Longitudinal predictors of writing composition in Chinese and English written by the same 153 Hong Kong nine-year-old children were tested, and their production errors within the English essays across ten categories, focusing on punctuation, spelling, and grammar, were compared to errors made by ninety American nine-year-olds writing on the same topic. The correlation between quality of the compositions in Chinese and English was .53. In stepwise regression analyses examining early predictors at ages between five and nine years, tasks of speed or fluency were consistently uniquely associated with Chinese writing composition; measures of English vocabulary knowledge, word reading, or both were consistently uniquely associated with English writing quality. Compared to the American children, Chinese children's writing reflected significantly higher proportions of errors in all grammatical categories but did not differ in punctuation or spelling. Findings underscore both similarities and differences in writing at different levels across languages.

The present study investigates the influence of word category on naming performance in two populations: bilingual and monolingual children. The question is whether and, if so, to what extent monolingual and bilingual children differ with respect to noun and verb naming and whether a noun bias exists in the lexical abilities of bilingual children. Picture naming of objects and actions by Russian–German bilingual children (aged 4–7 years) was compared to age-matched monolingual children. The results clearly demonstrate a naming deficit of bilingual children in comparison to monolingual children that increases with age. Noun learning is more fragile in bilingual contexts than is verb learning. In bilingual language acquisition, nouns do not predominate over verbs as much as is seen in monolingual German and Russian children. The results are discussed with respect to semantic-conceptual aspects and language-specific features of nouns and verbs, and the impact of input on the acquisition of these word categories.

This study used lexical tasks to examine associations between languages, tasks, and age in bilingual children with primary language impairment. Participants (n = 41, mean age 8;8 years) lived in the United States, spoke primarily Spanish (L1) at home and English (L2) at school, and were identified with moderate to severe impairments in both languages. A total of eight tasks (four in each language) measured breadth of vocabulary knowledge (receptive and expressive vocabulary) and aspects of lexical processing (rapid automatic naming and nonword repetition). Correlational analyses revealed older children outperformed younger children on lexical tasks in L2 but not L1, as well as relative L2 dominance for most individuals and tasks. Positive associations were found between languages on processing-based tasks but not vocabulary measures. Findings were consistent with literature on typical bilingual learners, albeit with a notable increased risk of plateau in L1 growth. Results are interpreted within a Dynamic Systems framework.

Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we measured pre-attentive processing involved in native vowel perception as reflected by the mismatch negativity (MMN) in monolingual and simultaneous bilingual (SB) users of Canadian English and Canadian French in response to various pairings of four vowels: English /u/, French /u/, French /y/, and a control /y/. The monolingual listeners exhibited a discrimination pattern that was shaped by their native language experience. The SB listeners, on the other hand, exhibited a MMN pattern that was distinct from both monolingual listener groups, suggesting that the SB pre-attentive system is tuned to access sub-phonemic detail with respect to both input languages, including detail that is not readily accessed by either of their monolingual peers. Additionally, simultaneous bilinguals exhibited sensitivity to language context generated by the standard vowel in the MMN paradigm. The automatic access to fine phonetic detail may aid SB listeners to rapidly adjust their perception to the variable listening conditions that they frequently encounter.

This study investigates the role of age of acquisition (AoA) on the bilingual mental lexicon. Four groups of participants were tested: (i) English native speakers with minimal exposure to French; (ii) late English–French bilinguals; (iii) early English–French bilinguals; and (iv) simultaneous English–French bilinguals. We used a masked priming paradigm to investigate early, automatic lexical processing at the semantic level by testing both a within-language semantic condition and a cross-language translation condition. AoA was investigated both through group effects and a correlation analysis. We found significant translation priming effects for the simultaneous and early bilinguals only, and a significant correlation between AoA and translation priming effects. Due to the matched L2 proficiency of the early and late bilinguals, these results support our hypothesis that an early AoA, regardless of L2 proficiency, is crucial in order to find the L2-to-L1 priming effects that have often been elusive in recent studies.

