Research has shown that speakers of different languages may differ in their cognitive and perceptual processing of reality. A common denominator of this line of investigation has been its reliance on the sensory domain of vision. The aim of our study was to extend the scope to a new sense—taste. Using as a starting point crosslinguistic differences in the category boundaries of edible bulbs, we examined whether monolingual speakers of English and bilingual speakers of Norwegian and English were influenced by language-specific categories during tasting. The results showed no evidence of such effects, not even for the Norwegian participants in an entirely Norwegian context. This suggests that crosslinguistic differences in visual perception do not readily generalize to the domain of taste. We discuss the findings in terms of predictive processing, with particular reference to trigeminal stimulation (a central tasting component) and the interplay between chemosensory signals and top-down linguistic modulation.

Aims: The study investigates the effects of L2 proficiency and L2 exposure on L2-to-L1 cross-language activation (CLA) in L1-dominant bilinguals. In so doing, it tests the predictions made by prominent models of the bilingual lexicon regarding how language experience modulates CLA. Design: The participants (27 L1-dominant L1 English-L2 Afrikaans speakers) completed a visual world eye-tracking task, conducted entirely in English, in which they saw four objects on a screen: a target object, which they were instructed to click on; a competitor object, whose Afrikaans label overlapped phonetically at onset with the English target object label; and two unrelated distractors. Language background data were collected using the Language History Questionnaire 3.0. Analysis: A growth curve analysis was performed to investigate the extent to which the background variables modulated looks to the Afrikaans competitor item versus to the two unrelated distractor items. Findings: Increased L2 exposure was associated with greater CLA, which is consistent with models suggesting that exposure modulates the likelihood and speed with which a linguistic item becomes activated. Moreover, CLA was reduced at higher levels of L2 proficiency, which aligns with accounts of the bilingual lexicon positing that parasitism of the L2 on the L1 is reduced at higher proficiency levels, leading to reduced CLA. Originality: L2 activation during L1 processing and the variables that modulate it are not well documented, particularly among L1 speakers with limited proficiency in and exposure to the L2. Significance: The findings contribute to the evaluation of competing accounts of bilingual lexical organization.

The present study assesses linguistic and geographic diversity in selected outlets of SLA and multilingualism research. Specifically, we examine over 2,000 articles published in specialized top-tier journals, recording the languages under study and their acquisition order, author affiliations, the country in which the research was conducted, and citations. In the sample, there were 183 unique languages and 174 unique pairings, corresponding to 3 per cent of the world’s 7,000 languages and less than 0.001 per cent of 24.5 million possible language combinations. English was overwhelmingly the most common language, followed by Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. North America and Western Europe were both the main producers of knowledge and the main sites for research on multilingualism in the sample. Crucially, the regions with the highest levels of linguistic diversity and societal multilingualism (typically the Global South) were only marginally represented. The findings also show that studies on English and northern Anglophone settings were likely to elicit more citations than studies on other languages and settings, and that less studied languages were included more frequently in article titles.

This paper explores the link between the metaphoric structure TIME IS SPACE and time perception in bilinguals. While there appear to be fundamental commonalities in the way humans perceive and experience time regardless of language background, language-specific spatiotemporal metaphors can give rise to differences between populations, under certain conditions. Little is known, however, about how bilinguals experience time, and the specific factors that may modulate bilingual temporal processing. Here, we address this gap by examining L1 Spanish – L2 Swedish bilinguals in a psychophysical task. Results show that duration estimation of dynamic spatial configurations analogous to L2-specific temporal metaphors is modulated by L2 proficiency. In contrast, duration estimation of spatial configurations analogous to the L1 metaphorical expressions appears to be modulated by the age of L2 acquisition. These findings are discussed in terms of associative learning and cognitive restructuring in the bilingual mind.

A series of recent studies have shown that the once-assumed cognitive advantage of bilingualism finds little support in the evidence available to date. Surprisingly, however, the view that bilingualism incurs linguistic costs (the so-called lexical deficit) has not yet been subjected to the same degree of scrutiny, despite its centrality for our understanding of the human capacity for language. The current study implemented a comprehensive meta-analysis to address this gap. By analyzing 478 effect sizes from 130 studies on expressive vocabulary, we found that observed lexical deficits could not be attributed to bilingualism: Simultaneous bilinguals (who acquired both languages from birth) did not exhibit any lexical deficit, nor did sequential bilinguals (who acquired one language from birth and a second language after that) when tested in their mother tongue. Instead, systematic evidence for a lexical deficit was found among sequential bilinguals when tested in their second language, and more so for late than for early second language learners. This result suggests that a lexical deficit may be a phenomenon of second language acquisition rather than bilingualism per se.

