A central finding of bilingual research is that cognates – words that share semantic, phonological, and orthographic characteristics across languages – are processed faster than non-cognate words. However, it remains unclear whether cognate facilitation effects are reliant on identical cognates, or whether facilitation simply varies along a continuum of cross-language orthographic and phonological similarity. In two experiments, German–English bilinguals read identical cognates, close cognates, and non-cognates in a lexical decision task and a sentence-reading task while their eye movements were recorded. Participants read the stimuli in their L1 German and L2 English. Converging results found comparable facilitation effects of identical and close cognates vs. non-cognates. Cognate facilitation could be described as a continuous linear effect of cross-language orthographic similarity on lexical decision accuracy and latency, as well as fixation durations. Cross-language phonological similarity modulated the continuous orthographic similarity effect in single word recognition, but not in sentence processing.

Knowing the sentence structures (i.e., information that guides the assembly of words into sentences) is crucial in language knowledge. This knowledge must be stable for successful communication, but when learning another language that uses different structures, speakers must adjust their structural knowledge. Here, we examine how newly acquired second language (L2) knowledge influences first language (L1) structure knowledge. We compared two groups of Korean speakers: Korean-immersed speakers living in Korea (with little English exposure) versus English-immersed speakers who acquired English late and were living in the US (with more English exposure). We used acceptability judgment and sentence production tasks on Korean sentences in English and Korean word orders. Results suggest that acceptability and structural usage in L1 change after exposure to L2, but not in a way that matches L2 structures. Instead, L2 exposure might lead to increased difficulties in the selection and retrieval of word orders while using L1.

Emotional experiences are often dulled in one's second language. We tested whether emotion concepts are more strongly associated with first language (L1) than second language (L2) emotion words. Participants (140 L1-Swedish–L2-English bilinguals) saw a facial expression of an emotion (cue) followed by a target, which could either be another facial expression, an L1 emotion word, or an L2 emotion word. Participants indicated whether the cue and target represented the same or different emotions as fast as possible. Participants were faster and more accurate in both the L1 and L2 word conditions compared to the face condition. However, no significant differences emerged between the L1 and L2 word conditions, suggesting that emotion concepts are not more strongly associated with L1 than L2 emotion words. These results replicate prior research showing that L1 emotion words speed facial emotion perception and provide initial evidence that words (not only first language words) shape emotion perception.

Bimodal bilinguals master languages in two modalities, spoken and signed, and can use them simultaneously due to the independence of the articulators. This behavior, named code-blending, is one of the hallmarks of bimodal bilingualism. Lexical experiments on production and comprehension in American Sign Language/English showed that blending is not cognitively costly and facilitates lexical access. In this work, we replicated the blending advantage in lexical comprehension for hearing bimodal bilinguals with two other language pairs, French Sign Language (LSF)–French and Italian Sign Language (LIS)–Italian, and we explored whether the facilitation is also found at the sentential level. Results show that blended utterances for languages with incongruent word order like LIS–Italian were processed slower than monolingual utterances, while no difference was found when the word orders were congruent (LSF–French). We discuss these findings in light of linguistic theories of syntactic structure derivation in bimodal bilinguals.

The goal of the current paper is to investigate effects of multilingualism regarding emotional competence (EC). We argue that there might be two paths of influence that connect multilingualism and EC. First, we assume that multilingualism represents a linguistically and culturally heterogeneous context that may stimulate the development of EC. Second, cognitions, such as executive control or divergent thinking, might be an important condition for or constituent of emotions. Since cognitive abilities are sometimes assumed to be positively influenced by multilingualism (called the cognitive resp. bilingual advantage hypothesis), multilingualism might affect EC by boosting these cognitive functions. In an initial pre-study (N = 85) we found that two EC subcomponents were significantly predicted by degree of multilingualism (DM). In a second study (N = 989), we found that DM significantly predicted EC directly and was mediated by cultural heterogeneity but not by language switching, executive functions, or divergent thinking.

Semantic and affective priming have long been treated separately in psycholinguistic studies. Recently, however, the question of whether and how these two primings interact has become controversial, especially in cross-language contexts where such discussions are rare. In the present study, four mixed-design experiments were conducted with Chinese EFL learners to investigate cross-language semantic-affective interactions: 3 (prime valence: negative, positive, neutral) × 2 (semantic relatedness: related, unrelated). Results show that semantic priming effects occurred in the L1L1 and L1L2 conditions, whereas affective priming effects were observed in the L2L2 condition. In the L2L1 priming condition, only emotion primes induced cross-language priming. These results suggest that semantic and emotional accesses are activated automatically and separately, but can facilitate cross-language word processing mutually. The results support the hierarchical representation of semantic features of emotion words from L1 to L2 in the unbalanced bilingual mental lexicon, while affective attributes are spread across a distributed network.