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.

We investigated whether individual differences in inhibitory control relate to bilingual spoken word recognition. While their eye movements were monitored, native English and native French English–French bilinguals listened to English words (e.g., field) and looked at pictures corresponding to the target, a within-language competitor (feet), a French cross-language competitor (fille “girl”), or both, and unrelated filler pictures. We derived cognitive and oculomotor inhibitory control measures from a battery of inhibitory control tasks. Increased cognitive inhibitory control was linked to less within-language competition for all bilinguals, and less cross-language competition for native French low-English-exposure bilinguals. Increased oculomotor inhibitory control was linked to less within-language competition for all native French bilinguals, and less cross-language competition for native French low-English-exposure bilinguals. The results extend previous findings (Blumenfeld & Marian, 2011), and suggest that individual differences in inhibitory control relate to bilingual spoken word processing.

This study examines the convergence and divergence between subjective and objective measures of language proficiency for assessing language dominance in Mandarin–English bilinguals. Sixty-two young adults (Experiment 1) and 27 children (Experiment 2) provided self-ratings of proficiency level (or were rated by their parents), were interviewed for spoken proficiency, and named pictures in the Multilingual Naming Test (MINT) and (in Experiment 1 only) the Boston Naming Test. In Experiment 1, the four measures converged in the number of people classified into different dominance groups but both naming tests indicated greater English dominance than self-report and interview measures. In Experiment 2, parent report and interview measures converged in dominance classifications but the MINT indicated higher degrees of English dominance. To a large extent bilinguals were able to classify themselves (or their children) into dominance groups but some mismatches between measures in dominance classification were observed for all age and dominance groups. These results, together with previous findings with Spanish–English bilingual adults (Gollan et al., 2012), suggest that bilinguals may shift to English dominance in confrontation naming before they do so in conversational fluency, and that dominance shifts persist throughout the lifespan but may be relatively more pronounced in children. These findings caution against the use of self-reports as the sole means of classifying bilinguals into dominance groups and support a multi-measure approach including direct assessment of the relevant linguistic domain.

Previous studies have shown that orthography is activated during speech processing and that it may have positive and negative effects for non-native listeners. The present study examines whether the effect of orthography on non-native word learning depends on the relationship between the grapheme–phoneme correspondences across the native and non-native orthographic systems. Specifically, congruence between grapheme–phoneme correspondences across the listeners’ languages is predicted to aid word recognition, while incongruence is predicted to hinder it. Native Spanish listeners who were Dutch learners or naïve listeners (with no exposure to Dutch) were taught Dutch pseudowords and their visual referents. They were trained with only auditory forms or with auditory and orthographic forms. During testing, non-native listeners were less accurate when the target and distractor pseudowords formed a minimal pair (differing in only one vowel) than when they formed a non-minimal pair, and performed better on perceptually easy than on perceptually difficult minimal pairs. For perceptually difficult minimal pairs, Dutch learners performed better than naïve listeners and Dutch proficiency predicted learners’ word recognition accuracy. Most importantly and as predicted, exposure to orthographic forms during training aided performance on minimal pairs with congruent orthography, while it hindered performance on minimal pairs with incongruent orthography.

To address the negative effects of deafness on spoken language acquisition, many clinicians suggest using cochlear implant (CI) and oral education and advise against sign language, even when combined with spoken language (i.e., bilingualism), believing that it may slow down spoken language development. In a deaf child with CI who was exposed at an early age to Italian Sign Language and spoken Italian, we evaluated language development and the relationship between the two languages. The number of words/signs produced by the child consistently increased with age, and the vocabulary growth rate in spoken Italian was equivalent to that of hearing peers. Before CI, the child relied almost exclusively on sign language; after CI, he gradually shifted to spoken Italian yet still used sign language when unable to retrieve words in spoken Italian. We conclude that bimodal bilingualism may scaffold the development of spoken language also in deaf children with CI.

