This study investigated the unresolved issue of potential sources of heritage language attrition. To test contributing effects of three learner variables – age of second language acquisition, length of residence, and language input – on heritage children's lexical retrieval accuracy and speed, we conducted a real-time word naming task with 68 children (age 11–14 years) living in South Korea who spoke either Chinese or Russian as a heritage language. Results of regression analyses showed that the participants were less accurate and slower in naming target words in their heritage language as their length of residence in Korea and the amount of Korean input increased. The age of Korean acquisition did not significantly influence their performance. These findings support the claim that heritage speakers’ language experience is a more reliable predictor of first language attrition than age of acquisition. We discuss these findings in light of different approaches to explaining language attrition.

When bilinguals produce words in one language, their translation equivalents in the other language are thought to be activated as well. A common assumption is that this parallel co-activation produces interference, which slows down word retrieval. The current study aimed to evaluate the assumption of lexical interference during word retrieval by testing whether late Portuguese–English bilinguals were slower to name pictures in their native language when they knew the word in their second language compared to when they only knew the native language label. Instead of interfering with production, knowing the second-language label facilitated speed of word retrieval in the native language for both cognate and non-cognate translation-equivalent pairs. We suggest that using the second language may provide an indirect frequency boost for translation-equivalent words in the native language. This frequency boost has both long-term and short-term effects, strengthening connections to native-language labels when the translation equivalent is retrieved.

The finding that noun production is slower and less accurate in bilinguals compared to monolinguals is well replicated, but not well understood. This study examined the two prominent theoretical accounts for this bilingual effect: weaker links and cross-language interference. Highly proficient Mandarin–English bilinguals and English-speaking monolinguals named pictures in which the effects of grammatical class, word frequency and translatability were examined. While bilinguals were slower overall than monolinguals in both L1 and L2, the magnitude of this bilingual effect was smaller for verbs than for nouns. Bilinguals showed a larger production advantage for high vs. low frequency words in their L2 relative to monolinguals and their L1. Bilinguals also showed an advantage for words with greater translatability, which did not differ across grammatical categories. The findings lend partial support to the weaker links account, and reveal cross-language facilitation rather than interference.

Proficient bilinguals demonstrate slower lexical retrieval than comparable monolinguals. The present study tested predictions from two main accounts of this effect, the frequency-lag and competition hypotheses. Both make the same prediction for bilinguals but differ for trilinguals and for age differences. 200 younger or older adults who were monolingual, bilingual, or trilingual performed a picture naming task in English that included high and low frequency words. Naming times were faster for high than for low frequency words and, in line with frequency-lag, group differences were larger for low than high frequency items. However, on all other measures, bilinguals and trilinguals performed equivalently, and lexical retrieval differences between language groups did not attenuate with age, consistent with the competition view.

Many bimodal bilinguals are immersed in a spoken language-dominant environment from an early age and, unlike unimodal bilinguals, do not necessarily divide their language use between languages. Nonetheless, early ASL–English bilinguals retrieved fewer words in a letter fluency task in their dominant language compared to monolingual English speakers with equal vocabulary level. This finding demonstrates that reduced vocabulary size and/or frequency of use cannot completely account for bilingual disadvantages in verbal fluency. Instead, retrieval difficulties likely reflect between-language interference. Furthermore, it suggests that the two languages of bilinguals compete for selection even when they are expressed with distinct articulators.

This study explored effects of the metabolic syndrome (MetS) on language in aging. MetS is a constellation of five vascular and metabolic risk factors associated with the development of chronic diseases and increased risk of mortality, as well as brain and cognitive impairments. We tested 281 English-speaking older adults aged 55–84, free of stroke and dementia. Presence of MetS was based on the harmonized criteria (Alberti et al., 2009). Language performance was assessed by measures of accuracy and reaction time on two tasks of lexical retrieval and two tasks of sentence processing. Regression analyses, adjusted for age, education, gender, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, demonstrated that participants with MetS had significantly lower accuracy on measures of lexical retrieval (action naming) and sentence processing (embedded sentences, both subject and object relative clauses). Reaction time was slightly faster on the test of embedded sentences among those with MetS. MetS adversely affects the language performance of older adults, impairing accuracy of both lexical retrieval and sentence processing. This finding reinforces and extends results of earlier research documenting the negative influence of potentially treatable medical conditions (diabetes, hypertension) on language performance in aging. The unanticipated finding that persons with MetS were faster in processing embedded sentences may represent an impairment of timing functions among older individuals with MetS. (JINS, 2015, 21, 116–125)

The first part of this paper reviews research evidence for typological similarity and/or L2 status as determinants of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in multilingual lexical production. The second part presents a model of vocabulary acquisition as a framework to explain CLI at the levels of form, (syntactic) frame, and meaning, as well as some of the developmental changes that have been reported for CLI patterns in relation to L3 learners’ proficiency. It is suggested that these patterns can be related to default processes and stages involved in the acquisition of individual word forms and their integration into networks of existing lexical triads, as described in the Parasitic Model of vocabulary acquisition. The third part of this paper points to research into the complexity and non-linearity of multilingual lexical development and the need to learn more about it.

