Increasing numbers of international students enter university education via English language bridging programs. Much research has overlooked the nature of second language reading development during a bridging program, focusing instead on the development of literacy skills of international students who already meet the language requirement for undergraduate admission. We report a longitudinal eye-movement study assessing English passage reading efficiency and comprehension in 405 Chinese-speaking bridging program students. Incoming IELTS reading scores were used as an index of baseline reading ability. Linear mixed-effects regression models fitted to global eye-movement measures and reading comprehension indicated that despite initial between-subjects differences, within-subject change at each ability level progressed at the same rate, following parallel growth trajectories. Therefore, there was significant overall reading progress during the bridging program, but no evidence that the gap between low and high ability readers either closed or widened over time.

According to the “reduced emotionality hypothesis”, we are less emotionally driven when reasoning in a foreign language (FL) than in a native language (NL). We examined whether this foreign language effect (FLe) extends to the way we perceive motivational quotes (i.e., encouraging slogans conveying a profound and inspirational message): we expected FL participants to rate motivational quotes as less profound than NL participants. Strikingly, we observed the opposite: FL participants found motivational quotes more profound than NL participants, even after controlling for potential confounders (e.g., IQ, reasoning style). Both FL and NL participants gave similarly low profundity ratings to pseudo-profound bullshit sentences (i.e., meaningless sentences sounding profound), indicating that the message must be meaningful for the FLe to arise. We propose that, like space or time, language could promote psychological distance. This favours a focus on the background of a message to indicate profoundness.

Both inhibitory control and typological similarity between two languages feature frequently in current research on multilingual cognitive processing mechanisms. Yet, the modulatory effect of speaking two typologically highly similar languages on inhibitory control performance remains largely unexplored. However, this is a critical issue because it speaks directly to the organisation of the multilingual's cognitive architecture. In this study, we examined the influence of typological similarity on inhibitory control performance via a spatial Stroop paradigm in native Italian and native Dutch late learners of Spanish. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find evidence for a differential Stroop effect size for the typologically similar group (Italian–Spanish) compared to the typologically dissimilar group (Dutch–Spanish). Our results therefore suggest a limited influence of typological similarity on inhibitory control performance. The study has critical implications for characterising inhibitory control processes in multilinguals.

This study investigated the effect of external non-linguistic cues on language selection in bilinguals. Participants viewed photographs and stated in which language they would speak to the individuals in those photographs via a button press. These images were manipulated such that external cues (the ‘speak Welsh’ logo, presented in the form of a poster or a lanyard) were present or absent. Participants responded faster and selected Welsh as their language of choice more often in trials that contained a language cue than in trials in which a language cue was absent. Furthermore, trials containing a lanyard had a greater effect on participant performance than trials containing a poster. These results suggest that external cues can influence language selection in bilinguals, and that the perceived reliability of the cue can modulate this effect. These findings have implications for the language selection literature and could inform the development of future language use interventions.

Findings of bilingual participants outperforming their monolingual counterparts in executive functioning tasks have been repeatedly reported in the literature (Bialystok, 2017). However, uncontrolled factors or imperfectly matched samples might affect the reliability of these findings. This study aims to take into account a range of relevant variables in combination with innovative analyses to investigate the performance of one unstudied language group, Greek–English bilingual children in the north of England, compared to monolingual control groups. Our battery of executive function tasks taps into inhibition, updating and shifting. We use k-means nearest neighbour methods to match the groups and factor analysis to determine language proficiency. We find that bilinguals’ accuracy is on a par with their monolingual peers – however, they are faster in inhibition and working memory tasks. Our study provides strong evidence for the presence of a bilingual advantage in these domains, while making important methodological contributions to the field.

