Access to verb bias and plausibility information during syntactic processing in adult Spanish-English bilinguals.

In two experiments, we examine how proficient second language speakers integrate verb bias and plausibility information during online sentence comprehension. Spanish-English speakers and native English speakers read sentences in English in which a post-verbal noun phrase (NP) could be interpreted as a direct object or a sentential subject. To examine the role of verb bias, the post-verbal NP was preceded by a verb that is preferentially followed by a direct object (DO-bias verbs) or a sentential complement (SC-bias verbs). To assess the role of plausibility, the semantic fit between the verb and the post-verbal NP was either congruent or incongruent with the direct object interpretation. The results show that both second language speakers and native speakers used verb bias information to assign a grammatical role to the post-verbal ambiguous NP with small differences. Syntactic revision of an initially incorrect DO interpretation was facilitated by the presence of an implausible NP.

Phasic pupillary responses reveal differential engagement of attentional control in bilingual spoken language processing.

Language processing is cognitively demanding, requiring attentional resources to efficiently select and extract linguistic information as utterances unfold. Previous research has associated changes in pupil size with increased attentional effort. However, it is unknown whether the behavioral ecology of speakers may differentially affect engagement of attentional resources involved in conversation. For bilinguals, such an act potentially involves competing signals in more than one language and how this competition arises may differ across communicative contexts. We examined changes in pupil size during the comprehension of unilingual and codeswitched speech in a richly-characterized bilingual sample. In a visual-world task, participants saw pairs of objects as they heard instructions to select a target image. Instructions were either unilingual or codeswitched from one language to the other. We found that only bilinguals who use each of their languages in separate communicative contexts and who have high attention ability, show differential attention to unilingual and codeswitched speech. Bilinguals for whom codeswitching is common practice process unilingual and codeswitched speech similarly, regardless of attentional skill. Taken together, these results suggest that bilinguals recruit different language control strategies for distinct communicative purposes. The interactional context of language use critically determines attentional control engagement during language processing.

Neural signatures of inhibitory control in intra-sentential code-switching: Evidence from fMRI.

In this study we examined the neural control mechanisms that are at play when habitual code-switchers read code-switches embedded in a sentence context. The goal was also to understand if and to what extent the putative control network that is engaged during the comprehension of code-switched sentences is modulated by the linguistic regularity of those switches. Towards that goal, we tested two different types of code switches (switches at the noun-phrase boundary and switches at the verb-phrase boundary) that despite being both represented in naturalistic corpora of code switching, show different distributional properties. Results show that areas involved in general cognitive control (e.g., pre-SMA, anterior cingulate cortex) are recruited when processing code-switched sentences, relative to non-code-switched sentences. Additionally, significant activation in the cerebellum when processing sentences containing code-switches at the noun-phrase boundary suggests that habitual code-switchers might engage a wider control network to adapt inhibitory control processes according to task demands. Results are discussed in the context of the current literature on neural models of bilingual language control.

Brain potentials reveal differential processing of masculine and feminine grammatical gender in native Spanish speakers.

Studies of Spanish grammatical gender have shown that native speakers exploit gender cues in determiners to facilitate speech processing and are sensitive to gender mismatches. However, past research has not considered attested distributional asymmetries between masculine and feminine gender, collapsing performance on trials with one or the other gender into a single analysis. We use event-related potentials to investigate whether masculine and feminine grammatical gender elicit qualitatively different brain responses. Forty monolingual Spanish speakers read sentences that were well-formed or contained determiner-noun gender violations. Half of the nouns were masculine and the other half were feminine. Consistent with previous research, brain responses varied along a continuum between LAN- and P600-dominant effects for both gender categories. However, results showed that individuals' ERP response dominance (LAN/P600) systematically differed across the two genders: participants who showed a LAN-dominant response to masculine-noun violations were more likely to show a P600 effect in response to feminine-noun violations. Correlations with individual difference measures further revealed that responses to masculine-noun violations were modulated by performance on the AX-CPT, a measure of cognitive control, whereas responses to feminine-noun violations were modulated by lexical knowledge, as indexed by verbal fluency. Together, the results demonstrate that even when processing features of language that belong to the same "natural class," native speakers can exhibit patterns of brain activity attuned to distributional patterns of language use. The inherent variability in native speaker processing is, therefore, an important factor when explaining purported deviations from the "native norm" reported in other types of populations.

Are All Code-Switches Processed Alike? Examining Semantic v. Language Unexpectancy.

