This study examines language control deficits in bilingual aphasia in terms of domain specific cognitive control and domain general cognitive control. Thirty Spanish–English controls and ten Spanish–English adults with aphasia completed the flanker task and a word-pair relatedness judgment task. All participants exhibited congruency effects on the flanker task. On the linguistic task, controls did not show the congruency effect on the first level analysis. However, conflict ratios revealed that the control group exhibited significant effects of language control. Additionally, individual patient analysis revealed overall positive and negative effects of language control impairment and a benefit from semantically related word-pairs. Patient data suggest a dissociation between the mechanisms of language control and cognitive control, thus providing evidence for domain specific cognitive control. The influence of language proficiency on speed of translation was also examined. Generally, controls were faster when translating into their dominant language, whereas the patients did not show the same trends.

This study investigated the structure of the bimodal bilingual lexicon. In the cross-modal priming task nonnative sign language learners heard an English word (e.g., keys) and responded to the lexicality of a signed target: an underlying rhyme (e.g., cheese) or a sign neighbor of that word (e.g., paper). The results indicated that rhyme words were retrieved more quickly and the L2 neighbors were faster for beginner learners. An item analysis also indicated that semantics did not facilitate neighbor retrieval and high frequency signs were retrieved more quickly. The AX discrimination task showed that learners focus on handshape and movement parameters and discriminate equally. The interlanguage dynamics play an important role in which phonological parameters are used and the spread of activation over time. A nonselective, integrated model of the bimodal bilingual lexicon is proposed such that lateral connections are weakened over time and handshape parameter feeds most of the activation to neighboring signs as a function of system dynamics.

The need to control multiple languages is thought to require domain-general executive control in bilinguals such that the executive control and language systems become interdependent. However, there has been no systematic investigation into how and where executive control and language processes overlap in the bilingual brain. If the concurrent recruitment of executive control during bilingual language processing is domain-general and extends to non-linguistic control, we hypothesize that regions commonly involved in language processing, linguistic control, and non-linguistic control may be selectively altered in bilinguals compared to monolinguals. A conjunction of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from a flanker task with linguistic and non-linguistic distractors and a semantic categorization task showed functional overlap in the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) in bilinguals, whereas no overlap occurred in monolinguals. This research therefore identifies a neural locus of functional overlap of language and executive control in the bilingual brain.

This study analyzed the association between levels of language proficiency and levels of bilingualism and performance on verbal and nonverbal executive functions (working memory, updating, shifting, and inhibition tasks) in young bilinguals. Forty balanced (high and low proficiency), 34 unbalanced bilinguals, and 40 English monolinguals, were selected. The Bilingual Verbal Ability Test was used as a measure of language proficiency; WAIS Block design test was used as a measure of non-verbal intelligence. High proficiency balanced bilinguals performed better than low proficiency balanced bilinguals; unbalanced bilinguals scored in between both balanced groups. High proficiency monolinguals scored higher than low proficiency monolinguals and similar to high proficiency bilinguals. Regression analyses demonstrated that nonverbal intelligence significantly predicted performances on verbal working memory and verbal and nonverbal inhibition tasks. It was concluded that nonverbal intelligence scores are better predictors of executive function performance than bilingualism or language proficiency.

In this paper we show that heritage speakers and returnees are fundamentally different from the majority of adult second language learners with respect to their use of collocations (Laufer & Waldman, 2011). We compare the use of lexical collocations involving yap- “do” and et- “do” among heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany (n = 45) with those found among Turkish returnees (n = 65) and Turkish monolinguals (n = 69). Language use by returnees is an understudied resource although this group can provide crucial insights into the specific language ability of heritage speakers. Results show that returnees who had been back for one year avoid collocations with yap- and use some hypercorrect forms in et-, whilst returnees who had been back for seven years at the time of recording produce collocations that are quantitatively and qualitatively similar to those of monolingual speakers of Turkish. We discuss implications for theories of ultimate attainment and incomplete acquisition in heritage speakers.

