L1/L2English and L1/L2BP speakers. L2ers were grouped according to language proficiency (Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced). Results of ordinal logistic regressions show that Intermediate proficiency is associated with Manner-verb (L2BP) and Manner-prep ratings (L2English), and that Advanced proficiency is associated with Manner-verb (L2English) and Manner-AdvClause judgments (L2English and L2BP). These findings contribute to the limited body of work on the acquisition of v-framed L2s and the development of low-proficiency learners.

Little is known about the interplay between the language of operation and gender stereotype processing. In this study, Polish–English (L1–L2) male and female bilinguals made meaningfulness judgments on L1 and L2 stereotypically congruent and incongruent as well as semantically correct and incorrect sentences. The results showed gender- and language-dependent modulations by sentence type within the N400 and Late Positive Complex (LPC) time frames. In females, semantically correct sentences converged with stereotypically congruent and incongruent conditions in both languages, indicating a deep-rooted internalization of gender stereotype-laden content. Conversely, males displayed a heightened gender-stereotypical bias only in L1. In L2, they exhibited a reduced sensitivity to gender stereotypes, whereby semantically incorrect sentences converged with both stereotypically congruent and incongruent conditions in the N400 time window and with stereotypically incongruent sentences in the LPC time frame. Altogether, the study extends the foreign language effect to the context of bilingual gender stereotype processing.

Twenty-five L1 Nepali speaking participants living in Trondheim, Norway who spoke English as L2 and Norwegian as L3 (late adult learners) participated in this study. Participants’ L2 proficiency was established as advanced in LexTALE. We administered language comprehension and production tasks in a trilingual design. In a mouse tracking trilingual parallel activation experiment, participants performed a language comprehension task in which they listened to the spoken word in their L1, L2 and L3 and clicked on the matching target picture. Mouse trajectories of their response pattern were recorded and analyzed. The language production task included a phonological and a semantic verbal fluency task (VFT), which also served as an executive control task. VFT showed their dominance in L1 and L2 compared to L3. This study contributes novel knowledge on trilingual parallel activation and suggests that in the presence of a non-dominant L3, a dominant L1 and a dominant L2 are processed faster than the non-dominant language in phonologically competing conditions.

This study investigated how second language (L2) learners process the Korean numeral quantifier construction by using transferable and nontransferable information. For Chinese-speaking learners of Korean (Chinese group), agreement between an honorific numeral quantifier and a noun in Korean constitutes transferable information in the canonical structure and nontransferable L2-specific information in the scrambled structure. For Japanese-speaking learners of Korean (Japanese group), this information gives rise to crosslinguistic conflicts in both structures. The results from a self-paced reading task showed that the Japanese group did not exhibit sensitivity to grammatical errors in both structures, whereas the Chinese group detected the agreement violation in the canonical but not in the scrambled structure. When a context sentence was provided to license scrambling in the test sentence, however, another group of Chinese-speaking learners of Korean showed sensitivity to the violation. These findings suggest varying degrees of crosslinguistic influence in L2 sentence processing.

Working memory encompasses the limited incoming information that can be held in mind for cognitive processing. To date, we have little information on the effects of bilingualism on working memory because, absent evidence, working memory tasks cannot be assumed to measure the same constructs across language groups. To garner evidence regarding the measurement equivalence in Spanish and English, we examined second-grade children with typical development, including 80 bilingual Spanish–English speakers and 167 monolingual English speakers in the United States, using a test battery for which structural equation models have been tested – the Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM). Results established measurement invariance across groups up to the level of scalar invariance.

In a cross-sectional study of L2 Danish, we examined the production of correct verb-second (V2) word order. We tested the effect of (1) the learners’ language background, (2) test level and (3) the length of the sentence constituents. The texts were written by 217 students (3 test levels (A2-B1), 52 different L1s). Interrogative clauses had high accuracy, but 25% of the 491 declarative sentences with non-initial subjects had incorrect V3 word order. Our study shows that V2 is not difficult for all learners. Learners whose L1 is a V2 language had a significantly higher share of correct V2 word order, and they never overused V2. For non-V2 learners, the share of correct V2 significantly increased with proficiency level. For constituent length, accuracy decreased significantly with the length of the first constituent and for subjects consisting of multiple words.

