Article
Psychology, Mathematical
Athanasia Papastergiou, Vasileios Pappas, Eirini Sanoudaki
Summary: This study introduces a novel method to evaluate the performance of bilingual and monolingual children in executive functioning skills. Results indicate that bilingual children have superior technical efficiency compared to monolingual children.
BEHAVIOR RESEARCH METHODS
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Kalinka Timmer, Zofia Wodniecka, Albert Costa
Summary: The study investigated the impact of bilingual context on attentional mechanisms, finding that the alerting and executive control networks are enhanced in a bilingual environment, while the orienting network remains unaffected. Additionally, language switching in a bilingual context has an alerting effect, impacting future visual processing.
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Margaret M. Kehoe, Emilie Cretton
Summary: This study examined intraword variability in 40 typically developing French-speaking monolingual and bilingual children, finding that factors influencing variability rate include age, gender, language ability, among others. Results showed that intraword variability was lower in French compared to English, consistent with phonological differences between the two languages.
JOURNAL OF SPEECH LANGUAGE AND HEARING RESEARCH
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Edith Brignoni-Perez, Anna A. Matejko, Nasheed Jamal, Guinevere F. Eden
Summary: The study compared brain activity in English monolinguals and Spanish-English early bilinguals during arithmetic problem-solving using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results showed no effect of bilingual language experience on brain activity related to arithmetic, suggesting early bilingualism does not influence the neuroanatomy of simple arithmetic.
HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Kelly A. Vaughn, My V. H. Nguyen, Juliana Ronderos, Arturo E. Hernandez
Summary: This study utilized data from the ABCD Study to examine cortical thickness differences between bilingual and monolingual children. It found that bilinguals had thinner cortex than monolinguals in various regions, and within bilinguals, greater English use was associated with thicker frontal and parietal cortical regions, while greater English vocabulary was associated with thicker frontal and temporal cortical regions. These findings replicate previous research and highlight unexplained cortical thickness differences between bilinguals and monolinguals.
Article
Neurosciences
Guoqin Ding, Kathleen A. J. Mohr, Carla Orellana, Allison S. Hancock, Stephanie Juth, Rebekah Wada, Ronald B. Gillam
Summary: This study examined the use of fNIRS in sentence processing and the performance of bilingual children and adults in syntactic tasks. Results showed the influence of syntactic knowledge on sentence processing, with simultaneous bilinguals exhibiting higher hemodynamic responses in specific brain regions.
FRONTIERS IN HUMAN NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Edith Brignoni-Perez, Nasheed Jamal, Guinevere F. Eden
Summary: This study compared brain activity and functional connectivity during word processing in Spanish-English early bilingual adults and English monolingual adults, and found no significant differences in brain activity between the two groups. However, in terms of functional connectivity, bilinguals showed stronger connections between two regions associated with reading, which were functionally connected to those inside and outside of the reading network.
HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Kehui Zhang, Xin Sun, Chi-Lin Yu, Rachel L. Eggleston, Rebecca A. Marks, Nia Nickerson, Valeria C. Caruso, Xiao-Su Hu, Twila Tardif, Tai-Li Chou, James R. Booth, Ioulia Kovelman
Summary: During literacy development, children learn to recognize word sounds and meanings in print, but this process is different for alphabetic and character-based orthographies. A study involving bilingual and monolingual children showed that the task that was more central to reading in a specific orthography elicited less brain activation. Bilingual children showed less activation during phonology but more activation during morphology compared to monolinguals. These findings suggest that both the structural characteristics and literacy experiences with a given language can influence children's emerging brain networks for learning to read.
HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING
(2023)
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Margaret Kehoe, Marie Philippart de Foy
Summary: This study analyzed the articulation and perception of alveolar and alveopalatal fricatives in monolingual and bilingual French-speaking children. The results showed that several factors, including age, gender, bilingualism, and word/sound-related factors, influenced the spectral moments and duration of fricatives in children.
