Using lexical semantic cues to mitigate interference effects during real-time sentence processing in aphasia.

We examined the auditory sentence processing of neurologically unimpaired listeners and individuals with aphasia on canonical sentence structures in real-time using a visual-world eye-tracking paradigm. The canonical sentence constructions contained multiple noun phrases and an unaccusative verb, the latter of which formed a long-distance dependency link between the unaccusative verb and its single argument (which was base generated in the object position and then displaced to the subject position). To explore the likelihood of similarity-based interference during the real time linking of the verb and the sentence's subject noun, we manipulated the animacy feature of the noun phrases (matched or mismatched). The study's objectives were to examine whether (a) reducing the similarity-based interference by mismatching animacy features would modulate the encoding and retrieval dynamics of noun phrases in real-time; and (b) whether individuals with aphasia would demonstrate on time sensitivity to this lexical-semantic cue. Results revealed a significant effect of this manipulation in individuals both with and without aphasia. In other words, the mismatch in the representational features of the noun phrases increased the distinctiveness of the unaccusative verb's subject target at the time of syntactic retrieval (verb offset) for individuals in both groups. Moreover, individuals with aphasia were shown to be sensitive to the lexical-semantic cue, even though they appeared to process it slower than unimpaired listeners. This study extends to the cue-based retrieval model by providing new insight on the real-time mechanisms underpinning sentence comprehension.

Individual and Sociolinguistic Differences in Language Background Predict Stroop Performance.

To examine how differences in language experience and sociolinguistic context impact cognitive control, 146 Spanish-English bilingual participants were tested on a non-linguistic Stroop arrows task. Dimensions of language experience included a continuum of L2 proficiency, exposure, age of L2 acquisition, and English receptive vocabulary, along with cognitive non-verbal reasoning. Sociolinguistic context varied with more exposure to Spanish for participants in Southern California (SoCal) than in the Midwest. The task involved perceptual stimulus-stimulus conflict within stimulus features (e.g., right-pointing arrow on the left side of a display). Reaction times to trials where arrow location and direction matched (congruent), mismatched (incongruent), or arrow location was centered (neutral) were used to calculate Stroop (incongruent-congruent), facilitation (neutral-congruent), and inhibition (incongruent-neutral) effects. When examining performance on a continuum of bilingual language experience, individual differences in linguistic background (i.e., L2 proficiency and exposure, receptive vocabulary) and cognitive abilities (i.e., non-verbal reasoning abilities) predicted more efficient performance on the Stroop task. Across sociolinguistic contexts, findings revealed better performance via smaller Stroop and facilitation effects in the Midwest than in SoCal, and no group difference on the inhibition effect. We conclude that research on the cognitive consequences of bilingualism must consider a continuum of language experiences and must be situated in broader naturalistic contexts that take into account the sociolinguistic environments of language use.

Language dominance predicts cognate effects and metalinguistic awareness in preschool bilinguals.

The current work investigates whether language dominance predicts transfer of skills across cognitive-linguistic levels from the native language (Spanish) to the second language (English) in bilingual preschoolers. Sensitivity to cognates (elephant/elefante in English/Spanish) and metalinguistic awareness (MLA) have both been shown to transfer from the dominant to the nondominant language. Examining these types of transfer together using a continuous measure of language dominance may allow us to better understand the effect of the home language in children learning a majority language in preschool. Forty-six preschool-aged, Spanish-English bilinguals completed English receptive vocabulary and metalinguistic tasks indexing cognate effects and MLA. Language dominance was found to predict crosslinguistic (cognate) facilitation from Spanish to English. In addition, MLA skills also transferred from Spanish to English for children with lower English proficiency, and no transfer of MLA was evident for children with higher English proficiency. Altogether, findings suggest that transfer from a dominant first language to a nondominant second language happens at linguistic and cognitive-linguistic levels in preschoolers, although possibly influenced by second language proficiency. The current study has implications for supporting the home language for holistic cognitive-linguistic development.

