Bilingualism: Language and Cognition

Noticing the hole (NTH) occurs when speakers want to say something, but realise they do not know the right word(s). Such awareness of lacking knowledge supposedly facilitates the acquisition of the unknown word(s) from later input (Swain, 1993). We tested this claim by experimentally inducing NTH in a second language (L2) for some participants (experimental), but not others (control). Then, in a price comparison game, all participants were exposed to spoken L2 input containing the to-be-learned words. They were unaware of taking part in an L2 study. Post-tests showed that participants who had noticed holes in their vocabulary had indeed learned more words compared to participants who had not. This held both for the experimental group as well as those participants in the control group who later reported to have noticed holes. Thus, when we become aware of vocabulary holes, the first step to improve our vocabulary is already taken.

Although international students experience lower attainment at university than home students (Morrison et al., 2005), reasons are poorly understood. Some question the role of language proficiency as international students come with required language qualifications. This study investigated language and literacy of international students who successfully met language entry requirements and those of home students, matched on non-verbal cognition, studying in their native language. In a sample of 63 Chinese and 64 British students at a UK university, large and significant group differences were found at entry and eight months later. Furthermore, language and literacy indicators explained 51% of variance in the Chinese group's grades, without predicting the home students’ achievement. Thus language proficiency appears predictive of academic outcomes only before a certain threshold is reached, and this threshold does not correspond to the minimum language entry requirements. This highlights a systematic disadvantage with which many international students pursue their education.

Recent theories propose that language-switching in bilinguals influences executive control. We investigated whether switching behaviour, shaped by the bilingual's interactional context as well as personal preferences impacted attentional control. We compared four groups – (i) Edinburgh monolinguals, (ii) Edinburgh non-switching late bilinguals, (iii) Edinburgh non-switching early bilinguals, and (iv) Singapore switching early bilinguals – on two tasks of attentional control. Effects of interactional context were observed, with Singapore bilinguals performing better on conflict resolution in the Attention Network Task and Edinburgh late bilinguals on attentional switching in the Elevator reversal (Test of Everyday Attention) subtest. Our results suggest that the interactional context of bilinguals could impact attentional control differently.

This study assesses the effects of age and language exposure on VOT production in 29 simultaneous bilingual children aged 3;7 to 5;11 who speak German as a heritage language in the Netherlands. Dutch and German have a binary voicing contrast, but the contrast is implemented with different VOT values in the two languages. The results suggest that bilingual children produce ‘voiced’ plosives similarly in their two languages, and these productions are not monolingual-like in either language. Bidirectional cross-linguistic influence between Dutch and German can explain these results. Yet, the bilinguals seemingly have two autonomous categories for Dutch and German ‘voiceless’ plosives. In German, the bilinguals’ aspiration is not monolingual-like, but bilinguals with more heritage language exposure produce more target-like aspiration. Importantly, the amount of exposure to German has no effect on the majority language's ‘voiceless’ category. This implies that more heritage language exposure is associated with more language-specific voicing systems.

Previous studies have shown bilingually and monolingually developing children to differ in their sensitivity to referential pragmatic deixis in challenging tasks, with bilinguals exhibiting a higher sensitivity. The learning of adjectives is particularly challenging, but has rarely been investigated in bilingual children. In the present study we presented a pragmatic cue supporting the learning of novel adjectives to 32 Spanish–German bilingual and 28 German monolingual 5-year-olds. The children's responses to a descriptive hand gesture highlighting an object's property were measured behaviorally using a forced choice task and neurophysiologically through functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS). While no group differences emerged on the behavioral level, fNIRS revealed a higher activation in bilingual than monolingual children in the vicinity of the posterior part of the right superior temporal sulcus (STS). This result supports the prominent role of the STS in processing pragmatic gestures and suggests heightened pragmatic sensitivity for bilingual children.

Mouthings, the spoken language elements in sign language discourse, are typically analysed as having a redundant, one-on-one relationship with manual signs, both semantically and temporally. We explore exceptions to this presupposed semantic and temporal congruency in a corpus of spontaneous signed conversation by deaf users of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). We identify specifying mouthings (words with a different meaning than the co-occurring sign), solo mouthings (uttered while the hands are inactive) and added mouthings (words added to a signing stream without their corresponding sign), and make a sentence-level analysis of their occurrences. These non-redundant mouthings occurred in 12% of all utterances, and were made by almost all signers. We argue for the presence of a code-blending continuum for NGT, where NGT is the matrix language and spoken Dutch is blended in, in various degrees. We suggest expansion of existing code-mixing models, to allow for description of bimodal mixing.

Long-term experience with a tonal language shapes pitch perception in specific ways, and consequently Chinese speakers may not process pitch in English words – e.g., “Rose?” spoken as a question versus “Rose” spoken as a statement – in the same way as native speakers of non-tonal languages do. If so, what are those pitch processing differences and how do they affect Chinese recognition of English words? We investigated these questions by administering a primed lexical-decision task in English to proficient Chinese–English bilinguals and two control groups, namely, Spanish–English and native English speakers. Prime-target pairs differed in one sound and/or in pitch. Results showed specific cross-language differences in pitch processing between the Chinese speakers and the control groups, confirming that experience with a tonal language shaped the perception of English words' intonation. Moreover, such experience helps to incorporate pitch into models of word-recognition for bilinguals of tonal and non-tonal languages.

