This study examined whether the Foreign-Language effect, an increase in bilinguals’ rate of rational decisions to moral dilemmas in their foreign versus their native language, is influenced by emotion and the modality in which the dilemmas are presented. 154 Dutch–English bilinguals were asked to read and listen to personal and impersonal moral dilemmas in Dutch or in English. Importantly, the reading task had the character of a self-paced reading task to resemble the listening task as closely as possible. In both modalities, participants’ task was to indicate whether the proposed action was appropriate or not. Results showed that the Foreign-Language effect was present for personal dilemmas only. In addition, an effect of modality demonstrated that participants took overall more rational decisions during the listening than the reading task. These findings give insight in the interplay between language, emotion and task demands, revealing that moral decision making is context-dependent.

Previous studies have investigated the cognitive processes of simultaneous interpreting and translation using eye-tracking. No study has yet utilized eye-tracking to investigate cognitive load and cognitive effort in dialogue interpreting. An eye-tracking study was conducted on two groups of interpreters (experienced and inexperienced) with varying language backgrounds during a staged dialogue interpreting session. The aim of the study was to explore gaze patterns in dialogue interpreting in relation to the interpreters’ action and translation direction. The results indicated there were differences in gaze patterns depending on the action and the language used. Participants averted gaze more when interpreting into the allophone language (the L2 for a majority of the participants in this study). This may indicate that interpreting into L2 in a dialogue may involve more cognitive effort than interpreting into L1. Finally, gaze patterns did not differ significantly between inexperienced and experienced dialogue interpreters.

Numerous studies have argued that bilingualism has effects on cognitive functions. Recently, in light of increasingly mixed empirical results, this claim has been challenged. One might ponder if there is enough evidence to justify a cessation to future research on the topic or, alternatively, how the field could proceed to better understand the phantom-like appearance of bilingual effects. Herein, we attempt to frame this appearance at the crossroads of several factors such as the heterogeneity of the term ‘bilingual’, sample size effects, task effects, and the complex dynamics between an early publication bias that favours positive results and the subsequent Proteus phenomenon. We conclude that any definitive claim on the topic is premature and that research must continue, albeit in a modified way. To this effect, we offer a path forward for future multi-lab work that should provide clearer answers to whether bilingualism has neurocognitive effects, and if so, under what conditions.

Adult foreign language acquisition is challenging, and the degree of success varies among individuals. Anatomical differences in brain structure prior to training can partly explain why some learn more than others. We followed a sample of conscript interpreters undergoing intense language training to study learning-related changes in white-matter microstructure (FA, MD, RD and AD) and associations between differences in brain structure prior to training with acquired language proficiency. No evidence for changes in white matter microstructure relative to a control group was found. Starting values of RD, AD and MD were positively related to final test scores of language proficiency, corroborating earlier findings in the field and highlighting the need for further study of how initial brain structure influences and interacts with learning outcomes.

This study provides a novel approach for testing the universality of perceptual biases by looking at speech processing in simultaneous bilingual adults learning two languages that support the maintenance of this bias to different degrees. Specifically, we investigated the Iambic/Trochaic Law, an assumed universal grouping bias, in simultaneous French–German bilinguals, presenting them with streams of syllables varying in intensity, duration or neither and asking them whether they perceived them as strong-weak or weak-strong groupings. Results showed robust, consistent grouping preferences. A comparison to monolinguals from previous studies revealed that they pattern with German-speaking monolinguals, and differ from French-speaking monolinguals. The distribution of simultaneous bilinguals' individual performance was best explained by a model fitting a unimodal (not bimodal) distribution, failing to support two subgroups of language dominance. Moreover, neither language experience nor language context predicted their performance. These findings suggest a special role for universal biases in simultaneous bilinguals.

The adaptive control hypothesis predicts adaptation of control mechanisms as a response to intensive language use in bilinguals. The present study aims to investigate this hypothesis in two memory experiments with professional and student interpreters. In experiment 1, we compared a group of interpreting students to translation students using a reading span task to test working memory (WM) and a digit span task to test short-term memory (STM). In experiment 2, we added a group of professional interpreters and compared them with the participants in experiment 1. Training-related improvement was found for WM but not for STM, with no differences between both student groups. Professional interpreters with over 20 years of interpreting experience showed better performance than translation students but not than interpreting students both on WM and STM. The results are discussed in light of the framework of interpreting as a type of extreme bilingualism.

Code-switching has been found to incur a processing cost in auditory comprehension. However, listeners may have access to anticipatory phonetic cues to code-switches (Piccinini & Garellek, 2014; Fricke et al., 2016), thus mitigating switch cost. We investigated effects of withholding anticipatory phonetic cues on code-switched word recognition by splicing English-to-Mandarin code-switches into unilingual English sentences. In a concept monitoring experiment, Mandarin–English bilinguals took longer to recognize code-switches, suggesting a switch cost. In an eye tracking experiment, the average proportion of all participants' looks to pictures corresponding to sentence-medial code-switches decreased when cues were withheld. Acoustic analysis of stimuli revealed tone-specific pitch contours before English-to-Mandarin code-switches, consistent with previous work on tonal coarticulation. We conclude that withholding anticipatory phonetic cues can negatively affect code-switched recognition: therefore, bilingual listeners use phonetic cues in processing code-switches under normal conditions. We discuss the implications of tonal coarticulation for mechanisms underlying phonetic cues to code-switching.