Prior studies using the event-related potential (ERP) technique show that integrating sentential code-switches during online processing leads to a broadly distributed late positivity component (LPC), while processing semantically unexpected continuations instead leads to the emergence of an N400 effect. While the N400 is generally assumed to index lexico-semantic processing, the LPC has two different interpretations. One account suggests that it reflects the processing of an improbable or unexpected event, while an alternative account proposes sentence-level reanalysis. To investigate the relative costs of semantic to language-based unexpectancies (i.e., code-switches), the current study tests 24 Spanish-English bilinguals in an ERP reading study. Semantically constrained Spanish frames either varied in their semantic expectancy (high vs. low expectancy) and/or their language continuation (same-language vs. code-switch) while participants' electrophysiological responses were recorded. The Spanish-to-English switch direction provides a more naturalistic test for integration costs to code-switching as it better approximates the code-switching practices of the target population. Analyses across three time windows show a main effect for semantic expectancy in the N400 time window and a main effect for code-switching in the LPC time window. Additional analyses based on the self-reported code-switching experience of the participants suggest an early positivity linked to less experience with code-switching. The results highlight that not all code-switches lead to similar integration costs and that prior experience with code-switching is an important additional factor that modulates online processing.

Codeswitching: A Bilingual Toolkit for Opportunistic Speech Planning.

The ability to engage in fluent codeswitching is a hallmark of the flexibility and creativity of bilingual language use. Recent discoveries have changed the way we think about codeswitching and its implications for language processing and language control. One is that codeswitching is not haphazard, but subject to unique linguistic and cognitive constraints. Another is that not all bilinguals codeswitch, but those who do, exhibit usage patterns conforming to community-based norms. However, less is known about the cognitive processes that regulate and promote the likelihood of codeswitched speech. We review recent empirical studies and provide corpus evidence that highlight how codeswitching serves as an opportunistic strategy for optimizing performance in cooperative communication. From this perspective, codeswitching is part and parcel of a toolkit available to bilingual codeswitching speakers to assist in language production by allowing both languages to remain active and accessible, and therefore providing an alternative means to convey meaning, with implications for bilingual speech planning and language control more generally.

Interactional context mediates the consequences of bilingualism for language and cognition.

Proficient bilinguals use two languages actively, but the contexts in which they do so may differ dramatically. The present study asked what consequences the contexts of language use hold for the way in which cognitive resources modulate language abilities. Three groups of speakers were compared, all of whom were highly proficient Spanish-English bilinguals who differed with respect to the contexts in which they used the two languages in their everyday lives. They performed two lexical production tasks and the "AX" variant of the Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT), a nonlinguistic measure of cognitive control. Results showed that lexical access in each language, and how it related to cognitive control ability, depended on whether bilinguals used their languages separately or interchangeably or whether they were immersed in their second language. These findings suggest that even highly proficient bilinguals who speak the same languages are not necessarily alike in the way in which they engage cognitive resources. Findings support recent proposals that being bilingual does not, in itself, identify a unique pattern of cognitive control. An important implication is that much of the controversy that currently surrounds the consequences of bilingualism may be understood, in part, as a failure to characterize the complexity associated with the context of language use. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Prediction at the Discourse Level in Spanish-English Bilinguals: An Eye-Tracking Study.

In two experiments, we examine English monolinguals' and Spanish-English bilinguals' ability to predict an upcoming pronoun referent based on the Implicit Causality (IC) bias of the verb. In an eye-tracking experiment, the monolingual data show anticipation of the upcoming referent for NP1-bias verbs. For bilinguals, the same effect is found, showing that bilinguals are not slower than monolinguals at processing the information associated with the IC of the verb. In an off-line experiment, both groups showed knowledge of IC bias information for the verbs used in the eye-tracking experiment. Based on the findings of the two experiments, we show that highly proficient bilinguals have similar online and off-line predictions based on IC verb information than monolingual speakers.

The Neural Correlates of Conflict Detection and Resolution During Multiword Lexical Selection: Evidence from Bilinguals and Monolinguals.

Previous studies have identified the Event Related Potential (ERP) components of conflict detection and resolution mechanisms in tasks requiring lexical selection at the individual word level. We investigated the brain potentials associated with these mechanisms in a lexical selection task based on multiword units made up of verb-noun combinations (e.g., eat breakfast, skip school). Native and non-native English speakers were asked to select a familiarized target verb-noun sequence (eat breakfast) between two choices. Trials were low-conflict, with only one plausible candidate (e.g., eat - shoot - breakfast) or high-conflict, with two plausible verbs (e.g., eat - skip - breakfast). Following the presentation of the noun, native English speakers showed a biphasic process of selection, with a conflict-detection centro-parietal negativity between 500 and 600 ms (Ninc), followed by a right frontal effect (RFE) between 600 and 800 ms preceding responses. Late Spanish-English bilinguals showed a similar but more sustained and more widespread effect. Additionally, brain activity was only significantly correlated with performance in native speakers. Results suggest largely similar basic mechanisms, but also that different resources and strategies are engaged by non-native speakers when resolving conflict in the weaker language, with a greater focus on individual words than on multiword units.

