The joint effects of bilingualism, DLD and item frequency on children's lexical-retrieval performance.

BACKGROUND: Bilingual children and children diagnosed with developmental language disorder (DLD) are characterized by reduced lexical-retrieval abilities. Few studies examined their joint contribution and the mechanisms underlying these effects in the lexical domain. AIMS: To explore the joint effects of bilingualism and DLD by adopting a four-group comparison in which the difference between bi- and monolingual children with DLD is directly compared with that of bi- and monolingual children with typical language development (TLD). In addition, to examine the mechanisms underlying the effects of bilingualism and DLD on children's lexical-retrieval abilities, we tested how item's characteristics (frequency of use) modulate the effects of bilingualism and DLD. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Fifty-eight children (aged 9-14 years) participated in the current study. They were either Hebrew monolingual or Hebrew-English bilinguals and were either diagnosed with DLD or had TLD. Children completed a Hebrew picture-naming task and verbal short-term memory tests. The influence of participants' characteristics, including bilingualism, DLD and verbal short-term memory, as well as item's characteristics (frequency of use) were tested. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Accuracy analysis revealed that bilingual children scored lower than monolingual children and that children with DLD scored lower than children with TLD. Critically, the two factors interacted such that their joint presence resulted in less-than-additive effects. Specifically, although bilingual children with DLD performed worse than all other groups, they performed better than expected under an additive model. Interestingly, monolingual children with DLD performed similarly to bilingual children with TLD. Increased verbal short-term memory was associated with better performance across the four groups. Finally, bilingualism and DLD interacted with item frequency, such that being bilingual, having DLD, or both, resulted in increased sensitivity to item frequency manifested in exceptionally lower performance on low-frequency items. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: The findings suggest that the strength of linguistic representations contribute to the effects of bilingualism and DLD. Further, the presence of bilingualism in the context of DLD does not exaggerate the impact of DLD. Clinically, this suggests that differences between bi- and monolingual children with DLD must be considered in reference to the gap in lexical-retrieval performance observed between bi- and monolingual children with TLD. Finally, because monolingual children with DLD and bilingual children with TLD performed similarly, sensitive diagnostic tools and intervention programmes should be adopted to allow correct identification and treatment of bilingual children with DLD.

The influence of complete and partial shared translation in the first language on semantic processing in the second language.

This study investigated (a) whether L2 semantic processing is modulated by automatic activation of L1 translations, (b) whether L1 translation activation involves both phonological and orthographic representations, and (c) whether these phonological and orthographic representations of L1 translations are accessed along a similar time course. To this end, 48 Hebrew-English bilinguals and 48 native English speakers with no Hebrew knowledge performed a semantic relatedness judgment task in English. Critical prime-target pairs (n = 96) were semantically unrelated, but their translations in Hebrew could include form overlap. Specifically, complete translation-overlap pairs shared both a phonological and an orthographic lexical form (e.g., "beak" and "source" = מקור /makor/), whereas partial translation-overlap pairs shared either a phonological form (e.g., "skin" and "light" = /or/) or an orthographic form (e.g., "book" and "barber" = ספר) in Hebrew. Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of the prime-target L2-English words was further manipulated to reveal the time course of phonological and orthographic translation activation. Results showed that complete overlap in the translation lead Hebrew-English bilinguals, but not native English speakers, to judge semantically unrelated pairs as related in meaning and to do so more quickly irrespective of SOA. For partial translation overlap in phonology, the percentage of "yes" responses was affected only in the short SOA (300 ms), and under partial translation overlap in orthography, only in the long SOA (750 ms). These findings suggest that L1 translation activation during L2 word processing spreads to both phonological and orthographic representations but at different time points along processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

L1 production following brief L2 exposure: Evidence for cross-talk across comprehension and production.