JOURNAL OF SPEECH LANGUAGE AND HEARING RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Samuel Kyle Jones, Jodie Davies-Thompson, Jeremy Tree
Summary: The relationship between bilingualism and cognitive functions is currently under debate, with conflicting results from studies questioning whether the differences are due to varying definitions of bilingualism or methodological limitations in measurement. Studies focusing on specific experimental paradigms have reported potential bilingual differences, but a broader approach in this study found no evidence that bilingualism leads to differential cognitive performance. Further research using refined machine learning methods is recommended to explore the complex relationship between bilingualism and cognition.
FRONTIERS IN HUMAN NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Qiongge Li, Luca Pasquini, Gino Del Ferraro, Madeleine Gene, Kyung K. Peck, Hernan A. Makse, Andrei Holodny
Summary: The study showed that bilingualism affects clinical fMRI language tasks, and connectivity metrics can characterize differences in bilingual networks to establish a benchmark for patient care.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2021)
Article
Linguistics
Laura Spinu
Summary: Recent findings suggest that bilinguals have enhanced phonetic and phonological learning ability compared with monolinguals. This study investigates memory mechanisms, specifically auditory sensory memory, in these two groups of speakers to explore the advantages of bilinguals in language learning.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUALISM
(2023)
Article
Linguistics
Abhijeet Patra, Arpita Bose, Theodoros Marinis
Summary: The study found that bilinguals show less semantic context effect and more semantic facilitation, as well as better performance in terms of interference effects for longest naming latencies in linguistic tasks, challenging the notion that bilinguals are disadvantaged compared to monolinguals. This study provides evidence for the advantage of bilingualism in linguistic tasks where executive control demands are higher.
JOURNAL OF NEUROLINGUISTICS
(2021)
Article
Linguistics
Sonya Trawick, Trevor Bero
Summary: This study examines the gender assignment of English nouns in Spanish discourse by bilinguals using a variationist analysis and logistic regression. Results show that a variety of constraints, including Analogical Gender, Phonological Shape, Syntactic Role, and Determiner Definiteness, impact gender assignment in bilingual discourse. The originality lies in offering a unified analysis of these constraints from a usage-based approach.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUALISM
(2022)
Article
Linguistics
Sarvenaz Ostadghafour, Ellen Bialystok
Summary: The study found that bilingual children perform better on complex linguistic tasks that require executive function, and they are more accurate in understanding the meaning of spoken sentences in the presence of distraction. Furthermore, performance in these tasks is calibrated to the degree of bilingualism, with higher levels associated with better performance.
APPLIED PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
(2021)
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Max R. Freeman, Henrike K. Blumenfeld, Matthew T. Carlson, Viorica Marian
Summary: The study found that bilinguals are influenced by their native language when processing a second language, especially in tasks with high metalinguistic awareness demands. Results indicated that bilinguals were more likely to be influenced by the phonotactic constraints of their native language when identifying second language words starting with s+consonant clusters.
LANGUAGE AND SPEECH
(2022)
Article
Linguistics
Max R. Freeman, Viorica Marian
Summary: This study examines how input modality and L2 proficiency influence the activation of L1 phonotactic constraints in bilinguals during L2 processing. The findings suggest that bilinguals with lower L2 proficiency are more likely to access L1 phonotactic constraints during L2 visual word processing.
STUDIES IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
(2022)
Article
Linguistics
Sayuri Hayakawa, Yue Pan, Viorica Marian
Summary: The study shows that processing medical scenarios in a second language, English, leads to the perception of medical conditions being easier to cure, less physically painful, and less emotionally distressing. Additionally, using English also increases endorsement of beliefs more consistent with individualistic norms.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUALISM
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Sirada Rochanavibhata, Viorica Marian
Summary: The study revealed significant cross-cultural differences in communication styles between American and Thai mothers during toy play with their children. American mothers focused on narrative skills while Thai mothers emphasized vocabulary learning. Children from the two cultural backgrounds exhibited distinct conversation patterns, with American children producing more evaluative statements and Thai children repeating their mothers' utterances more often.