Native Language and Second Language Convergence and Second Language Instruction Shape Speech-Language Performance in Adult Learners.

PURPOSE: We examined native language (L1) and second language (L2) convergence of underlying skills in adult L2 learners as well as the contribution of instructional L2 level on L2 attainment across speech motor, lexical, and narrative levels. METHOD: Thirty-four adult Spanish L2 learners who had completed at least 1 year of college Spanish participated in this preliminary study. Learners were tested at the speech motor, lexical, and narrative levels in their L1 (English) and L2 (Spanish). L1-L2 convergence was indexed by associative links between corresponding L1 and L2 skills. In regression analyses, the level of Spanish instruction at the time of the study was also considered as a predictor of L2 attainment across speech motor, lexical, and narrative levels. RESULTS: L1-L2 convergence was identified for some speech motor skills (distance, maximum speed) and for lexical skills but was limited for other speech motor skills (duration, spatiotemporal index) and for narrative measures. Furthermore, lexical and narrative measures, but not speech motor measures, showed improvements with Spanish (L2) instruction. CONCLUSIONS: L1-L2 convergence and instructional level are predictors of L2 performance in adult language learners. These factors play somewhat different roles across speech motor, lexical, and narrative levels, warranting further "all-system" research across processing and proficiency levels.

First-language influence on second language speech perception depends on task demands.

While listening to non-native speech, second language users filter the auditory input through their native language. We examined how bilinguals perceived second language (L2 English) sound sequences that conflicted with native-language (L1 Spanish) constraints across three experiments with different task demands. We used the L1 Spanish phonotactic constraint (i.e., rule for combining speech sounds) that vowels must precede s+consonant clusters (e.g., Spanish: estricto, "strict"). This L1 Spanish constraint may influence Spanish-English bilinguals' processing of L2 English words such as strict because of a missing initial vowel, as in estrict. We found that the extent to which bilinguals were influenced by the L1 during L2 processing depended on task demands. When metalinguistic awareness demands were low, as in the AX word discrimination task (Experiment 1), cross-linguistic effects were not observed. When metalinguistic awareness demands were high, as in the vowel detection (Experiment 2) and lexical decision (Experiment 3) tasks, response times demonstrated that bilinguals were influenced by the L1 constraint when processing L2 words beginning with an s+consonant. We conclude that bilinguals are cross-linguistically influenced by L1 phonotactic constraints during L2 processing when metalinguistic demands are higher, suggesting that L2 input may be mapped onto L1 sub-lexical representations during perception. These results extend previous research on language co-activation and speech perception by providing a more fine-grained understanding of task demands and elucidating when and where cross-linguistic phonotactic access is present during bilingual comprehension.

Investigating the Link Between Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Cognitive Control in Bilinguals Using Laplacian-Transformed Event Related Potentials.

Bilinguals' need to suppress the activation of their other language while speaking has been proposed to result in enhanced cognitive control abilities outside of language. Several studies therefore suggest shared cognitive control processes across linguistic and non-linguistic tasks. Here we investigate this potential overlap using scalp electroencephalographic recordings and the Laplacian transformation, providing an estimation of the current source density and enabling the separation of EEG components in space. Fourteen Spanish-English bilinguals performed a picture-word matching task contrasting incongruent trials using cross-linguistic false cognates (e.g., a picture - foot, overlaid with distractor text: the English word PIE, i.e., the false cognate for the Spanish pie meaning "foot") with congruent trials (matching English picture names and words, i.e., a picture - foot, with overlaid text: the English word FOOT), and an unrelated control condition. In addition, participants performed an arrow-version of the Eriksen flanker task. Worse behavioral performance was observed in incongruent compared to congruent trials in both tasks. In the non-linguistic task, we replicated the previously observed congruency effect on a medial-frontal event-related potential (ERP) peaking around 50 ms before electromyography (EMG) onset. A similar ERP was present in the linguistic task, was sensitive to congruency, and peaked earlier, around 150 ms before EMG onset. In addition, another component was found in the linguistic task at a left lateralized anterior frontal site peaking around 200 ms before EMG onset, but was absent in the non-linguistic task. Our results suggest a partial overlap between linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive control processes and that linguistic conflict resolution may engage additional left anterior frontal control processes.