Using a priming paradigm, we investigated the processing of overtly identical verb forms with different sets of morphosyntactic features in L1 and L2 German. We found that more specific functions of a verb (inflected verbs) were better primes for less specific verb functions (past participles) than vice versa. For L1 speakers, these priming asymmetries were observed regardless of whether the lexical verb was repeated in prime and target or not (i.e., priming also for abstract configurations). For L2 learners, a similar but not native-like asymmetric priming pattern was seen only with repetition of the lexical verb. It was absent when the verb was not repeated. We conclude that in L2, morphosyntactic information is processed more on a lexical, item-based level compared to L1. We discuss our results in the context of several accounts, e.g., Shallow Structure Hypothesis, Declarative Procedural Model and the Ontogenesis Model of the L2 Lexical Representation.

Bilinguals may choose to speak a language either at their own will or in response to an external demand, but the underlying neural mechanisms in the two contexts is poorly understood. In the present study, Chinese–English bilinguals named pairs of pictures in three conditions: during forced-switch, the naming language altered between pictures 1 and 2. During non-switch, the naming language used was the same. During free-naming, either the same or different languages were used at participants' own will. While behavioural switching costs were observed during free-naming and forced-switching, neuroimaging results showed that forced language selection (i.e., forced-switch and non-switch) is associated with left-lateralized frontal activations, which have been implicated in inhibitory control. Free language selection (i.e., free-naming), however, was associated with fronto-parietal activations, which have been implicated in self-initiated behaviours. These findings offer new insights into the neural differentiation of language control in forced and free language selection contexts.

The present study examined whether length of bilingual experience and language ability contributed to cross-situational word learning (XSWL) in Spanish-English bilingual school-aged children. We contrasted performance in a high variability condition, where children were exposed to multiple speakers and exemplars simultaneously, to performance in a condition where children were exposed to no variability in either speakers or exemplars. Results revealed graded effects of bilingualism and language ability on XSWL under conditions of increased variability. Specifically, bilingualism bolstered learning when variability was present in the input but not when variability was absent in the input. Similarly, robust language abilities supported learning in the high variability condition. In contrast, children with weaker language skills learned more word-object associations in the no variability condition than in the high variability condition. Together, the results suggest that variation in the learner and variation in the input interact and modulate mechanisms of lexical learning in children.

Bilinguals activate both of their languages as they process written words, regardless of modality (spoken or signed); these effects have primarily been documented in single word reading paradigms. We used eye-tracking to determine whether deaf bilingual readers (n = 23) activate American Sign Language (ASL) translations as they read English sentences. Sentences contained a target word and one of the two possible prime words: a related prime which shared phonological parameters (location, handshape or movement) with the target when translated into ASL or an unrelated prime. The results revealed that first fixation durations and gaze durations (early processing measures) were shorter when target words were preceded by ASL-related primes, but prime condition did not impact later processing measures (e.g., regressions). Further, less-skilled readers showed a larger ASL co-activation effect. Together, the results indicate that ASL co-activation impacts early lexical access and can facilitate reading, particularly for less-skilled deaf readers.

This study investigates how L2 proficiency contributes to creativity in relation to personality among 205 young adolescent English-as-a-foreign-language learners from rural China. Participants completed the Cambridge A2 Key for Schools English Test to assess English proficiency, the Chinese Big Five Personality Inventory to evaluate personality traits, and the Evaluation of Potential Creativity to measure creativity, operationalized as divergent and convergent thinking in verbal and graphic domains. Pearson correlation analyses revealed that L2 proficiency was positively associated with both divergent and convergent thinking across verbal and graphic domains, while Openness to Experience and Extraversion were positively linked to creativity components, albeit partially depending on the domain. Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism showed no significant associations with creativity. Structural equation modeling further demonstrated that L2 proficiency, Openness, and Extraversion directly co-predicted creativity components, excluding convergent thinking in the verbal domain.