LANGUAGE LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT
(2022)
Article
Linguistics
Kelly T. Macdonald, David J. Francis, Arturo E. Hernandez, Anny P. Castilla-Earls, Paul T. Cirino
Summary: The study examined the characteristics of language skills among at-risk EL students and their impact on cognitive and academic outcomes. The results showed a two-factor structure of English and Spanish language skills in this population, three profiles of students, and mixed support for objective and subjective measures of language usage.
BILINGUALISM-LANGUAGE AND COGNITION
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Ashley Chung-Fat-Yim, Peiyao Chen, Alice H. D. Chan, Viorica Marian
Summary: This study investigated the way in which bicultural bilinguals evaluate multisensory emotions. The results showed that bicultural bilinguals relied more on the visual modality when processing Western audio-visual emotion information, while their reliance on the auditory modality increased with more daily exposure to East-Asian cultures when processing East-Asian audio-visual emotion information. Greater interference was observed when Asian faces were paired with English speech compared to Caucasian faces paired with Mandarin speech.
MOTIVATION AND EMOTION
(2022)
Editorial Material
Education & Educational Research
Viorica Marian
Article
Ethnic Studies
Peiyao Chen, Ashley Chung-Fat-Yim, Taomei Guo, Viorica Marian
Summary: During multisensory emotion perception, the attention devoted to visual and auditory modalities varies depending on cultural background. This study examined how cultural familiarity influences multisensory emotion perception in Eastern and Western cultures, as well as the underlying processes accounting for cultural differences in modality dominance. Results showed that American participants were more influenced by visual modality in familiar cultural context, while Chinese participants were more influenced by auditory modality. Both groups showed increased visual dominance and only the Chinese group simultaneously showed decreased auditory dominance in unfamiliar cultural context. Therefore, cultural background and input familiarity interact to influence modality dominance in multisensory emotion perception.
CULTURAL DIVERSITY & ETHNIC MINORITY PSYCHOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Matias Fernandez-Duque, Sayuri Hayakawa, Viorica Marian
Summary: Language diversity plays a role in higher cognitive functions such as memory, with multilinguals being an important group for studying the interaction between language and cognition.
Editorial Material
Education & Educational Research
Viorica Marian
Article
Psychology
Ashley Chung-Fat-Yim, Susan C. C. Bobb, Noriko Hoshino, Viorica Marian
Summary: This study investigated the neural mechanisms of attention during nonverbal sound discrimination and found that bilinguals initially increased attention to identify different tones, but used fewer cognitive resources for infrequent stimuli at later stages of processing compared to monolinguals. Additionally, increased exposure to the native language led to larger ERP effects. These findings suggest that bilingualism shapes perceptual processes and alters sustained attention, with implications for perception and learning.
TRANSLATIONAL ISSUES IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Tehila Nugiel, Damion Demeter, Mackenzie E. Mitchell, Annacarolina Garza, Arturo E. Hernandez, Jenifer Juranek, Jessica A. Church
Summary: The study found that the connectivity between regions of interest (ROIs), especially the cognitive control ROIs, were positively related to reading skills but not math skills in English learners (ELs). This suggests that the cognitive control brain systems play a central role in reading for ELs, and individualized brain function localization may clarify brain-behavior relationships.
Article
Linguistics
Peiyao Chen, Ashley Chung-Fat-Yim, Viorica Marian
Summary: Emotion perception often involves the integration of visual and auditory information, with culture shaping modality interference in multisensory emotion perception. Daily exposure to a new culture and length of cultural immersion impact emotion perception in bilingual immigrants, showing different patterns of modality interference based on cultural immersion duration.
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Kelly A. Vaughn, Emily M. Watlington, Paulina Linares Abrego, Benjamin J. Tamber-Rosenau, Arturo E. Hernandez
Summary: The left DLPFC plays an important role in language control for bilinguals, but stimulating this area does not benefit nonlinguistic control.
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-GENERAL
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Arturo E. Hernandez, Jean P. Bodet, Kevin Gehm, Shutian Shen
Summary: The study found that around 17 years old is a critical period for the most effective acquisition of a second language, with the late childhood to late adolescence age range being crucial for learning an L2. The results can be conceptualized by emergentist models of language acquisition where behavior and brain interactively reorganize across development.