Auditory Sentence Processing in Bilinguals: The Role of Cognitive Control.

A number of research studies have shown that the unique need in bilinguals to manage both of their languages positively impacts their cognitive control processes. Yet, due to a dearth of studies at the sentence level, it is still unclear if this benefit extends to sentence processing. In monolinguals and bilinguals, cognitive control helps in reinterpretation of garden path sentences but it is still unknown how it supports the real-time resolution of interference during parsing, such as the type of interference seen in the processing of object relative (OR) sentences. In this study, we compared monolinguals and bilinguals during online spoken OR sentence processing and examined if both groups used cognitive control to resolve interference. In this eye-tracking visual world (ETL-vw) study, OR sentences were aurally presented to 19 monolingual and 21 Spanish-English bilingual adults while gaze patterns were captured throughout the time course of the sentence. Of particular interest was the post-verb position, where the listener connects the verb to its direct object. In OR constructions (e.g., "The man that the boy pushes__ has a red shirt."), the verb ('pushes') links to its syntactically licensed direct object ('the man') at verb offset. During syntactic linking, the parser crosses over an intervening noun phrase (NP, 'the boy') and the two NP activations create interference. The nature of this paradigm allows us to measure interference and its resolution between the intervening NP and the displaced object in real-time. By relating sentence processing patterns with cognitive control measures, high- and no- conflict N-Back tasks, we investigated group differences in the use of cognitive control during sentence processing. Overall, bilinguals showed less interference than monolinguals from the intervening NP during the real time processing of OR sentences. This interference effect and its resolution was significantly predicted by cognitive control skills for bilingual, but not monolingual listeners. This enhanced effect in bilinguals extends previous findings of interference resolution to real time spoken sentence processing suggesting that bilinguals are more efficient than monolinguals at managing interference during complex sentence processing.

The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Ten years later.

The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q) is a validated questionnaire tool for collecting self-reported proficiency and experience data from bilingual and multilingual speakers ages 14 to 80. It is available in over 20 languages, and can be administered in a digital, paper-and-pencil, and oral interview format. The LEAP-Q is used by researchers across various disciplines (Psychology, Neuroscience, Linguistics, Education, Communication Sciences & Disorders, etc.) to provide a comprehensive description of their bilingual participants, to substantiate a division of bilinguals into groups (e.g., early vs. late bilinguals), and to screen participants for adequate or threshold levels of language proficiency. Best practices for using the LEAP-Q include administration of the full questionnaire, consideration of acquisition and history of language use together with self-ratings of proficiency, and supplementation of self-reported data with objective language measures whenever possible. The LEAP-Q can be downloaded at no cost at https://bilingualism.northwestern.edu/leapq/.

Cross-linguistic phonotactic competition and cognitive control in bilinguals.

The current study examines the relation between cognitive control and linguistic competition resolution at the sublexical level in bilinguals. Twenty-one Spanish-English bilinguals and 23 English monolinguals completed a non-linguistic Stroop task (indexing inhibitory control) and a linguistic priming/lexical decision task (indexing Spanish phonotactic constraint competition during English comprehension). More efficient Stroop performance (i.e., a smaller Stroop effect) in bilinguals was associated with decreased competition from Spanish phonotactic constraints during English comprehension. This relation was observed when nonword targets overlapped in phonotactic constraints and phonological form with preceding cognate primes (e.g., prime: stable (Spanish: estable)/target: esteriors). Findings suggest a link between non-linguistic cognitive control and co-activation of linguistic structures at the sublexical level in bilinguals.

Phonotactic Constraints Are Activated across Languages in Bilinguals.