Autobiographical memories (AMs) are partly influenced by people's ability to process and express their emotions. This study investigated the extent to which trait emotional intelligence (EI) contributed to the emotional vocabulary of 148 adolescents – 60 speakers of Spanish as a heritage language (HL) raised in Germany, 61 first-language (L1) German speakers and 27 L1 Spanish speakers – in their written AMs of anger and surprise. The results revealed that heritage speakers with high trait EI used more emotional words in their AMs. These bilinguals also used more positive, negative and high-arousal words in their HL and in their AMs of anger. Similar patterns were observed in the AMs produced in Spanish (HL and L1), but L1 Spanish speakers used more emotional words in their AMs of surprise. By contrast, L1 German speakers used more emotional words than bilinguals in their AMs in German, and AMs of anger in German included more emotional vocabulary than those addressing surprise events.

The present paper investigates whether school-aged French-English bilingual children’s implicit and explicit knowledge of article use is affected by cross-linguistic influence (CLI) during online and offline sentence comprehension. The studies focus on the encoding of plural and mass nouns in specific and generic contexts. We also explore whether individual measures of oral proficiency, language exposure and age play a role in the children’s performance. Forty-three 8-to-10-year-old French-English bilingual children took part in a Self-Paced Reading task, a Grammaticality Judgement task and a Cloze test in their two languages. Overall, CLI was observed across tasks in English and French. These findings suggest that CLI can be bi-directional and tap into school-aged bilinguals’ implicit and explicit representations during sentence comprehension and production. The data also makes a new contribution to our understanding of the relative amount of language exposure, oral proficiency and age on CLI.

High-frequency words are processed faster than low-frequency words, known as the word frequency effect (FE). Although the FE has been studied in various writing systems as well as in first- (L1) and second-language (L2) reading, existing theoretical hypotheses are mainly based on findings in alphabetic languages. To date, no study has investigated theoretical explanations of the FE such as the learning hypothesis, the lexical entrenchment hypothesis and the rank hypothesis apply to Chinese–English bilinguals. The present study, therefore, compared the FEs in Chinese– and Dutch–English bilinguals during natural paragraph reading in their L1 and L2, using eye-tracking measures. Chinese bilinguals exhibited a larger FE in L2 than in L1. They displayed smaller L1 FEs and much steeper L2 FE curves than Dutch bilinguals. These findings are not entirely consistent with the existing FE hypotheses, and the present study discusses theoretical accounts in light of the observed results.

Previous studies have reported fewer social biases in bilinguals compared to monolinguals. However, it is unclear whether the expression of social biases varies across the bilingualism spectrum. This article investigates the connections between different dimensions of bilingual experience and the expression of explicit bias. We analyzed the responses of 389 bilinguals to a battery of questionnaires on bilingual and multicultural experiences, explicit bias, internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice and executive control. The results show that more diverse language-use and language-learning experiences were associated with lower explicit bias among bilinguals who had lower internal motivation to respond without prejudice (i.e., motivation driven by personal values). This study presents novel evidence on the relationships between bilingual experiences and the expression of social biases.

Recent conceptualisations of bilingualism are moving away from strict categorisations, towards continuous approaches. This study supports this trend by combining empirical psycholinguistics data with machine learning classification modelling. Support vector classifiers were trained on two datasets of coded productions by Italian speakers to predict the class they belonged to (“monolingual”, “attriters” and “heritage”). All classes can be predicted above chance (>33%), even if the classifier's performance substantially varies, with monolinguals identified much better (f-score >70%) than attriters (f-score <50%), which are instead the most confusable class. Further analyses of the classification errors expressed in the confusion matrices qualify that attriters are identified as heritage speakers nearly as often as they are correctly classified. Cluster clitics are the most identifying features for the classification performance. Overall, this study supports a conceptualisation of bilingualism as a continuum of linguistic behaviours rather than sets of a priori established classes.

Phoneme discrimination is believed to be less accurate in non-native languages compared to native ones. What remains unclear is whether differences in pre-attentive phonological processing emerge between the first foreign language (L2) and additional ones (L3/Ln), and whether they might be influenced by the acquisition setting (formal vs. naturalistic). We conducted an event-related brain potential oddball study with native Polish learners of English (L2) and Norwegian (L3/Ln). The results revealed a graded amplitude of the mismatch negativity (MMN) effect, which was largest in L1, smaller in L2, and smallest in L3/Ln. Considering the previously obtained results for naturalistic/mixed learners with the same language combination, we believe that the acquisition setting is an important factor influencing the perception of phonemic contrasts. In the naturalistic group, no difference was observed between L1 and L2, while the instructed group exhibited more fine-grained distinctions between all tested languages.