In early childhood, the human brain goes through a period of tuning to native speech sounds but retains remarkable flexibility, allowing the learning of new languages throughout life. However, little is known about the stability over time of early neural specialization for speech and its influence on the formation of novel language representations. Here, we provide evidence that early international adoptees, who lose contact with their native language environment after adoption, retain enhanced sensitivity to a native lexical tone contrast more than 15 years after being adopted to Sweden from China, in the absence of any pretest familiarization with the stimuli. Changes in oscillatory brain activity showed how adoptees resort to inhibiting the processing of defunct phonological representations, rather than forgetting or replacing them with new ones. Furthermore, neurophysiological responses to native and nonnative contrasts were not negatively correlated, suggesting that native language retention does not interfere with the acquisition of adoptive phonology acquisition. These results suggest that early language experience provides strikingly resilient specialization for speech which is compensated for through inhibitory control mechanisms as learning conditions change later in life.

In most event-related potential (ERP) studies on the second language (L2) processing, the native speaker (L1) control group’s grand average ERP pattern serves as the ‘gold standard’ that the L2 group has to reach to be labeled ‘native-like’. This relies on the assumption that the grand average is representative of all or most individuals in a group. Recent research, however, has shown that there can be considerable systematic qualitative variability between individuals even in coherent L1 samples, especially in studies on morphosyntactic processing. We discuss how these qualitative individual differences can undermine previous findings from the gold standard paradigm, and critically assess the main ERP components used as markers for nativelike grammatical processing, namely the left-anterior negativity and the P600. We argue that qualitative variation reflects the dynamics characteristic of nativelike grammatical processing and propose a model for experimental designs that can capture these processing dynamics and, thereby, has the potential to provide a more fine-grained understanding of nativelike attainment in an L2.

Increasing evidence implicates the sensorimotor systems with high-level cognition, but the extent to which these systems play a functional role remains debated. Using an elegant design, Shebani and Pulvermüller (2013) reported that carrying out a demanding rhythmic task with the hands led to selective impairment of working memory for hand-related words (e.g., clap), while carrying out the same task with the feet led to selective memory impairment for foot-related words (e.g., kick). Such a striking double dissociation is acknowledged even by critics to constitute strong evidence for an embodied account of working memory. Here, we report on an attempt at a direct replication of this important finding. We followed a sequential sampling design and stopped data collection at N = 77 (more than five times the original sample size), at which point the evidence for the lack of the critical selective interference effect was very strong (BF₀₁ = 91). This finding constitutes strong evidence against a functional contribution of the motor system to keeping action verbs in working memory. Our finding fits into the larger emerging picture in the field of embodied cognition that sensorimotor simulations are neither required nor automatic in high-level cognitive processes, but that they may play a role depending on the task. Importantly, we invite researchers to engage in transparent, high-powered, and fully pre-registered experiments like the present one to ensure the field advances on a solid basis.

In sentence comprehension, the parser in many languages has the option to use both the morphological form of a noun and its lexical representation when evaluating agreement. The additional step of consulting the lexicon incurs processing costs, and an important question is whether the parser takes that step even when the formal cues alone are sufficiently reliable to evaluate agreement. Our study addressed this question using electrophysiology in Zulu, a language where both grammatical gender and number features are reliably expressed formally by noun class prefixes, but only gender features are lexically specified. We observed reduced, more topographically focal LAN, and more frontally distributed alpha/beta power effects for gender compared to number agreement violations. These differences provide evidence that for gender mismatches, even though the formal cues are reliable, the parser nevertheless takes the additional step of consulting the noun's lexical representation, a step which is not available for number.

It has recently been suggested that bilingualism, rather than age of acquisition, is what underlies less than nativelike attainment in childhood L2 acquisition. Currently, however, the empirical evidence in favor of or against this interpretation remains scarce. The present study sets out to fill this gap, implementing a novel factorial design in which the variables age of acquisition and bilingualism have been fully crossed. Eighty speakers of Swedish, who were either L1 monolinguals, L1 simultaneous bilinguals, L2 sequential monolinguals (international adoptees), or L2 sequential bilinguals (childhood immigrants), were tested on phonetic, grammatical, and lexical measures. The results indicate consistent effects of age of acquisition, but only limited effects of bilingualism, on ultimate attainment. These findings thus show that age of acquisition – not bilingualism – is the primary determinant of L2 ultimate attainment.