Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Evelina Leivada, Natalia Mitrofanova, Marit Westergaard
Summary: The impact of bilingualism on cognitive functions is a contentious topic in cognitive science. Research suggests that bilinguals often perform better in tasks requiring monitoring and inhibiting automatic responses, but also tend to be slower in judging stimuli, with ongoing debate about the robustness of this effect. The study proposes the Plurilingual Adaptive Trade-off Hypothesis (PATH) to explain the trade-off between decreased fallibility to illusions and other effects of bilinguals' cognitive abilities.
Article
Education & Educational Research
Yasmine Tachakourt, Outhmane Rassili
Summary: This study aimed to expand the research on statistical learning (SL) to multilinguals and investigate the factors that facilitate word segmentation. The researchers examined the influence of the number of cues available in the input and the number of languages spoken on SL and word segmentation. The results showed that all language groups had similar SL capacity when using syllable transitional probabilities (TPs) to segment words. However, when an additional cue was added, bilinguals, trilinguals, and quadrilinguals outperformed monolinguals. Interestingly, quadrilinguals performed better than bilinguals, and the performance was enhanced when the input provided two cues.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUALISM
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Isabelle Chou, Jiehui Hu, Edinson Munoz, Adolfo M. Garcia
Summary: Research on bilingualism shows that the age at which a second language is acquired can affect the ability to recall information from naturalistic discourse. Early bilinguals outperformed late bilinguals in recalling information from real-life news reports, regardless of factors like attention speed and speech rate.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Mona Roxana Botezatu, Carol A. Miller, Jaclyn Johnson, Maya Misra
Summary: The study examined behavioral and electrophysiological evidence to investigate whether bilinguals differ from monolinguals in response inhibition efficiency. While behavioral performance did not differ between the two groups, the electrophysiological data suggested that bilinguals may be more efficient in resolving response conflict.
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Cristina Lopez-Rojas, Eleonora Rossi, Alejandra Marful, Ma Teresa Bajo
Summary: This study investigated the influence of bilingual experiences on performance in prospective memory tasks. The results showed that early bilinguals differed from late bilinguals and monolinguals in their performance in non-focal tasks, suggesting that prospective processing is dependent on bilingual experience.
BRAIN AND LANGUAGE
(2022)
Article
Acoustics
Iyad Ghanim, Aida Perovic
Summary: Face masks hinder the efficiency of speech processing and language comprehension by blocking visual and acoustic cues. This study investigates how monolingual and bilingual listeners utilize semantic information to compensate for the loss of visual and acoustic information caused by face masks. The results show that both groups are affected by masking and the semantic association strength, suggesting that word-level semantic information has a limited role in processing speech under adverse listening conditions.
JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Erika Skoe, Adrian Garcia-Sierra, Nairan Ramirez-Esparza, Shu Jiang
Summary: This study investigated the modulatory effect of language familiarity on automatic sound encoding in the auditory brainstem. The results showed that both familiarity with the language environment and bilingual language experience may influence the quality of automatic sound encoding.
NEUROSCIENCE LETTERS
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Jingwen Ma, Xiaoxuan Fan, Ning Pan, Xiaoyu Xu, Yuying Jin, Xuning Guo, Jin Jing, Xiuhong Li
Summary: The study found that Cantonese-Mandarin bilinguals and Mandarin monolinguals have similar efficient topological structure in processing auditory phonological tasks, but exhibit differences in functional connectivity. Bilinguals employ different functional brain networks for auditory phonological processing in the two languages within bilingualism.
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Cristobal Lozano, Teresa Quesada
Summary: This study investigates the acquisition of anaphora resolution in Spanish as a second language. Through analyzing written samples from a corpus, it uncovers key factors in anaphora resolution acquisition, including the division of labor of anaphoric forms, their antecedents, and the syntactic configuration in which they appear. The study also reveals that overt pronouns are rarely used and are replaced by repeated NPs, showing a clear bias toward non-subject antecedents. Furthermore, it finds that information structure has a more complex influence on anaphora resolution, with null pronouns marking topic continuity and overtly realized referential expressions indicating topic shift. Learners face more difficulties with topic continuity, while topic shift is less problematic.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Linguistics
Chunyan Kang, Shuhua Li, Fengyang Ma, Taomei Guo
Summary: This study investigates the impact of language switching training on language control in bilingual language production. Late unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals received an eight-day language switching training, during which they named pictures based on a visual cue. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded before and after training, while participants performed a similar language switching task with a cue preceding a picture for 800 ms. The results showed that after training, the N2 switch effect disappeared and the overall N2 amplitude increased. This suggests that language switching training reduces inhibitory control dependency and enhances response selection with reduced interference.