Language control allows bilinguals to fluently shift between their languages. Here, we tested whether comprehension and production tasks initiate language control processes to the same extent, and whether these processes operate over specific concepts or globally. Seventy Hebrew-English bilinguals completed an L1 picture-naming production task in the first and third blocks, and either a reading aloud (word production) or an animacy judgment (word comprehension) task in their L2 in the second block. Further, concepts were either repeated across blocks or not. Results showed more filled pauses in the third block relative to the first block. Additionally, the size of this blocked-language order effect was similar following word production and word comprehension tasks in the L2, suggesting that production and comprehension tasks were similarly efficient in instigating control processes. Finally, both recurring and new concepts were affected, suggesting that mostly global language control is at play. These findings provide constraining evidence for fully understanding the scope of bilingual language control.

Cross-language influences: translation status affects intraword sense relatedness.

Many words have more than one meaning, and these meanings vary in their degree of relatedness. In the present experiment, we examined whether this degree of relatedness is influenced by whether or not the two meanings share a translation in a bilingual's other language. Native English speakers with Spanish as a second language (i.e., English-Spanish bilinguals) and native Spanish speakers with English as a second language (i.e., Spanish-English bilinguals) were presented with pairs of phrases instantiating different senses of ambiguous English words (e.g., dinner date-expiration date) and were asked to decide whether the two senses were related in meaning. Critically, for some pairs of phrases, a single Spanish translation encompassed both meanings of the ambiguous word (joint-translation condition; e.g., mercado in Spanish refers to both a flea market and the housing market), but for others, each sense corresponded to a different Spanish translation (split-translation condition; e.g., cita in Spanish refers to a dinner date, but fecha refers to an expiration date). The proportions of "yes" (related) responses revealed that, relative to monolingual English speakers, Spanish-English bilinguals consider joint-translation senses to be less related than split-translation senses. These findings exemplify semantic cross-language influences from a first to a second language and reveal the semantic structure of the bilingual lexicon.

The Involvement of Listening Effort in Explaining Bilingual Listening Under Adverse Listening Conditions.

The current review examines listening effort to uncover how it is implicated in bilingual performance under adverse listening conditions. Various measures of listening effort, including physiological, behavioral, and subjective measures, have been employed to examine listening effort in bilingual children and adults. Adverse listening conditions, stemming from environmental factors, as well as factors related to the speaker or listener, have been examined. The existing literature, although relatively limited to date, points to increased listening effort among bilinguals in their nondominant second language (L2) compared to their dominant first language (L1) and relative to monolinguals. Interestingly, increased effort is often observed even when speech intelligibility remains unaffected. These findings emphasize the importance of considering listening effort alongside speech intelligibility. Building upon the insights gained from the current review, we propose that various factors may modulate the observed effects. These include the particular measure selected to examine listening effort, the characteristics of the adverse condition, as well as factors related to the particular linguistic background of the bilingual speaker. Critically, further research is needed to better understand the impact of these factors on listening effort. The review outlines avenues for future research that would promote a comprehensive understanding of listening effort in bilingual individuals.

Talking While Signing: The Influence of Simultaneous Communication on the Spoken Language of Bimodal Bilinguals.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to examine how speech while sign (simultaneous communication [SimCom]) affects the spoken language of bimodal bilingual teachers and how individual differences in sign-language vocabulary knowledge, SimCom teaching experience, and the ability to perform speech under dual-task conditions explain the variability in SimCom performance. METHOD: Forty experienced teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students participated in a story narration task under different conditions. Speech rate, lexical richness, and syntactic complexity were measured and compared across speech-only versus SimCom conditions. Furthermore, participants' score on a sign-language vocabulary test, their self-reported SimCom teaching experience, and their performance in a dual-task condition were taken as predictors of SimCom narration performance. RESULTS: The findings revealed slower speech rate, lower lexical richness, and lower syntactic complexity in the SimCom condition compared with the speech-only condition. Sign-language vocabulary score and SimCom teaching experience explained speech rate and lexical richness. Participant's ability to speak under a dual-task condition did not modulate performance. CONCLUSIONS: The findings may suggest that the production of the less dominant (sign) language during SimCom entails inhibition of the dominant (spoken) language relative to the speech-only condition. At the same time, the findings are also compatible with the suggestion that SimCom serves as a unique complex communication unit that cannot be reduced to the combination of two languages.

Influences of bilingualism and developmental language disorder on how children learn and process words.