Twenty-seven Mandarin–English bilingual children participated in picture identification and picture naming tasks at two time points, 16 months apart. The younger children (mean age = 4 years) showed greater gains over time than the older children (mean age = 6 years 10 months) in English lexical-semantic skills and neither group showed significant gains in Mandarin. At the individual level, a majority of the children showed increased accuracy for the English tasks, but only half of them did so for the Mandarin tasks. Analyses of error distribution indicated production of more advanced error types in the older children and in English, as well as different patterns of time-related changes in error types in the two languages. These findings illustrate how age and initial language proficiency are related to lexical growth among Mandarin-speaking bilingual children who are becoming English-dominant.

We examined how age of acquisition in Spanish heritage speakers and L2 learners interacts with implicitness vs. explicitness of tasks in gender processing of canonical and non-canonical ending nouns. Twenty-three Spanish native speakers, 29 heritage speakers, and 33 proficiency-matched L2 learners completed three on-line spoken word recognition experiments involving gender monitoring, grammaticality judgment, and word repetition. All three experimental tasks required participants to listen to grammatical and ungrammatical Spanish noun phrases (determiner–adjective–noun) but systematically varied the type of response required of them. The results of the Gender Monitoring Task (GMT) and the Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) revealed significant grammaticality effects for all groups in accuracy and speed, but in the Word Repetition Task (WRT), the native speakers and the heritage speakers showed a grammaticality effect, while the L2 learners did not. Noun canonicity greatly affected processing in the two experimental groups. We suggest that input frequency and reduced language use affect retrieval of non-canonical ending nouns from declarative memory in L2 learners and heritage speakers more so than in native speakers. Native-like processing of gender in the WRT by the heritage speakers is likely related to context of acquisition and particular experience with oral production.

The present study aimed (a) to determine whether the bilingual advantage in false-belief (FB) understanding is replicated when considering socio-economic status and (b) to assess whether conflict inhibition and/or working memory underpin the advantage, if there is one. Monolingual preschoolers (24 English monolinguals and 24 French monolinguals) and 24 English–French bilingual counterparts received FB, conflict inhibition, working memory, and verbal ability tests. Monolingual and bilingual groups were equivalent on parental income and education, measured through a parental questionnaire. Results indicated that bilinguals significantly outperformed monolinguals on FB, but only after statistically controlling for language proficiency and age. Working memory likely compensated for the potential negative impact of bilinguals’ low language proficiency on FB.

When speakers describe motion events using different languages, they subsequently classify those events in language-specific ways (Gennari, Sloman, Malt & Fitch, 2002). Here we ask if bilingual speakers flexibly shift their event classification preferences based on the language in which they verbally encode those events. English–Spanish bilinguals and monolingual controls described motion events in either Spanish or English. Subsequently they judged the similarity of the motion events in a triad task. Bilinguals tested in Spanish and Spanish monolinguals were more likely to make similarity judgments based on the path of motion versus bilinguals tested in English and English monolinguals. The effect is modulated in bilinguals by the age of acquisition of the second language. Late bilinguals based their judgments on path more often when Spanish was used to describe the motion events versus English. Early bilinguals had a path preference independent of the language in use. These findings support “thinking-for-speaking” (Slobin, 1996) in late bilinguals.

The purpose of this study was to investigate receptive vocabulary achievement among French–English bilinguals in Canada. Standardized test scores of receptive vocabulary were measured in both languages from preschool, early-elementary, and late-elementary French–English bilingual children, and French–English bilingual adults. Mean vocabulary scores across all bilingual age groups were statistically equivalent to or above the standard mean in French and English with the exception of the early-elementary bilinguals who scored below the standard mean on the English vocabulary assessment. Mean vocabulary scores of the preschool and adult bilingual groups were not significantly different from those of their monolingual peers in either language. However, early-elementary and late-elementary bilingual children scored significantly lower than monolinguals on the English vocabulary assessment. The positive sociocultural context for French–English bilingualism in Canada as well as language input changes in school are discussed as underlying reasons for these findings.