The performance of bilingual children and adults in Wales on Welsh and English vocabulary and grammar and on cognitive measures is re-analysed in relation to SES indicators of parental education and parental professions. Results are reported for 732 participants ranging across seven age groups from age 3 to over 60 and from four home language types, monolingual English, and bilinguals with only English at home, Welsh and English at home, or only Welsh at home. Results reveal extensive evidence of SES influence on performance, and of a complex relation of exposure in the home and SES level on performance, modulated by the age of the participant and whether one is considering the majority or minority language.

Idiom priming effects (faster processing compared to novel phrases) are generally robust in native speakers but not non-native speakers. This leads to the question of how idioms and other multiword units are represented and accessed in a first (L1) and second language (L2). We address this by investigating the processing of translated Chinese idioms to determine whether known L1 combinations show idiom priming effects in non-native speakers when encountered in the L2. In two eye-tracking experiments we compared reading times for idioms vs. control phrases (Experiment 1) and for figurative vs. literal uses of idioms (Experiment 2). Native speakers of Chinese showed recognition of the L1 form in the L2, but figurative meanings were read more slowly than literal meanings, suggesting that the non-compositional nature of idioms makes them problematic in a non-native language. We discuss the results as they relate to crosslinguistic priming at the multiword level.

Although the extant literature provides robust evidence of the influence of language exposure and socioeconomic status (SES) on language acquisition, it is unknown how sensitive the early receptive vocabulary system is to these factors. The current study investigates effects of minimal second language exposure and SES on the comprehension vocabulary of 16-month-old children in the language in which they receive the greatest exposure. Study 1 revealed minimal second language exposure and SES exert significant and independent effects on a direct measure of vocabulary comprehension in English-dominant and English monolingual children (N = 72). In Study 2, we replicated the effect of minimal second language exposure in Spanish-dominant and Spanish monolingual children (N = 86), however no effect of SES on vocabulary was obtained. Our results emphasize the sensitivity of the language system to minimal changes in the environment in early development.

Monolingual speakers show priming for idiomatic sequences (e.g. a pain in the neck) relative to matched controls (e.g. a pain in the foot); single word translation equivalents show cross-language activation (e.g. dog–chien) for bilinguals. If the lexicon is heteromorphic (Wray, 2002), larger units may show cross-language priming in the same way as single words. We used the initial words of English idioms (e.g. to spill the. . . beans) and transliterated Chinese idioms (e.g. draw a snake and add. . . feet) as primes for the final words in a lexical decision task with high proficiency Chinese–English bilinguals and English monolinguals. Bilinguals responded to targets significantly faster when they completed a Chinese idiom (e.g. feet) than when they were presented with a matched control word (e.g. hair). The results are discussed in terms of conceptual activation and lexical translation processes, and are also incorporated into a dual route model of formulaic and novel language processing.

In this study we explore the role of explicit metalinguistic knowledge (MLK) of first language (L1) in the learning of a third language (L3). We compare the oral production of 40 participants with varying degrees of explicit MLK of the L1, who are exposed to a completely new L3. In accordance with the second language (L2) status factor, which is further motivated by the distinction between implicit competence and explicit knowledge (Bardel & Falk, 2012; Paradis, 2009), we hypothesize that the participants with low explicit MLK in their L1 will transfer from their L2, and that the participants with high explicit MLK in the L1 will transfer from their L1. The structure of interest is adjective placement, which is the same in the L1 and the L3 (but not in the participants’ L2s). The results show that the degree of explicit MLK in the L1 plays a decisive role at the initial state of L3 learning.

In two picture-naming experiments we examined whether bilinguals co-activate the non-target language during word production in the target language. The pictures were presented out-of-context (Experiment 1) or in visually presented sentence contexts (Experiment 2). In both experiments different participant groups performed the task in Dutch, their native language (L1), or in English, their second language (L2). The pictures’ names were Dutch–English cognates or non-cognates, the cognate effect serving as the marker of activation of the non-target language. In Experiment 2 we also examined the effect of sentence constraint. In both experiments a cognate effect occurred, but it was modulated by language and sentence constraint: The effect was larger in L2 than in L1, larger with low-constraint sentences than with high-constraint sentences, and disappeared in the high-constraint L1 condition. These results extend earlier bilingual word-recognition and out-of-context production studies, suggesting that also during word production in context, co-activation of the non-target language occurs.

Executive control abilities and lexical access speed in Stroop performance were investigated in English monolinguals and two groups of bilinguals (English–Chinese and Chinese–English) in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages. Predictions were based on a bilingual cognitive advantage hypothesis, implicating cognitive control ability as the critical factor determining Stroop interference; and two bilingual lexical disadvantage hypotheses, focusing on lexical access speed. Importantly, each hypothesis predicts different response patterns in a Stroop task manipulating stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). There was evidence for a bilingual cognitive advantage, although this effect was sensitive to a number of variables including proficiency, language immersion, and script. In lexical access speed, no differences occurred between monolinguals and bilinguals in their native languages, but there was evidence for a delay in L2 processing speed relative to the L1. Overall, the data highlight the multitude of factors affecting executive control and lexical access speed in bilinguals.

A corpus analysis of phonological word-forms shows that English words have few phonological neighbors that are Spanish words. Concomitantly, Spanish words have few phonological neighbors that are English words. These observations appear to undermine certain accounts of bilingual language processing, and have significant implications for the processing and representation of word-forms in bilinguals.