Previous studies found that bilingual children and adults with typical language development (TLD) perform better than monolinguals in novel word learning, but show lower scores on lexical retrieval tasks (e.g., naming known words). Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) lack in their abilities in both tasks compared with children with TLD. The current study tested the interplay between bilingualism and language disorder during novel word learning and lexical retrieval. Preschoolers (N = 101; 50 boys and 51 girls; mothers' mean years of education = 16.35) in four groups (Hebrew monolinguals or Russian-Hebrew bilinguals with DLD or TLD) learned 12 novel real words (6 with a familiar referent and 6 with a novel referent) and performed a lexical retrieval task. Children exhibited significant learning with no effect of bilingualism, but a negative effect of language disorder. Thus, children with DLD performed worse than children with TLD, and this ability was not affected by bilingualism. In lexical retrieval, DLD groups scored lower than TLD groups, and critically also bilinguals scored lower than monolinguals. This differential effect of bilingualism in the two tasks suggests that bilingualism does not impede language learning mechanisms even among children with DLD. Instead, the findings suggest that lower performance in the lexical retrieval task is due to decreased frequency of exposure. By exploring both word learning and lexical retrieval, the study highlights the differential mechanisms at play in the effects of bilingualism and language disorder on the developing lexicon. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Equal Opportunity Interference: Both L1 and L2 Influence L3 Morpho-Syntactic Processing.

We investigated cross-language influences from the first (L1) and second (L2) languages in third (L3) language processing, to examine how order of acquisition and proficiency modulate the degree of cross-language influences, and whether these cross-language influences manifest differently in online and offline measures of L3 processing. The study focused on morpho-syntactic processing of English as an L3 among Arabic-Hebrew-English university student trilinguals (n = 44). Importantly, both L1 (Arabic) and L2 (Hebrew) of participants are typologically distant from L3 (English), which allows overcoming confounds of previous research. Performance of trilinguals was compared to that of native English monolingual controls (n = 37). To investigate the source of cross-language influences, critical stimuli were ungrammatical sentences in English, which when translated could be grammatical in L1, in L2 or in both. Thus, the L3 morpho-syntactic structures included in the study were a mismatch with L1, a mismatch with L2, a Double mismatch, with both L1 and L2, or a no mismatch condition. Participants read the English sentences while their eye-movements were recorded (online measure), and they also performed grammaticality judgments following each sentence (offline measure). Across both measures, cross-language influences were assessed by comparing the performance of the trilinguals in each of the critical interference conditions to the no-interference condition, and by comparing their performance to that of the monolingual controls. L1 interference was evident in first pass sentence reading, and marginally in offline grammaticality judgment, and L2 interference was robust across second pass reading and grammaticality judgments. These results suggest that either L1 or the L2 can be the source of cross-language influences in L3 processing, but with different time-courses. The findings highlight the difference between online and offline measures of performance: processing language in real-time reflects mainly automatic activation of morpho-syntactic structures, whereas offline judgments might also involve strategic and meta-linguistic decision making. Together, the findings show that during L3 processing, trilinguals have access to all previously acquired linguistic knowledge, and that the multilingual language system is fully interactive.

Direct and indirect effects of multilingualism on novel language learning: An integrative review.

Accumulated recent research suggests that prior knowledge of multiple languages leads to advantages in learning additional languages. In the current article, we review studies examining potential differences between monolingual and multilingual speakers in novel language learning in an effort to uncover the cognitive mechanisms that underlie such differences. We examine the multilingual advantage in children and adults, across a wide array of languages and learner populations. The majority of this literature focused on vocabulary learning, but studies that address phonology, grammar, and literacy learning are also discussed to provide a comprehensive picture of the way in which multilingualism affects novel language learning. Our synthesis indicates two avenues to the multilingual advantage including direct transfer of prior knowledge and prior skills as well as indirect influences that result from multilingual background and include more general changes to the cognitive-linguistic system. Finally, we highlight topics that are in need of future systematic research.

Is susceptibility to cross-language interference domain specific?