JOURNAL OF NEUROLINGUISTICS
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Andrey Anikin, Nikolay Aseyev, Niklas Erben Johansson
Summary: The study found that people have a strong preference for familiar languages, there are cross-cultural differences in which languages are perceived as more beautiful, and there is a preference for breathy female voices.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2023)
Article
Gerontology
Alena Stasenko, Daniel Kleinman, Tamar H. Gollan
Summary: Young bilinguals show greater reversed language dominance effects when switching languages compared to older bilinguals, who exhibit nonsignificant language dominance effects. The dominance reversal in younger bilinguals transfers to, and is even larger in, the second set of pictures, suggesting that repetition may partially offset inhibitory effects.
PSYCHOLOGY AND AGING
(2021)
Article
Education & Educational Research
Ana Taboada Barber, Susan Lutz Klauda, Weimeng Wang
Summary: This study examined the differences in reading anxiety between emergent bilinguals and English monolinguals, showing that the former had slightly higher reading anxiety and lower reading achievement.
READING RESEARCH QUARTERLY
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Michelle K. Tulloch, Erika Hoff
Summary: This preregistered, longitudinal study examines early code-switching behavior in 34 US-born, Spanish-English bilingual children. The findings show that children code-switch most frequently at speaker changes, while within-turn and within-utterance code-switching is rare. At 3;6, switches to English are more frequent than switches to Spanish. The study suggests that children code-switch not only to fill gaps in their weaker language, but also to maximize their expressive power.
JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE
(2023)
Article
Education & Educational Research
Ana Taboada Barber, Kelly B. Cartwright, Gregory R. Hancock, Susan Lutz Klauda
Summary: The simple view of reading posits reading as a product of decoding and listening comprehension, yet complexities in reading comprehension during elementary school years suggest a more nuanced understanding is needed. Cognitive-linguistic factors and executive function skills are hypothesized to contribute significantly to reading comprehension, particularly in emergent bilinguals and English monolinguals. These findings challenge the simplicity of the traditional view and emphasize the importance of considering additional cognitive factors in understanding reading comprehension.
READING RESEARCH QUARTERLY
(2021)
Article
Linguistics
Antje Stoehr, Clara D. Martin
Summary: The study found that incongruencies between L1 and L2 grapheme-phoneme correspondences can influence bilingual speech perception but not speech production. In early bilinguals, orthography plays a crucial role in the speech system.
BILINGUALISM-LANGUAGE AND COGNITION
(2022)
Review
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Patricia Roman, Irene Gomez-Gomez
Summary: This study systematically reviews and analyzes the variations in native sentence comprehension and production between monolinguals and bilinguals. The findings suggest that bilingual experiences can cause small transformations in first language processing, with the degree of change depending on the length of residence in an L2 setting.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Linguistics
Patricia Roman, Edith Kaan, Paola E. Dussias
Summary: In sentence comprehension, both second language speakers and native English speakers utilize verb bias information to assign grammatical roles to post-verbal ambiguous noun phrases, with minor differences. The presence of an implausible noun phrase facilitates syntactic revision of an initially incorrect direct object interpretation.
BILINGUALISM-LANGUAGE AND COGNITION
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Lidon Marin-Marin, Victor Costumero, Cesar avila, Christos Pliatsikas
Summary: This study investigates the non-linear effects of bilingual experiences on regional grey matter volume in the brain. The results show a non-linear relationship between bilingualism score and inferior frontal gyrus volume, as well as linear increases in putamen and cerebellum volumes as a function of bilingualism score.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Education & Educational Research
Noelia Ventura-Campos, Lara Ferrando Esteve, Anna Miro-Padilla, Cesar Avila
Summary: This study investigates the brain anatomy differences between two groups, one group that commits reversal errors in problem-solving and a second group that does not. The results show that the group with reversal errors has a larger volume in the putamen, suggesting that these subjects have to exert more effort to solve problems.