We evaluated the impact of exposure to a second language on infants’ emerging speech production skills. We compared speech produced by three groups of 12-month-old infants while they interacted with interlocutors who spoke to them in Spanish and English: monolingual English-learning infants who had previously received 5 hours of exposure to a second language (Spanish), English- and Spanish-learning simultaneous bilinguals, and monolingual English-learning infants without any exposure to Spanish. Our results showed that the monolingual English-learning infants with short-term exposure to Spanish and the bilingual infants, but not the monolingual English-learning infants without exposure to Spanish, flexibly matched the prosody of their babbling to that of a Spanish- or English-speaking interlocutor. Our findings demonstrate the nature and extent of benefits for language learning from early exposure to two languages. We discuss the implications of these findings for language organization in infants learning two languages.

Interpreting is a complex bilingual task, placing high demands on both language control (i.e., source language not interfering in target language production) and processing control (i.e., multi-tasking carried out in concert under time pressure). On the basis of empirical evidence in the literature, we propose an attentional control model to account for both language control and processing control. Specifically, language control in interpreting is achieved by a structural framework of language-modality connections (established in interpreting training and stored as task schema), and by focused attention that helps build, strengthen and adapt the framework through monitoring, target enhancement, task disengagement, shifting, and working memory. In contrast, processing control in interpreting is achieved by divided attention via coordination and working memory, and by language processing efficiency that includes mastery of both languages and the appropriate use of interpreting strategies. Implications of this model for general bilingual language control are discussed.

When people interact, aspects of their speech and language patterns often converge in interactions involving one or more languages. Most studies of speech convergence in conversations have examined monolingual interactions, whereas most studies of bilingual speech convergence have examined spoken responses to prompts. However, it is not uncommon in multilingual communities to converse in two languages, where each speaker primarily produces only one of the two languages. The present study examined complexity matching and lexical matching as two measures of speech convergence in conversations spoken in English, Spanish, or both languages. Complexity matching measured convergence in the hierarchical timing of speech, and lexical matching measured convergence in the frequency distributions of lemmas produced. Both types of matching were found equally in all three language conditions. Taken together, the results indicate that convergence is robust to monolingual and bilingual interactions because it stems from basic mechanisms of coordination and communication.

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.

To investigate whether similar control processes are used during single and dual language production, we compared register switching (formal and informal speech in the same language) vs. language switching (French and English). The results across two experiments showed a positive correlation of overall register- and language-switch costs and similar formal French switch costs across the two switching tasks. However, whereas increasing the cue-to-stimulus interval resulted in a reduction of language-switch costs, register-switch costs were unaffected by the interval manipulation. This difference in switch-cost pattern indicates that control processes are not entirely identical during single and dual language production.

Bilinguals usually select the right language to speak for the particular context they are in, but sometimes the nontarget language intrudes. Despite a large body of research into language selection and language control, it remains unclear where intrusion errors originate from. These errors may be due to incorrect selection of the nontarget language at the conceptual level, or be a consequence of erroneous word selection (despite correct language selection) at the lexical level. We examined the former possibility in two language switching experiments using a manipulation that supposedly affects language selection on the conceptual level, namely whether the conversational language context was associated with the target language (congruent) or with the alternative language (incongruent) on a trial. Both experiments showed that language intrusion errors occurred more often in incongruent than in congruent contexts, providing converging evidence that language selection during concept preparation is one driving force behind language intrusion.

This study addresses the question of whether and how growing up with more than one language shapes a child's language impairment. Our focus is on Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in bilingual (Turkish–German) children. We specifically investigated a range of phenomena related to the so-called CP (Complementizer Phrase) in German, the hierarchically highest layer of syntactic clause structure, which has been argued to be particularly affected in children with SLI. Spontaneous speech data were examined from bilingual children with SLI in comparison to two comparison groups: (i) typically-developing bilingual children, (ii) monolingual children with SLI. We found that despite persistent difficulty with subject-verb agreement, the two groups of children with SLI did not show any impairment of the CP-domain. We conclude that while subject-verb agreement is a suitable linguistic marker of SLI in German-speaking children, for both monolingual and bilingual ones, ‘vulnerability of the CP-domain’ is not.

Native language (L1) processing draws on implicit expectations. An open question is whether non-native learners of a second language (L2) similarly draw on expectations, and whether these expectations are based on learners’ L1 or L2 knowledge. We approach this question by studying inverse preference effects on lexical encoding. L1 and L2 speakers of Spanish described motion events, while they were either primed to express path, manner, or neither. In line with other work, we find that L1 speakers adapted more strongly after primes that are unexpected in their L1. For L2 speakers, adaptation depended on their L2 proficiency: The least proficient speakers exhibited the inverse preference effect on adaptation based on what was unexpected in their L1; but the more proficient speakers were, the more they exhibited inverse preference effects based on what was unexpected in the L2. We discuss implications for L1 transfer and L2 acquisition.

Many human infants grow up learning more than one language simultaneously but only recently has research started to study early language acquisition in this population more systematically. The paper gives an overview on findings on early language acquisition in bilingual infants during the first two years of life and compares these findings to current knowledge on early language acquisition in monolingual infants. Given the state of the research, the overview focuses on research on phonological and early lexical development in the first two years of life. We will show that the developmental trajectory of early language acquisition in these areas is very similar in mono- and bilingual infants suggesting that these early steps into language are guided by mechanisms that are rather robust against the differences in the conditions of language exposure that mono- and bilingual infants typically experience.

Multilingual children are faced with the task of selectively using the linguistic systems of their languages. Previous research has shown that although bilinguals may make more errors in production and comprehension than their monolingual peers, less cognitively demanding processing experiments may reveal target-like performance. This has been attributed to several factors, among which language transfer and processing limitations. In this study we investigate the processing of additive connectives in both languages of German–Russian bilingual children using the Visual World Paradigm. Previous research has shown that bilingual children make many errors in the production of these connectives in Russian. The results show that the processing behaviour in both languages of the bilingual children does not differ from that of their monolingual peers. This finding is compatible with the view that errors in production and in more demanding comprehension tasks are due to processing limitations.