Automaticity and cognitive control in bilingual and translation expertise.

It has been observed that different linguistic experiences might exert a differential effect on general cognitive processes. For example, research has shown that language control in professional translation differs from language control applied to other types of bilingual activities. The present study focuses on the construct of automaticity and aims at determining whether different linguistic experiences might modulate the balance between automaticity and cognitive control at the general cognitive level. Hence, monolinguals, bilinguals, and professional translators performed a memory search task that has extensively been employed to observe how automaticity is acquired through consistent practice. Comparisons between the groups showed overall differences in the ease with which the task was performed and, importantly, differences in both automaticity and cognitive control. Specifically, monolinguals showed higher levels of automaticity in the learning phase of the task, while bilinguals and professional translations carried out the task in a more controlled fashion. This pattern might have implied higher cognitive costs for the monolingual group when a switched learning condition was presented. Possibly due to previous control over the initial learning phase, bilinguals and translators were less affected by the cognitive costs associated to the reversal of the learning condition. Differences are explained in terms of professional translation and everyday bilingual practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Motor processing modulates word comprehension.

We evaluated whether movement modulates the semantic processing of words. To this end, we used homograph words with two meanings, one associated with hand movements (e.g., 'abanico', 'fan' in Spanish) or foot movements ('bota', 'boot' in Spanish), and the other not associated with movement ('abanico', 'range' in Spanish; 'bota', 'wineskin' in Spanish). After the homograph, three words were presented, and participants were asked to choose the word related to one of the two homograph meanings. The words could be either related to the motor meaning of the homograph ('fan-heat'), to the non-motor meaning of the homograph ('range-possibility') or unrelated ('fan-phone'). The task was performed without movement (simple condition) or by performing hand (Experiment 1) and foot (Experiment 2) movements. Compared with the simple condition, the performance of movement oriented the preference towards the motor meaning of the homograph. This pattern of results confirms that movement modulates word comprehension.

Competition and working memory in sentence reading: Evidence from Spanish.

We evaluated the validity, preference, and competition of 2 syntactic cues in Spanish (subject-verb agreement and animacy) and the role of working memory (WM) during cue competition in sentence reading. Spanish participants read noun-verb-noun sentences and performed an agent assignment task. Experiment 1 revealed that readers preferred as agent of the sentence (a) the noun that agreed with the verb and (b) the animate noun over the inanimate noun. The subject-verb agreement cue was preferred over animacy. Cue competition arose in reading: Longer reading times were observed for sentences in which subject-verb agreement and animacy guided toward different interpretations. Experiment 2 revealed that the use of syntactic cues depended on WM. High-WM-span readers made use of lexical-semantic information (animacy) and did not show the interference associated with cue competition. Low WM span readers preferred the favourite cue in Spanish (subject-verb agreement) and showed interference when cues competed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).