The ability to overcome interference from the first-language (L1) is a source of variability in second language (L2) achievement, which has to date been explored mainly in same-script bilinguals. Such interference management, and bilingual language control more generally, have recently been linked to domain general executive functions (EF). In the current study, we examined L2 proficiency and executive functions as possible predictors of susceptibility to L1 interference during L2 processing, in bilinguals whose languages do not share an orthographic system. Seventy Arabic-Hebrew bilingual university students performed two tasks indexing cross-language interference (from L1 to L2). Lexical interference was assessed using a cross-modal semantic similarity judgment task in Hebrew, with false-cognates as critical items. Syntactic interference was assessed using a self-paced reading paradigm and grammaticality judgments on Hebrew sentences whose syntactic structures differed from those of Arabic. EFs were examined using spatial and numerical Stroop tasks, to index inhibitory control, and a task switching paradigm, to index shifting abilities. We found significant L1 interference across the lexical and syntactic domains, even in proficient different-script bilinguals. However, these interference effects were not correlated, and neither type of interference was related to domain general EF abilities. Finally, offline susceptibility to syntactic interference, but not lexical interference, was reduced with greater L2 proficiency. These results suggest at least partially independent mechanisms for managing interference in the two language domains, and raise questions regarding the degree to which domain general control abilities are recruited for managing L1 interference.

Determinants of translation ambiguity: A within and cross-language comparison.

Ambiguity in translation is highly prevalent, and has consequences for second-language learning and for bilingual lexical processing. To better understand this phenomenon, the current study compared the determinants of translation ambiguity across four sets of translation norms from English to Spanish, Dutch, German and Hebrew. The number of translations an English word received was correlated across these different languages, and was also correlated with the number of senses the word has in English, demonstrating that translation ambiguity is partially determined by within-language semantic ambiguity. For semantically-ambiguous English words, the probability of the different translations in Spanish and Hebrew was predicted by the meaning-dominance structure in English, beyond the influence of other lexical and semantic factors, for bilinguals translating from their L1, and translating from their L2. These findings are consistent with models postulating direct access to meaning from L2 words for moderately-proficient bilinguals.

Tip-of-the-tongue in a second language: the effects of brief first-language exposure and long-term use.

Bilinguals have more tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) incidents than monolinguals. Whereas previous research has focused on differences in the long term language experience between these groups, the present study examined the hypothesis that both long-term and transient context factors modulate TOT rates. Russian-Hebrew bilinguals who acquired Hebrew either early (<5years) or late (>11years) were compared to native Hebrew speakers on a picture naming task in Hebrew, before and after viewing a short movie in Russian. Both the short-term context (before-after the movie) and long-term language experience modulated TOT rates: Late bilinguals exhibited significantly higher TOT rates than early bilinguals who did not significantly differ from native Hebrew speakers. Critically, following the Russian movie, bilinguals in both groups differed from the native speakers of the target language. Thus, exposure to the non-target language exerted a global, non-item-specific, cross-language interference effect. The findings highlight the dynamic nature of the bilingual system in which both short and long-term language experience operate to influence bilingual performance.

Semantic ambiguity within and across languages: an integrative review.

Semantic ambiguity often occurs within a language (e.g., the word "organ" in English means both a body part and a musical instrument), but it can also cross a language boundary, such that a given word form is shared in two languages, but its meanings are different (e.g., the word "angel" means "sting" in Dutch). Bilingual individuals are therefore faced not only with ambiguity in each of their languages, but also with ambiguity across languages. The current review focuses on studies that explored such cross-language ambiguity and examines how the results from these studies can be integrated with what we have learned about within-language ambiguity resolution. In particular, this review examines how interactions of frequency and context manifest themselves in ambiguity that crosses a language boundary and call for the inclusion of language context as a contributing factor. An extension of the monolingual reordered access model (Duffy, Morris, & Rayner, 1988) is outlined to discuss the interactions between these factors. Furthermore, the effects of the similarity between the two meanings, task differences, and individual differences are explored. This review highlights the need for studies that test within- and cross-language ambiguity in the same individuals before strong conclusions can be made about the nature of interactions between frequency, semantic context, and language context.