During spoken language comprehension, auditory input activates a bilingual's two languages in parallel based on phonological representations that are shared across languages. However, it is unclear whether bilinguals access phonotactic constraints from the non-target language during target language processing. For example, in Spanish, words with s+ consonant onsets cannot exist, and phonotactic constraints call for epenthesis (addition of a vowel, e.g., stable/estable). Native Spanish speakers may produce English words such as estudy ("study") with epenthesis, suggesting that these bilinguals apply Spanish phonotactic constraints when speaking English. The present study is the first to examine whether bilinguals access Spanish phonotactic constraints during English comprehension. In an English cross-modal priming lexical decision task, Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals heard English cognate and non-cognate primes containing s+ consonant onsets or controls without s+ onsets, followed by a lexical decision on visual targets with the /e/ phonotactic constraint or controls without /e/. Results revealed that bilinguals were faster to respond to /es/ non-word targets preceded by s+ cognate primes and /es/ and /e/ non-word targets preceded by s+ non-cognate primes, confirming that English primes containing s+ onsets activated Spanish phonotactic constraints. These findings are discussed within current accounts of parallel activation of two languages during bilingual spoken language comprehension, which may be expanded to include activation of phonotactic constraints from the irrelevant language.

The role of language proficiency, cognate status and word frequency in the assessment of Spanish-English bilinguals' verbal fluency.

PURPOSE: Assessment tools are needed to accurately index performance in bilingual populations. This study examines the verbal fluency task to further establish the relative sensitivities of letter and category fluency in assessing bilingual language skills in Spanish-English bilinguals. METHOD: English monolinguals and Spanish-English bilinguals had 1 minute to name words belonging to a category (e.g. animals) or starting with a letter (e.g. A). Number of words retrieved, proficiency, cognate and frequency effects were examined. RESULT: In their dominant language (English), bilinguals and monolinguals showed similar fluency patterns, generating more words in category than letter tasks. This category advantage disappeared for bilinguals tested in their non-dominant language (Spanish). Further, bilinguals retrieved a higher percentage of cognates (e.g. lagoon-laguna) than monolinguals across tasks and languages. In particular, as proficiency increased in their non-dominant language, bilinguals were more likely to produce cognates (including cognates with lower word frequencies). CONCLUSION: While bilinguals and monolinguals performed largely the same, bilinguals showed fine-grained differences from monolinguals in both their dominant and non-dominant languages. Based on these results, it is recommended that clinicians evaluate findings from bilinguals' verbal fluency tasks with attention to language proficiency, cognate words produced and relative to normative data that match their clients' language histories.

Auditory word recognition across the lifespan: Links between linguistic and nonlinguistic inhibitory control in bilinguals and monolinguals.

Recent research suggests that bilingual experience reconfigures linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive processes. We examined the relationship between linguistic competition resolution and nonlinguistic cognitive control in younger and older adults who were either bilingual or monolingual. Participants heard words in English and identified the referent among four pictures while eye-movements were recorded. Target pictures (e.g., cab) appeared with a phonological competitor picture (e.g., cat) and two filler pictures. After each eye-tracking trial, priming probes assessed residual activation and inhibition of target and competitor words. When accounting for processing speed, results revealed that age-related changes in activation and inhibition are smaller in bilinguals than in monolinguals. Moreover, younger and older bilinguals, but not monolinguals, recruited similar inhibition mechanisms during word identification and during a nonlinguistic Stroop task. Results suggest that, during lexical access, bilinguals show more consistent competition resolution and recruitment of cognitive control across the lifespan than monolinguals.

Cognate identification methods: Impacts on the cognate advantage in adult and child Spanish-English bilinguals.