Revisiting Masculine and Feminine Grammatical Gender in Spanish: Linguistic, Psycholinguistic, and Neurolinguistic Evidence.

Research on grammatical gender processing has generally assumed that grammatical gender can be treated as a uniform construct, resulting in a body of literature in which different gender classes are collapsed into single analysis. The present work reviews linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurolinguistic research on grammatical gender from different methodologies and across different profiles of Spanish speakers. Specifically, we examine distributional asymmetries between masculine and feminine grammatical gender, the resulting biases in gender assignment, and the consequences of these assignment strategies on gender expectancy and processing. We discuss the implications of the findings for the design of future gender processing studies and, more broadly, for our understanding of the potential differences in the processing reflexes of grammatical gender classes within and across languages.

The Benefits of Multilingualism to the Personal and Professional Development of Residents of The US.

In the past two decades, new research on multilingualism has changed our understanding of the consequences of learning and using two or more languages for cognition, for the brain, and for success and well-being across the entire lifespan. Far from the stereotype that exposure to multiple languages in infancy complicates language and cognitive development, the new findings suggest that individuals benefit from that exposure, with greater openness to other languages and to new learning itself. At the other end of the lifespan, in old age, the active use of two or more languages appears to provide protection against cognitive decline. That protection is seen in healthy aging and most dramatically in compensating for the symptoms of pathology in those who develop dementia or are recovering from stroke. In this article we briefly review the most exciting of these new research developments and consider their implications.

Experience with code-switching modulates the use of grammatical gender during sentence processing.

Using code-switching as a tool to illustrate how language experience modulates comprehension, the visual world paradigm was employed to examine the extent to which gender-marked Spanish determiners facilitate upcoming target nouns in a group of Spanish-English bilingual code-switchers. The first experiment tested target Spanish nouns embedded in a carrier phrase (Experiment 1b) and included a control Spanish monolingual group (Experiment 1a). The second set of experiments included critical trials in which participants heard code-switches from Spanish determiners into English nouns (e.g., la house) either in a fixed carrier phrase (Experiment 2a) or in variable and complex sentences (Experiment 2b). Across the experiments, bilinguals revealed an asymmetric gender effect in processing, showing facilitation only for feminine target items. These results reflect the asymmetric use of gender in the production of code-switched speech. The extension of the asymmetric effect into Spanish (Experiment 1b) underscores the permeability between language modes in bilingual code-switchers.

Late Bilinguals Are Sensitive to Unique Aspects of Second Language Processing: Evidence from Clitic Pronouns Word-Order.

In two self-paced reading experiments we asked whether late, highly proficient, English-Spanish bilinguals are able to process language-specific morpho-syntactic information in their second language (L2). The processing of Spanish clitic pronouns' word order was tested in two sentential constructions. Experiment 1 showed that English-Spanish bilinguals performed similarly to Spanish-English bilinguals and revealed sensitivity to word order violations for a grammatical structure unique to the L2. Experiment 2 replicated the pattern observed for native speakers in Experiment 1 with a group of monolingual Spanish speakers, demonstrating the stability of processing clitic pronouns in the native language. Taken together, the results show that late bilinguals can process aspects of grammar that are encoded in L2-specific linguistic constructions even when the structure is relatively subtle and not affected for native speakers by the presence of a second language.

Bilingual deaf readers' use of semantic and syntactic cues in the processing of English relative clauses.

Eye fixation measures were used to examine English relative clause processing by adult ASL-English bilingual deaf readers. Participants processed subject relative clauses faster than object relative clauses, but expected animacy cues eliminated processing difficulty in object relative clauses. This brings into question previous claims that deaf readers' sentence processing strategies are qualitatively different from those of hearing English native speakers. Measures of English comprehension predicted reading speed, but not differences in syntactic processing. However, a trend for ASL self-ratings to predict the ability to handle syntactic complexity approached significance. Results suggest a need to explore how objective ASL proficiency measures might provide insights into deaf readers' ability to exploit syntactic cues in English.

The gender congruency effect during bilingual spoken-word recognition.