The recent hypothesis that L1 attrition affects the ability to process interface structures but not knowledge representations (Sorace, 2011) is tested by investigating the effects of recent L1 re-exposure on antecedent preferences for Spanish pronominal subjects, using offline judgements and online eye-tracking measures. Participants included a group of native Spanish speakers experiencing L1 attrition (‘attriters’), a second group of attriters exposed exclusively to Spanish before they were tested (‘re-exposed’), and a control group of Spanish monolinguals. The judgement data shows no significant differences between the groups. Moreover, the monolingual and re-exposed groups are not significantly different from each other in the eye-tracking data. The results of this novel manipulation indicate that attrition effects decrease due to L1 re-exposure, and that bilinguals are sensitive to input changes. Taken together, the findings suggest that attrition affects online sensitivity with interface structures rather than causing a permanent change in speakers’ L1 knowledge representations.

This study explores the role of cognate status, syllable position, and word length in Tip-of-the-Tongue (TOT) states induction and resolution for European Portuguese (EP; L1) – English (L2) bilinguals (and EP monolinguals as control). TOTs were induced using a picture naming task in L1 and L2 followed by a lexical decision task. Here, the first or the last syllable of the target word (or none for control) was embedded in pseudowords (syllabic pseudohomophones) in order to test its effect in TOT resolution. Bilinguals presented more TOTs in L2 than in L1, especially for noncognate words. Longer words showed more TOTs than shorter words, though only in L1. TOT resolution was higher for cognates in L2 and higher when primed by the first than by the last syllable. Finally, longer cognates showed more TOT resolution than shorter cognates, irrespective of the language. Results are discussed in light of TOT's main hypothesis.

This study assesses the impact of internal and external factors on very young EFL learners in an instructional setting. 71 child English learners in China (onset age: 2;0 - 5;6) were involved: their receptive vocabulary, productive vocabulary and receptive grammar were taken as outcome variables, and age of onset, short-term memory, nonverbal intelligence, English input quantity and quality, English use, and maternal English level were taken as predictive variables. Multiple regression analyses, verified by Bayes factor comparisons, revealed that the total amount of school input and home English media environment were significant predictors for all of three aspects of English proficiency, with each aspect having different additional significant predictors. Both internal factors (e.g., age of onset) and external factors (e.g., English input quantity) played an important role, but in contrast to similar studies (e.g., Paradis, 2011) focusing on a L2 naturalistic setting, external factors explained more variance of English proficiency measures.

Converging evidences from eye movement experiments indicate that linguistic contexts influence reading strategies. However, the question of whether different linguistic contexts modulate eye movements during reading in the same bilingual individuals remains unresolved. We examined reading strategies in a transparent (German) and an opaque (French) language of early, highly proficient French–German bilinguals: participants read aloud isolated French and German words and pseudo-words while the First Fixation Location (FFL), its duration and latency were measured. Since transparent linguistic contexts and pseudo-words would favour a direct grapheme/phoneme conversion, the reading strategy should be more local for German than for French words (FFL closer to the beginning) and no difference is expected in pseudo-words’ FFL between contexts. Our results confirm these hypotheses, providing the first evidence that the same individuals engage different reading strategy depending on language opacity, suggesting that a given brain process can be modulated by a given context.

Language-specific orthography (i.e., letters or bigrams that exist in only one language) is known to facilitate language membership recognition. Yet the contribution of continuous sublexical and lexical statistics to language membership decisions during visual word processing is unknown. Here, we used pseudo-words to investigate whether continuous sublexical and lexical statistics bias explicit language decisions (Experiment 1) and language attribution during naming (Experiment 2). We also asked whether continuous statistics would have an effect in the presence of orthographic markers. Language attribution in both experiments was influenced by lexical neighborhood size differences between languages, even in presence of orthographic markers. Sublexical frequencies of occurrence affected reaction times only for unmarked pseudo-words in both experiments, with greater effects in naming. Our results indicate that bilinguals rely on continuous language-specific statistics at sublexical and lexical levels to infer language membership. Implications are discussed with respect to models of bilingual visual word recognition.