While most investigations of bilingualism document participants’ language background, there is an absence of consensus on how to quantify bilingualism. The high number of different language background questionnaires used by researchers and practitioners jeopardises data comparability and cross-pollination between research and practice. Using the Delphi consensus survey method, we asked 132 panellists (researchers, speech and language therapists, teachers) from 29 countries to rate 124 statements on a 5-point agreement scale. Consensus was pre-defined as 75% agreement threshold. After two survey rounds, 79% of statements reached consensus. The need for common measures to quantify bilingualism was acknowledged by 96% of respondents. Agreement was reached to document: language exposure and use, language difficulties, proficiency (when it cannot be assessed directly), education and literacy, input quality, language mixing practices, and attitudes (towards languages and language mixing). We discuss the implications of these findings for the creation of a new tool to quantify bilingual experience.

It is well-known that native English speakers sometimes erroneously accept subject-verb agreement violations when there is a number-matching attractor (e.g., *The key to the cabinets were…). Whether bilinguals whose L1 lacks number agreement are prone to such interference is unclear, given previous studies that report conflicting findings using different structures, participant groups, and experimental designs. To resolve the conflict, we examined highly proficient Korean–English bilinguals’ susceptibility to agreement attraction, comparing prepositional phrase (PP) and relative clause (RC) modifiers in a speeded acceptability judgment task and a speeded forced-choice comprehension task. The bilinguals’ judgments revealed attraction with RCs but not with PPs, while reaction times indicated attraction with both structures. The results therefore showed L2 attraction in all measures, with the consistent exception of judgments for PPs. We argue that this supports an overall native-like agreement processing mechanism, augmented by an additional monitoring mechanism that filters explicit judgments in simple structures.

Bilinguals’ emotions can vary in intensity with the language of a stimulus. Yet, extant research has somewhat surprisingly accepted inconsistent results from implicit nonverbal and explicit verbal emotion measures. To date, it is unclear if this inconsistency recurs to conceptual or methodological differences. We therefore investigated if squeezing a handheld dynamometer is a valid nonverbal, “visceral” alternative to self-reported language-dependent feelings by comparing explicit ratings to neuro-physiological emotional reactions. We replicated two pupillometry experiments inducing language-dependent emotions through sentence reading (Study 1) and listening to narrative video commercials (Study 2) of low and high emotionality in the first or second language. Pupillometry confirmed that bilinguals are more sensitive to the low-high emotionality contrast in their first than second language. Grip force (but not duration) mirrored these findings, whereas verbal ratings did not. We thus recommend grip force as a new attentional, nonverbal measure for bilingualism research.

We investigated cross-modal influences between speech and sign in hearing bimodal bilinguals, proficient in a spoken and a sign language, and its consequences on visual attention during message preparation using eye-tracking. We focused on spatial expressions in which sign languages, unlike spoken languages, have a modality-driven preference to mention grounds (big objects) prior to figures (smaller objects). We compared hearing bimodal bilinguals’ spatial expressions and visual attention in Dutch and Dutch Sign Language (N = 18) to those of their hearing non-signing (N = 20) and deaf signing peers (N = 18). In speech, hearing bimodal bilinguals expressed more ground-first descriptions and fixated grounds more than hearing non-signers, showing influence from sign. In sign, they used as many ground-first descriptions as deaf signers and fixated grounds equally often, demonstrating no influence from speech. Cross-linguistic influence of word order preference and visual attention in hearing bimodal bilinguals appears to be one-directional modulated by modality-driven differences.

First-generation refugee children often experience pre- and post-migration adversity and display high levels of mental health/wellbeing difficulties, but to date, research has not examined the impact of such factors on refugee children's L2 acquisition. Accordingly, this study examined the influence of externalizing and internalizing problem behaviours (wellbeing), time in refugee camps and low socioeconomic status (SES) (adversity) on the English-L2 abilities of 117 Syrian refugee children (7–14 years) in their third year of residency in Canada. Wellbeing difficulties and adversity factors accounted for variance on L2 vocabulary, morphosyntax, listening comprehension and narrative production tasks, beyond the variance accounted for by age of L2 acquisition and length of L2 exposure. Specifically, externalizing problem behaviours, time in refugee camp, maternal education and maternal employment predicted variance in L2 abilities. It is concluded that refugee children could have influences on their L2 acquisition that are different from those of bilinguals with other backgrounds.