MIND BRAIN AND EDUCATION
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Jesus Adrian-Ventura, Jaime Fabregat-Nabas, Victor Costumero, Cesar Avila
Summary: Reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) suggests that individual differences in defensive avoidance/approach behaviors stem from punishment sensitivity trait, reflecting distinct sensitivity and reactivity of the fight-flight-freeze and behavioral inhibition systems. This study explored the relationship between resting-state functional activity metrics and punishment sensitivity, revealing aberrant neural activity within the brain's defense system in individuals with high trait anxiety, potentially leading to pathological fear/anxiety behaviors arising from the fight-flight-freeze and behavioral inhibition systems.
BEHAVIOURAL BRAIN RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Maria-Angeles Palomar-Garcia, Esteban Villar-Rodriguez, Cristina Perez-Lozano, Ana Sanjuan, Elisenda Bueicheku, Anna Miro-Padilla, Victor C. Ostumero, Jesus Adrian-Ventura, Maria-Antonia Parcet, Cesar Avila
Summary: The present research used fMRI to investigate the impact of learning new vocabulary on the activation pattern of the language control network. The results showed that using familiar words and newly learned words in a picture naming task produced different activation patterns in cortical regions. These findings suggest that the language control network consists of two functional circuits for diverse cognitive purposes.
BRAIN AND LANGUAGE
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Francesca M. Branzi, Clara D. Martin, Emmanuel Biau
Summary: The modulation of neural responses during object recognition tasks remains unclear, particularly regarding the intention to name an object. This study found that lexical access can be observed even in a non-verbal task, suggesting similar neuronal processes in verbal and non-verbal semantic tasks. These findings have significant implications for understanding the relationship between linguistic operations and performance in different types of tasks.
Article
Linguistics
Angela de Bruin, Liv J. Hoversten, Clara D. Martin
Summary: Most research on multilingual language control has focused on bilinguals' L1 and L2. However, little is known about how a trilingual's L2 and L3 interact after initial stages of language learning. This study found that trilinguals experienced more interference from their L3 than their L1 during L2 naming tasks, suggesting a stronger inhibition over their L1.
JOURNAL OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE
(2023)
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Sara Guediche, Eugenia Navarra-Barindelli, Clara D. Martin
Summary: This study examines whether the impact of crosslinguistic effects on auditory word recognition is affected by the quality of the auditory signal (clear and noisy). Spanish-English bilingual listeners performed an auditory lexical decision task in English, and the results show that noise can worsen performance in cognates compared to noncognates when the translation has a high neighborhood density. The findings suggest that noise increases crosslinguistic lexical competition, and the phonological overlap between cognates and noncognates further contributes to the pool of lexical candidates.
JOURNAL OF SPEECH LANGUAGE AND HEARING RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
N. Ventura-Camposa, L. Ferrando-Estevea, A. Miro-Padillab, C. Avila
Summary: Reversal Error (RE) is a common error in algebra problem solving, where students make mistakes in translating sentences from natural language to algebraic language, reversing the relationship between two variables in comparison word problems. The research aimed to identify brain anatomical regions related to the RE phenomenon using sMRI data, and found differences in brain anatomy between the two groups.
Article
Acoustics
Antje Stoehr, Christoforos Souganidis, Trisha B. Thomas, Jessi Jacobsen, Clara D. Martin
Summary: Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, experiments conducted online and with face masks have become common. This study investigated the capture of phonetic detail in speech production during online experiments and experiments with face masks. The results showed differences in voice onset time (VOT), formants, and duration between English and Spanish/Basque speech, as well as some small differences between the conditions. The study concluded that online and mask-based testing are suitable for studying phonetic detail, although precise measurements may vary from traditional laboratory-based research.
JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
(2023)
Editorial Material
Education & Educational Research
Clara D. Martin, Antje Stoehr
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Antonio-Jose Silvestre-Lopez, Daniel Pinazo, Alfonso Barros-Lorcertales
Summary: Inducing a state of meditation through conceptual metaphors in guided meditation instructions can have unique effects on well-being and meta-thinking. The study found that using novel deliberate metaphors in instructions can activate meta-thinking activity and improve the affective state of meditators.
CURRENT PSYCHOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Leah Gosselin, Clara D. Martin, Ana Gonzalez Martin, Sendy Caffarra
Summary: In a study examining the processing of nonnative-accented speech among nonnative listeners, it was found that nonnative listeners exhibited a phonological mismatch negativity (PMN) when attending to speech produced by a native speaker. Furthermore, nonnative listeners also showed a P600 response to all grammatical violations regardless of their typicality or the accent in which they are produced. The study compared native and nonnative listeners and found directionally opposite PMN effects, suggesting the existence of an interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit.
JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