Decreased productivity on verbal fluency tasks by persons with schizophrenia has been attributed to semantic system abnormalities. Semantic structure is often assessed using multidimensional scaling (MDS) to detect normal and aberrant semantic clustering. However, MDS has limitations that may be particularly problematic for such assessments. Here, we introduce a different clustering technique, singular value decomposition (SVD), to elucidate abnormalities of the semantic system in schizophrenia. We compared 102 treated outpatients with schizophrenia to 109 healthy adults on two category-cued word fluency tasks. Patients with schizophrenia showed semantic clustering patterns that differ markedly from those of healthy adults. However, SVD revealed more detailed and critical semantic system abnormalities than previously appreciated using MDS. Patients with schizophrenia showed less coherent semantic clustering of both low- and high-frequency category exemplars than healthy adults. These results suggest the intriguing possibility that impaired automatic activation of semantic information is a key deficit in schizophrenia. (JINS, 2012, 18, 565–575)

The article by Gollan, Fennema-Notestine, Montoya, and Jernigan (2007, this issue) raises important issues about the, effects of bilingualism on naming test performance in older adults. In particular, proficiency in their two languages determines the ability with which older bilingual adults can name pictures in each of those languages. This observation is important if cognitive status is inferred from naming performance. In this commentary we largely endorse the arguments made by Gollan and colleagues, although we point to some limitations in their experimental design. (JINS, 2007, 13, 209–211.)

Category and letter fluency tasks have been used to demonstrate psychological and neurological dissociations between semantic and phonological aspects of word retrieval. Some previous neuroimaging and lesion studies have suggested that category fluency (semantic-based word retrieval) is mediated primarily by temporal cortex, while letter fluency (letter-based word retrieval) is mediated primarily by frontal cortex. Other studies have suggested that both letter and category fluency are mediated by frontal cortex. We tested these hypotheses using voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) in a group of 48 left-hemisphere stroke patients. VLSM maps revealed that category and letter fluency deficits correlate with lesions in temporal and frontal cortices, respectively. Other regions, including parietal cortex, were significantly implicated in both tasks. Our findings are therefore consistent with the hypothesis that temporal cortex subserves word retrieval constrained by semantics, whereas frontal regions are more critical for strategic word retrieval constrained by phonology. (JINS, 2006, 12, 896–900.)

The longitudinal effects of age on confrontation naming using the 60-item Boston Naming Test (BNT) were studied in 541 “normal” elderly (ages 50–99). For participants with at least 4 annual assessments (n = 238), 150 were followed for ≥6 years, 81 for ≥8 years, and 43 for ≥10 years. A small practice effect (0.21 words, p = 0.06) and moderately high test-retest reliability were found when comparing the first 2 assessments, which were 9–15 months apart (r = 0.76, n = 353). Reliable change index scores indicated that an annual decline of ≥4 points on the BNT is needed for a statistically reliable decline in an individual. A gradient in the mean annual rate of change on the BNT was found with improvement in the 50s age group, no change in the 60s age group, and decline in the 70s and 80s age groups. When projected over 10 years, the magnitudes of the mean changes were relatively small, that is, a 1-word improvement for participants in their 50s and a 1.3-word decline for participants in their 70s. These findings demonstrate that lexical retrieval as measured by a visual object confrontation naming task is generally well preserved in aging with only subtle decline in the 7th and 8th decades of age. (JINS, 2005, 11, 716–726.)

This study tests the hypothesis that retrieval of object and action names declines at different rates with age. Uncued and cued performance on the Boston Naming Test (BNT) and the Action Naming Test (ANT) were examined for 171 individuals from 50 to 88 years old. To control for differences in item difficulty, a subset of items from each of the two tests was selected for which uncued performance was equivalent in individuals in their 50s. With this matched set of items, differences in action and object naming were tested in the 60s and 70+ age groups. Although age-related decline in name retrieval was observed for both the BNT and the ANT subsets, no differences between object and action retrieval were found. Our results, thus, do not confirm previous studies reporting that object names and action names are differentially retrieved with aging. We discuss these new findings in relation to evidence of dissociations in object and action naming in brain-damaged individuals. (JINS, 2002, 8, 764–770.)