The current project investigated the extent to which several lexical aspects of second language (L2) speech – appropriateness, fluency, variation, sophistication, abstractness, sense relations – interact to influence native speakers’ judgements of comprehensibility (ease of understanding) and accentedness (linguistic nativelikeness). Extemporaneous speech elicited from 40 French speakers of English with varied L2 proficiency levels was first evaluated by 10 native-speaking raters for comprehensibility and accentedness. Subsequently, the dataset was transcribed and analyzed for 12 lexical factors. Various lexical properties of L2 speech were found to be associated with L2 comprehensibility, and especially lexical accuracy (lemma appropriateness) and complexity (polysemy), indicating that these lexical variables are associated with successful L2 communication. In contrast, native speakers’ accent judgements seemed to be linked to surface-level details of lexical content (abstractness) and form (variation, morphological accuracy) rather than to its conceptual and contextual details (e.g., lemma appropriateness, polysemy).

We used mouse tracking to compare the performance of bilinguals and monolinguals in a Stroop task. Participants were instructed to respond to the color of the words (e.g., blue in yellow font) by clicking on response options on the screen. We recorded participants’ movements of a computer mouse: when participants started moving (initiation times), and how fast they moved towards the correct response (x-coordinates over time). Interestingly, initiation times were longer for bilinguals than monolinguals. Nevertheless, when comparing mouse trajectories, bilinguals moved faster towards the correct response. Taken together, these results indicate that bilinguals behave qualitatively differently from monolinguals; bilinguals are “experts” at managing conflicting information. Experts across many different domains take longer to initiate a response, but then they outperform novices. These qualitative differences in performance could be at the root of apparently contradictory findings in the bilingual literature.

The current study examined if bilingual advantages in cognitive control influence memory encoding during a divided attention task. Monolinguals, simultaneous bilinguals, and sequential bilinguals switched between classifying objects and words, then were tested for their recognition memory of stimuli previously seen during the classification task. Compared to bilingual groups, monolinguals made the most errors on the classification task and simultaneous bilinguals committed the fewest errors. On the memory task, however, no differences were found between the three language groups, but significant correlations were found between the number of errors during switch trials on the classification task and recognition memory for both target and non-target stimuli. For bilinguals, their age of second language acquisition partially accounted for the association between attentional control (number of switch errors) and subsequent memory for non-target stimuli only. These results contribute to our understanding of how individual differences in language acquisition influence interactions between cognitive domains.

This study investigated the role of age-of-acquisition in determining whether young bilingual children show a pattern of L2/nonnative English, precocious BE acquisition, or whether they show the L1/native English pattern of synchronous acquisition of BE and inflectional morphology. Two groups of children with age-of-acquisition before or after 4;0 and equivalent exposure to L2 English were given production and grammaticality-judgement tasks. The children in both age-of-acquisition groups showed the precocious BE pattern, regardless of L1 background and on both tasks. We conclude that, for this aspect of morphosyntax, bilingual children who begin to learn English after age 3;0 are best characterized as child L2 rather than bilingual L1 learners.

We asked whether children's well-known difficulties revising initial sentence processing commitments characterize the immature or the learning parser. Adult L2 speakers of English acted out temporarily ambiguous and unambiguous instructions. While online processing patterns indicate that L2 adults experienced garden-paths and were sensitive to referential information to a similar degree as native adults, their act-out patterns indicate increased difficulties revising initial interpretations, at rates similar to those observed for 5-year-old native children (e.g., Trueswell, Sekerina, Hill & Logrip, 1999). We propose that L2 learners’ difficulties with revision stem from increased recruitment of cognitive control networks during processing of a not fully proficient language, resulting in the reduced availability of cognitive control for parsing revisions.

When do the gestures do and do not follow the patterns of the language one speaks? We examined this question by studying 10 Turkish-English bilingual adults (Turkish as L1) in comparison to 10 monolingual English and 10 monolingual Turkish adults as they described motion events either in speech with gesture (co-speech gesture) or only in gesture without speech (silent gesture). All speakers – monolingual and bilingual – showed cross-linguistic differences in co-speech gesture but not in silent gesture. Moreover, bilinguals followed L1 co-speech gesture patterns even when speaking L2, suggesting that acquisition of native-like gesture patterns does not co-occur with the acquisition of native-like speech patterns in bilinguals.