We investigate the 'gender-congruency' effect during a spoken-word recognition task using the visual world paradigm. Eye movements of Italian-Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals were monitored while they viewed a pair of objects on a computer screen. Participants listened to instructions in Spanish (encuentra la bufanda / 'find the scarf') and clicked on the object named in the instruction. Grammatical gender of the objects' name was manipulated so that pairs of objects had the same (congruent) or different (incongruent) gender in Italian, but gender in Spanish was always congruent. Results showed that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, looked at target objects less when they were incongruent in gender, suggesting a between-language gender competition effect. In addition, bilinguals looked at target objects more when the definite article in the spoken instructions provided a valid cue to anticipate its selection (different-gender condition). The temporal dynamics of gender processing and cross-language activation in bilinguals are discussed.

Phonetic variation in bilingual speech: A lens for studying the production-comprehension link.

We exploit the unique phonetic properties of bilingual speech to ask how processes occurring during planning affect speech articulation, and whether listeners can use the phonetic modulations that occur in anticipation of a codeswitch to help restrict their lexical search to the appropriate language. An analysis of spontaneous bilingual codeswitching in the Bangor Miami Corpus (Deuchar et al., 2014) reveals that in anticipation of switching languages, Spanish-English bilinguals produce slowed speech rate and cross-language phonological influence on consonant voice onset time. A study of speech comprehension using the visual world paradigm demonstrates that bilingual listeners can indeed exploit these low-level phonetic cues to anticipate that a codeswitch is coming and to suppress activation of the non-target language. We discuss the implications of these results for current theories of bilingual language regulation, and situate them in terms of recent proposals relating the coupling of the production and comprehension systems more generally.

Examining the relationship between comprehension and production processes in code-switched language.

We employ code-switching (the alternation of two languages in bilingual communication) to test the hypothesis, derived from experience-based models of processing (e.g., Boland, Tanenhaus, Carlson, & Garnsey, 1989; Gennari & MacDonald, 2009), that bilinguals are sensitive to the combinatorial distributional patterns derived from production and that they use this information to guide processing during the comprehension of code-switched sentences. An analysis of spontaneous bilingual speech confirmed the existence of production asymmetries involving two auxiliary + participle phrases in Spanish-English code-switches. A subsequent eye-tracking study with two groups of bilingual code-switchers examined the consequences of the differences in distributional patterns found in the corpus study for comprehension. Participants' comprehension costs mirrored the production patterns found in the corpus study. Findings are discussed in terms of the constraints that may be responsible for the distributional patterns in code-switching production and are situated within recent proposals of the links between production and comprehension.

Referential choice in a second language: evidence for a listener-oriented approach.

One central question in research on spoken language communication concerns how speakers decide how explicit to make a referential expression. In the present paper, we address the debate between a discourse-based approach and a listener-based approach to the choice of referring expressions by testing second language (L2) learners of English on the production of English referential expressions, and comparing their performance to a group of monolingual speakers of English. In two experiments, we found that when native speakers of English use full noun phrases, the L2 speakers tend to choose a pronoun, even when the use of a pronoun leads to ambiguity. Our results show that the pattern observed is not the result of cross-linguistic interference from the L1. Furthermore, a clear dissociation is found between calculating the discourse information and taking the listener's perspective into account, supporting a listener's based approach to the choice of referring expressions.

Sensitivity to verb bias in American sign language-English bilinguals.

Native speakers of English are sensitive to the likelihood that a verb will appear in a specific subcategorization frame, known as verb bias. Readers rely on verb bias to help them resolve temporary ambiguity in sentence comprehension. We investigate whether deaf sign-print bilinguals who have acquired English syntactic knowledge primarily through print exposure show sensitivity to English verb biases in both production and comprehension. We first elicited sentence continuations for 100 English verbs as an offline production measure of sensitivity to verb bias. We then collected eye movement records to examine whether deaf bilinguals' online parsing decisions are influenced by English verb bias. The results indicate that exposure to a second language primarily via print is sufficient to influence use of implicit frequency-based characteristics of a language in production and also to inform parsing decisions in comprehension for some, but not all, verbs.

Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain.

The use of two or more languages is common in most of the world. Yet, until recently, bilingualism was considered to be a complicating factor for language processing, cognition, and the brain. The past 20 years have witnessed an upsurge of research on bilingualism to examine language acquisition and processing, their cognitive and neural bases, and the consequences that bilingualism holds for cognition and the brain over the life span. Contrary to the view that bilingualism complicates the language system, this new research demonstrates that all of the languages that are known and used become part of the same language system. The interactions that arise when two languages are in play have consequences for the mind and the brain and, indeed, for language processing itself, but those consequences are not additive. Thus, bilingualism helps reveal the fundamental architecture and mechanisms of language processing that are otherwise hidden in monolingual speakers.