Deliberate vocabulary learning is common in the L2, however, questions remain about most efficient and effective forms of this learning approach. Bilingual models of L2 word learning and processing can be used to make predictions about outcomes of learning new vocabulary from bilingual (L2–L1) flashcards, and these predictions can be tested experimentally. In the present study, 41 late adult German–English bilinguals learned 48 English pseudowords using bilingual flashcards. Quality of component lexical representations established for the studied items was probed using form priming and semantic priming. The results show that, although all participants were able to establish robust orthographic representations of the studied items, only bilinguals with large L2 vocabularies established high-quality lexical semantic representations. With neither the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM) nor the Sense Model able to fully account for these findings, an alternative explanation based on a distributed semantic features view of word learning is proposed. Learning implications of the findings are discussed.

This study investigated the occurrence of interactive alignment between bilingual interlocutors communicating in a shared second language (L2). Thirty university-level students from various language backgrounds completed two information-exchange tasks in L2 English. Excerpts from the beginning and end of the interactions were presented to ten native-speaking listeners who rated each interlocutor individually and both interlocutors as a team for speech and personality variables, including degree of alignment. Results revealed interactive alignment which encompassed different aspects of interlocutors’ speech and personality characteristics in each task. Theoretical and practical implications for alignment as a sociocognitive phenomenon in lingua franca contexts are discussed.

Recent research shows that speakers with different first languages perceive various cognitive domains in different ways and that bilinguals’ conceptualization patterns are affected by the concepts of both languages. The present study extends Choi and Bowerman (1991) by examining the categorizations of spatial concepts in adult Korean–English bilinguals. Using similarity judgments, the study compares the conceptualization patterns of “put in” and “put on” by Korean–English bilinguals and Korean and English monolinguals. Results indicated significant differences between the monolingual and bilingual groups, demonstrating the process of convergence of the two languages in the bilingual mind. Regression analyses also revealed that bilinguals’ conceptualizations are largely influenced by English proficiency and frequency of Korean use. These findings provide evidence of conceptual restructuring, supporting the claim of previous research that bilinguals’ conceptualization patterns are susceptible to their language experience.

Previous studies showed reduced hemispheric asymmetry in face perception in bilinguals compared with monolinguals, suggesting that hemispheric asymmetry in visual stimulus processing may be modulated by language reading experience. Here we examined whether this phenomenon can also be observed in bilinguals with different language backgrounds. We compared English monolinguals, European–English bilinguals (who know two alphabetic languages), and Chinese–English bilinguals (who have mastered a logographic and an alphabetic language) in an English word sequential matching task. We showed that European–English bilinguals had a stronger right visual field/left hemispheric advantage than the other two groups, suggesting that different language experiences can influence how visual words are processed in the brain. In addition, by using a computational model that implements a theory of hemispheric asymmetry in perception, we showed that this lateralization difference could be accounted for by the difference in participants’ vocabulary size and the difference in word-to-sound mapping between alphabetic and logographic languages.

The current study investigated whether Russian–English bilinguals activate knowledge of Russian when reading English sentences. Russian and English share only a few letters, but there are some interlingual homographs (e.g., POT, which means “mouth” in Russian). Critical sentences were written such that the Russian meaning of the homographs fit the context. Sentences presented to participants contained either the English translation of the Russian meaning of a homograph, an interlingual homograph, or a control word (e.g., TO SEE TOM'S THROAT, THE DOCTOR ASKED TOM TO OPEN HIS MOUTH/POT/NET WIDELY). Bilinguals showed a reduction in the N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP) signal for interlingual homographs compared to control words, whereas the N400 of monolingual English speakers was of a similar magnitude in the two conditions. The finding provides evidence that bilinguals automatically activate representations in both of their languages when reading in one language, even when the combination of a language-specific script and the preceding language context indicates that the other language is not relevant.