This empirical study aims to shed light on L3 initial-stage transfer and later development by investigating Q-operations in L1 English–L2 Cantonese and L1 Cantonese–L2 English bilinguals’ L3 Mandarin and L1 English speakers’ L2 Mandarin at low and high proficiency levels. Data from an online cross-modal priming task and an offline acceptability judgement task found that structural similarity determines transfer source selection. Adopting a de-compositional approach to cues of different domains, we have found both facilitative and detrimental transfer effects from Cantonese, with the latter triggered by orthographic and phonological cues. Our data also suggest that detrimental transfer effects can persist at an advanced stage and that L3 development and acquisition results can be affected by various factors such as word frequency and the nature of learning situations.

Compound words consist of two or more words which combine to form a single word or phrase that acts as one. In English, the head of compound words is usually, but not always, the right-most root (e.g., “paycheck” is a noun because the head, “check,” is a noun). The current study explores the effects of head position on language control by examining language switching performance through electroencephalography (EEG). Twenty-one pairs of Chinese (L1)–English (L2) bilinguals performed cued language switching in a simultaneous production and comprehension task. The results showed that bilinguals recognized the head position earlier both in production and comprehension. However, the language control of the head position during production occurred in the middle stage (N2), but in the late stage (LPC) during comprehension. These findings indicate that the head position in compound words exerts differential influences on language control.

This online study investigates how first (L1) and foreign language (LX) users, and naïve (L0) listeners of Mandarin perceive the valence and arousal level of a Chinese interlocutor in various communication modalities. The 1485 participants (651 L1, 292 LX, and 542 L0 Mandarin users) were presented with 12 recordings of a Chinese actor conveying emotional events in the visual-vocal-verbal, vocal-verbal, visual-only, or vocal-only modality. Valence and arousal perceptions were collected via the 2DAFS (Lorette, 2021). Disregarding the vocal-only modality which led to neutral perceptions, bootstrapped regression models suggest that modality does not affect L1 users’ valence perceptions. LX and L0 users perceive markedly more neutral valence levels in the absence of visual cues, and in the case of positive stimuli, slightly lower arousal levels. This calls for a more nuanced conceptualisation of valence and arousal as universal features of emotions and stress the significance of modality for intercultural communication.

Learners can track word-referent co-occurrences across individually-ambiguous naming events to form correct word-referent mappings, termed statistical word learning (SWL). Prior research largely focuses on learning from a single language input, where a referent co-occurs with a single word (1:1 mapping). Here, we tested adults’ SWL from a simulated bilingual environment, where one referent co-occurred with two words (2:1 mapping) and the two words were either differentiated by a linguistic cue (Mandarin lexical tones, Cued condition) or not (Uncued condition). Results showed that in the Cued condition, Chinese–English bilinguals (N = 38) outperformed Spanish–English bilinguals (N = 56) and English monolinguals (N = 55), while Spanish–English bilinguals and English monolinguals performed similarly. The three groups did not differ in the Uncued condition. Self-reported learning confidence and strategies showed limited conscious awareness of learning. Results demonstrate that familiarity with a linguistic cue boosts overall statistical word learning from bilingual input.

To better explain various neurocognitive consequences of bilingualism, recent investigations have adopted continuous measures of bilingual experience, as opposed to binary bi/monolingual distinctions. However, few studies have considered whether bilingualism's effects on cognition are modulated by the linguistic distance (LD) between L1 and L2, and none of the existing studies has examined cognitive consequences of LD in aging populations. Here, we investigated the modulatory role of LD on the relationship between bilingualism, executive performance, and cognitive reserve (CR) in a sample of senior bilinguals. Our results show a dynamic trajectory of LD effects, with more distant language pairs exerting maximum effects at initial stages of bilingual experience – and closer language pairs at advanced stages. Bilingualism-related CR effects emerged only in the individuals with closer language pairs, suggesting that the language control stage of bilingual experience may play a key role in CR accrual, as compared to the L2 learning stage.