Bilingualism is hard to define, measure, and study. Sparked by the “replication crisis” in the social sciences, a recent discussion on the advantages of open science is gaining momentum. Here, we join this debate to argue that bilingualism research would greatly benefit from embracing open science. We do so in a unique way, by presenting six fictional stories that illustrate how open science practices – sharing preprints, materials, code, and data; pre-registering studies; and joining large-scale collaborations – can strengthen bilingualism research and further improve its quality.

Extending the paradigm in L1 acquisition, scholars have begun to investigate whether participants’ domain-general ability to represent, encode, and integrate spectral and temporal dimensions of sounds (i.e., auditory processing) could be a potential determinant of the outcomes of post-pubertal L2 speech learning. The current study set out to test the hypothesis that auditory processing makes a unique contribution to L2 speech acquisition, for 70 Japanese classroom learners of English with different levels of L2 proficiency when biographical backgrounds (length of instruction and immersion) and memory abilities (working, declarative, and procedural memory) are controlled for. Auditory processing loaded onto modality-general capacities to represent and incorporate anchor stimuli (relative to target stimuli) into long-term memory in an implicit fashion, but dissociated from explicit abilities to remember, associate, and elaborate sensory information. Auditory processing explained a small-to-medium amount of variance in L2 speech learning, even after the other potentially confounding variables were statistically factored out.

Prediction is an important part of language processing. An open question is to what extent people predict language in challenging circumstances. Here we tested the limits of prediction by asking bilingual Dutch native speakers to interpret Dutch sentences into their English counterparts. In two visual world experiments, we recorded participants’ eye movements to co-present visual objects while they engaged in interpreting tasks (consecutive and simultaneous interpreting). Most participants showed anticipatory eye movements to semantically-related upcoming target words in their L1 source language during both consecutive and simultaneous interpretation. A quarter of participants during simultaneous interpretation however did not move their eyes, an extremely unusual participant behaviour in visual world studies. Overall, the findings suggest that most people predict in the source language under challenging interpreting situations. Further work is required to understand the causes of the absence of (anticipatory) eye movements during simultaneous interpretation in a substantial subset of individuals.

This study explored how bilingual code-switching habits affect cognitive shifting and inhibition. Habitual code-switching from 31 Mandarin–English bilingual adults were collected through the Language and Social Background Questionnaire (Anderson, Mak, Keyvani Chahi & Bialystok, 2018) and the Bilingual Switching Questionnaire (Rodriguez-Fornells, Krämer, Lorenzo-Seva, Festman & Münte, 2012). All participants performed verbal and nonverbal switching tasks, including the verbal fluency task, a bilingual picture-naming and colour-shape switching task. A Go/No-go task was administered to measure the inhibitory control of participants.

Frequent bilingual switchers showed higher efficiency in both English to Chinese verbal switching and nonverbal cognitive shifting. Additionally, bilinguals with intensive dense code-switching experience outperformed in the Go/No-go task. In general, the study revealed the connections between bilinguals’ intensity of single-language context experience and goal maintenance efficiency, which partially supported the Adaptive Control Hypothesis’ prediction (Green & Abutalebi, 2013). Besides, it also indicated the facilitations of bilinguals’ dense code-switching experience on their conflicts monitoring and response inhibition.

This study compares the role of exemplars in native and non-native listening. Two English identity priming experiments were conducted with native English, Dutch non-native, and Spanish non-native listeners. In Experiment 1, primes and targets were spoken in the same or a different voice. Only the native listeners showed exemplar effects. In Experiment 2, primes and targets had the same or a different degree of vowel reduction. The Dutch, but not the Spanish, listeners were familiar with this reduction pattern from their L1 phonology. In this experiment, exemplar effects only arose for the Spanish listeners. We propose that in these lexical decision experiments the use of exemplars is co-determined by listeners’ available processing resources, which is modulated by the familiarity with the variation type from their L1 phonology. The use of exemplars differs between native and non-native listening, suggesting qualitative differences between native and non-native speech comprehension processes.