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to determine whether four different cognate identification methods resulted in notably different classifications of cognate status for Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition (PPVT-III) test items and to investigate whether differences across criteria would impact findings of cognate effects in adult and preschool-aged Spanish-English bilingual speakers. METHODOLOGY: We compared four cognate identification methods: an objective criterion based on phonological overlap; two subjective criteria based on a translation elicitation task; and a hybrid criterion integrating objective and subjective standards. We then used each criterion to investigate cognate effects on the PPVT-III in 26 adult and 73 child Spanish-English bilinguals. DATA AND ANALYSIS: The test items identified as cognates by each criterion were compared (Experiment 1). Then, cognate advantage magnitudes, cognate accuracy rates, non-cognate accuracy rates, and number of individuals demonstrating the cognate advantage were investigated in both adult (Experiment 2) and child bilinguals (Experiment 3). CONCLUSIONS: Objective and subjective cognate identification methods were found to select notably different subsets of test items as cognates. Further, the methods led to differences in cognate effects, as well as in cognate and non-cognate accuracy rates, for both child and adult bilinguals. ORIGINALITY: Although the cognate advantage has been widely studied in adult bilinguals, research on the cognate advantage in child bilinguals is limited and methods of identifying cognates are inconsistent across studies. The present study provides information about cognate effects in a young population and is the first comparison of objective and subjective approaches to cognate identification. IMPLICATIONS: This study extends previous work on cognate word processing in both child and adult bilinguals. Further, results offer an evaluation of methodologies that are critical for investigating the cognate advantage. This both facilitates interpretation of previous findings and can be used to guide methodological decisions in future research.

Parallel language activation and inhibitory control in bimodal bilinguals.

Findings from recent studies suggest that spoken-language bilinguals engage nonlinguistic inhibitory control mechanisms to resolve cross-linguistic competition during auditory word recognition. Bilingual advantages in inhibitory control might stem from the need to resolve perceptual competition between similar-sounding words both within and between their two languages. If so, these advantages should be lessened or eliminated when there is no perceptual competition between two languages. The present study investigated the extent of inhibitory control recruitment during bilingual language comprehension by examining associations between language co-activation and nonlinguistic inhibitory control abilities in bimodal bilinguals, whose two languages do not perceptually compete. Cross-linguistic distractor activation was identified in the visual world paradigm, and correlated significantly with performance on a nonlinguistic spatial Stroop task within a group of 27 hearing ASL-English bilinguals. Smaller Stroop effects (indexing more efficient inhibition) were associated with reduced co-activation of ASL signs during the early stages of auditory word recognition. These results suggest that inhibitory control in auditory word recognition is not limited to resolving perceptual linguistic competition in phonological input, but is also used to moderate competition that originates at the lexico-semantic level.

Proficiency and Linguistic Complexity Influence Speech Motor Control and Performance in Spanish Language Learners.

PURPOSE: Second-language (L2) production requires greater cognitive resources to inhibit the native language and to retrieve less robust lexical representations. The current investigation identifies how proficiency and linguistic complexity, specifically syntactic and lexical factors, influence speech motor control and performance. METHOD: Speech movements of 29 native English speakers with low or high proficiency in Spanish were recorded while producing simple and syntactically complex sentences in English and Spanish. Sentences were loaded with cognate (e.g., baby-bebé) or noncognate (e.g., dog-perro) words. Effects of proficiency, lexicality (cognate vs. noncognate), and syntactic complexity on maximum speed, range of movement, duration, and speech movement variability were examined. RESULTS: In general, speakers with lower L2 proficiency differed in their speech motor control and performance from speakers with higher L2 proficiency. Speakers with higher L2 proficiency generally had less speech movement variability, shorter phrase durations, greater maximum speeds, and greater ranges of movement. In addition, lexicality and syntactic complexity affected speech motor control and performance. CONCLUSIONS: L2 proficiency, lexicality, and syntactic complexity influence speech motor control and performance in adult L2 learners. Information about relationships between speech motor control, language proficiency, and cognitive-linguistic demands may be used to assess and treat bilingual clients and language learners.

Learning and processing of nonverbal symbolic information in bilinguals and monolinguals.

Bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals on word learning and on inhibition tasks that require competition resolution. Yet the scope of such bilingual advantages remains underspecified. We compared bilinguals and monolinguals on nonverbal symbolic learning and on competition resolution while processing newly-learned material. Participants were trained on 12 tone-to-symbol mappings, combining timbre, pitch, and duration of tones. During subsequent processing, participants viewed a display with four symbols, and were instructed to identify the symbol that matched a simultaneously-presented tone. On competition trials, two symbols matched the tone in timbre and pitch, but only one matched the tone on timbre, pitch, and duration. No learning differences emerged between 27 Spanish-English bilinguals and 27 English monolinguals, and more successful learners performed better on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary task. During the processing task, competition trials yielded responses with lower accuracies and longer latencies than control trials. Further, in both groups, more successful learning of tone-to-symbol mappings was associated with more successful retrieval during processing. In monolinguals, English receptive vocabulary scores also influenced retrieval efficiency during processing, with English/Spanish vocabulary less related to the novel processing task in bilinguals. Finally, to examine inhibition of competing stimuli, priming probes were presented after each tone-symbol processing trial. These probes suggested that bilinguals, and to a lesser extent monolinguals, showed residual inhibition of competitors at 200 ms post-target identification. Together, findings suggest that learning of novel symbolic information may depend in part on previous linguistic knowledge (not bilingualism per se), and that, during processing of newly-learned material, subtle differences in retrieval and competition resolution may emerge between bilinguals and monolinguals.

Cognitive control in bilinguals: Advantages in Stimulus-Stimulus inhibition.

Bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals at suppressing task-irrelevant information and on overall speed during cognitive control tasks. Here, monolinguals' and bilinguals' performance was compared on two nonlinguistic tasks: a Stroop task (with perceptual Stimulus-Stimulus conflict among stimulus features) and a Simon task (with Stimulus-Response conflict). Across two experiments testing bilinguals with different language profiles, bilinguals showed more efficient Stroop than Simon performance, relative to monolinguals, who showed fewer differences across the two tasks. Findings suggest that bilingualism may engage Stroop-type cognitive control mechanisms more than Simon-type mechanisms, likely due to increased Stimulus-Stimulus conflict during bilingual language processing. Findings are discussed in light of previous research on bilingual Stroop and Simon performance.

Parallel language activation and cognitive control during spoken word recognition in bilinguals.

Accounts of bilingual cognitive advantages suggest an associative link between cross-linguistic competition and inhibitory control. We investigate this link by examining English-Spanish bilinguals' parallel language activation during auditory word recognition and nonlinguistic Stroop performance. Thirty-one English-Spanish bilinguals and 30 English monolinguals participated in an eye-tracking study. Participants heard words in English (e.g., comb) and identified corresponding pictures from a display that included pictures of a Spanish competitor (e.g., conejo, English rabbit). Bilinguals with higher Spanish proficiency showed more parallel language activation and smaller Stroop effects than bilinguals with lower Spanish proficiency. Across all bilinguals, stronger parallel language activation between 300-500ms after word onset was associated with smaller Stroop effects; between 633-767ms, reduced parallel language activation was associated with smaller Stroop effects. Results suggest that bilinguals who perform well on the Stroop task show increased cross-linguistic competitor activation during early stages of word recognition and decreased competitor activation during later stages of word recognition. Findings support the hypothesis that cross-linguistic competition impacts domain-general inhibition.

Multilingual Stroop performance: Effects of trilingualism and proficiency on inhibitory control.

Previous research suggests that multilinguals' languages are constantly co-activated and that experience managing this co-activation changes inhibitory control function. The present study examined language interaction and inhibitory control using a colour-word Stroop task. Multilingual participants were tested in their three most proficient languages. The classic Stroop effect was detected in all three languages, with participants performing more accurately on congruent than on incongruent trials. Multilinguals were faster and more accurate in the within-language-competition condition than in the between-language-competition condition, indicating that additional processing costs are required when stimulus and response languages differ. Language proficiency influenced speed, accuracy and error patterns in multilingual Stroop task performance. These findings augment our understanding of language processing and inhibitory control in multilingual populations and suggest that experience using multiple languages changes demands on cognitive function.