Applied linguistic work claims that multilinguals’ non-native languages interfere with one another based on similarities in cognitive factors like proficiency or age of acquisition. Two experiments explored how trilinguals regulate control of native- and non-native-language words. Experiment 1 tested 46 Dutch–English–French trilinguals in a monitoring task. Participants decided if phonemes were present in the target language name of a picture, phonemes of non-target language translations resulted in longer response times and more false alarms compared to phonemes not present in any translation (Colomé, 2001). The second language (English) interfered more than the first (Dutch) when trilinguals monitored in their third language (French). In Experiment 2, 95 bilinguals learned an artificial language to explore the possibility that the language from which a bilingual learns a third language provides practice managing known-language interference. Language of instruction modulated results, suggesting that learning conditions may reduce interference effects previously attributed to cognitive factors.

Iconicity has traditionally been considered an objective, fixed, unidimensional property of language forms, often operationalized as transparency for experimental purposes. Within a Cognitive Linguistics framework, iconicity is a mapping between an individual’s construal of form and construal of meaning, such that iconicity is subjective, dynamic, and multidimensional. We test the latter alternative by asking signers who differed in ASL proficiency to complete a handshape monitoring task in which we manipulated the number of form–meaning construals that target handshapes participated in. We estimated the interaction of iconicity, proficiency, and construal density using mixed-effects models for response time and accuracy with crossed random effects for participants and items.

Results show a significant three-way interaction between iconicity, proficiency, and construal density such that less-proficient signers detected handshapes in more iconic signs faster than less iconic signs regardless of the handshape they were monitoring, but highly proficient signers’ performance was only improved by iconicity for handshapes that participate in many construals. Taken in conjunction with growing evidence of the subjectivity of iconicity, we interpret these results as support for the claim that construal is a core mechanism underlying iconicity, both for transparent and systematic language-internal form–meaning mappings.

Lexical access in bilinguals is known to be largely non-selective. However, most studies in this area have involved bilinguals whose two languages share the same script. This study aimed to examine bilingual lexical access among bilinguals whose two languages have distinct scripts. Korean–English bilinguals were tested in a phoneme monitoring task in their first or second language. The results showed a simultaneous activation of the non-target language in a monolingual task, suggesting non-selective lexical access even among bilinguals whose two languages do not share the same script. Language dominance did not affect the pattern of results.