An event-related potential (ERP) study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of two learning methods for the acquisition of vocabulary in a foreign language (FL). In the semantic method, FL words were presented with pictures denoting their meaning and the learners practiced with a semantic categorization task (to indicate whether FL words were exemplars of a semantic category). In the lexical method, FL words were paired with their translation in the first language (L1) and the learners practiced with a letter-monitoring task (to indicate whether L1-FL words contained a grapheme). A translation task and a picture-naming task were used to evaluate FL acquisition. ERP modulations associated with semantic processing were more evident and broadly distributed in the semantic versus lexical learning group. The pattern of results suggests that a single session of semantic learning favors the establishment of connections between semantics and the words learned in a new language.

Listeners are sensitive to speech sounds’ probability distributions. Distributional training (DT) studies with adults typically involve conscious activation of phoneme labels. We show that distributional exposure can shift existing phoneme boundaries (Spanish /e/–/i/) pre-attentively. Using a DT paradigm involving two bimodal distributions we assessed listener's neural discrimination across three sounds, showing pre-to-post-test improvement for the two adjacent sounds that fell into different clusters of the trained distribution than for those that fell into one cluster. Upon unattended exposure to an intricate stimulus set, listeners thus relocate native phoneme boundaries. We assessed whether the paradigm also works for category creation (Spanish establishing a duration contrast), where it has methodological advantages over the usual unimodal-versus-bimodal paradigm. DT yielded a greater effect for the /e/–/i/ boundary shift than for duration contrast creation. It seems that second-language phoneme contrasts similar to native ones might be easier to acquire than new contrasts.

This study investigated how second language speakers use syntactic and semantic cues in processing complex sentences. Turkish speakers of English, native speakers of English and native speakers of Turkish participated in a self-paced reading experiment, a read-aloud task and a pen-and-paper questionnaire in their relevant languages. The participants’ working memory capacity was also measured. The results supported the primacy of syntax view for native speakers of Turkish and English (Frazier & Fodor, 1978). Both groups of native speakers primarily used syntactic cues in their on-line decisions; semantic information influenced later decisions only. The second language speakers, however, used semantic cues in both their initial and later decisions, with evidence for accessing complex syntactic representations. The results are taken to support the view that native and non-native speakers weight linguistic cues differentially (Cunnings, 2017). The potential reasons for differential cue-retrieval in the first and second language are discussed.

This paper investigates the production of Persian–English bilingual compound verbs (BCVs) of the type [VERB+VERB]. In this type of code-switched structure, a lexical verb from the donor language English is combined with a light verb from the native language Persian. We tested the hypothesis that in Persian–English BCVs English verbs occupy the nominal slots of monolingual Persian complex predicates of the type [NOMINAL+VERB]. Two methodologies were used. A conversational-corpus analysis confirmed our predictions that Persian–English BCVs have translation-equivalent Persian compound verbs, that the English verbs denote the same action as the nominal constituents of those monolingual constructions, and that the support verbs tend to correspond in both types of compound verbs. A bilingual picture-word interference experiment provided evidence suggesting that English verbs interfere with the production of the nominal constituents of complex Persian verbs in Persian-bilingual speakers. We conclude that words from different word categories can compete for lexical access.

To assess the presence of cross-linguistic influence, this study compared the processing of Dutch sentences by English–Dutch and German–Dutch bilingual and Dutch monolingual children in a self-paced listening task. We combined insights from studies on child bilingualism and adult second language acquisition. Sentence structures showing partial overlap between languages were investigated (long passives), as well as structures with complete or no overlap (verb second and verb third sentences). We found evidence for syntactic co-activation of overlapping structures in the form of inhibition during listening. Syntactic, and possibly lexical, overlap between languages, and language dominance modulated effects. In particular, online cross-linguistic influence was visible only in the German–Dutch group. Furthermore, effects were most pronounced when structures partially overlapped and were absent in non-overlapping structures. Effects of online cross-linguistic influence became stronger the more German-dominant children were. Our results indicate that syntactic co-activation across languages affects sentence processing in bilingual children.