Grammatical processing in a second language (L2) that is learned in adulthood has been shown to differ from processing in a first/native language (L1). Clahsen and Felser's (2006) landmark article provided the first comprehensive account of these differences. According to their shallow structure hypothesis (SSH), L2 learners, unlike L1 speakers, do not compute abstract, hierarchical representations during online sentence comprehension; instead, they rely on lexical, semantic, and pragmatic information to build ‘good enough’ representations. However, native-like processing is attainable – with sufficient L2 proficiency – for word-level processing and morphosyntactic feature processing between locally related words. Clahsen and Felser's article spurred a prolific volume of research over the last decade. Some findings support the SSH, whereas others favor the competing claim that L1/L2 differences result from capacity-based limitations.

This study reports results from a series of masked priming experiments investigating early automatic processes involved in the visual recognition of English bimorphemic compounds in native and non-native processing. Results show that NSs produced robust and statistically equivalent masked priming effects with semantically transparent (e.g., toothbrush-TOOTH) and opaque (e.g., honeymoon-HONEY) compound primes, but no priming with orthographic controls (e.g., restaurant-REST), irrespective of constituent position. Similarly, advanced Chinese learners of English also produced robust and statistically equivalent priming effects with transparent and opaque compound primes in both positions. However, a clear orthographic priming effect was observed in the word-initial overlap position but no such effect in the word-final position. We argue that L2 compound priming originates from a different source from form priming. We conclude that these findings lend support to the sublexical morpho-orthographic decomposition mechanism underlying early English compound recognition not only in L1 but also in L2 processing.

In this research, 5- and 6-year-old monolingual (English) and heritage language (English–Spanish, English–Urdu) children completed a grammaticality judgment test to assess their awareness of grammatically correct and incorrect morphosyntactic structures in English. Results demonstrated that language group differences were minimized when heritage language children exhibited average receptive vocabulary proficiency for the sample, and when more difficult morphosyntactic structures were assessed. In this middle range, only two group differences were found. Our findings highlight the need to consider factors such as receptive vocabulary when assessing morphosyntactic awareness and language group differences.

I had several goals in writing my keynote “Exposure and input in bilingual development”. The first was to emphasize that there are two components to the study of environmental effects on language learning. The first is the stuff ‘out there’ (exposure) that we want to observe and count and whose effects we want to assess; the second is the internal, mentally represented stuff (my input) that is logically related to a particular learning problem. Both exposure and input are indissociable from assumptions about what language acquisition mechanisms do and the nature of linguistic cognition. Accordingly, for example, a decision to count ‘words’ in child-directed speech (CDS) or via a parental questionnaire is not an innocent one. Not only can one find radically different views on what a ‘word’ is (Krause, Bosch & Clahsen, 2015), one can find work that questions the need to postulate such a unit at all (see discussion in MacWhinney, 2000). It follows that adopting a clear position, about which abstract mentally represented elements are crucial cues to learning some phenomenon, is an essential step in deciding what to count in CDS.

This study examined whether training in translation/interpretation leads to a reliance on a ‘vertical’ translation strategy in which the source language text is comprehended before the message is reformulated. Students of translation/interpreting and untrained bilinguals were given an idiom translation judgment task with literal (form and meaning) or figurative equivalents (meaning only). Dependent measures included the time taken to comprehend the first presented sentence and the accuracy and speed of judging if the second presented sentence was a translation of the first sentence. The groups did not differ in their speed of reading the first presented sentence but translation verification times differed by group and translation type: untrained bilinguals were significantly faster at verifying literal than figurative translations while trained bilinguals were equally fast for the two types. The pattern of findings is consistent with the view that training in translation fosters a processing-for-meaning-before reformulating, or vertical, translation strategy.

Many bimodal bilinguals are immersed in a spoken language-dominant environment from an early age and, unlike unimodal bilinguals, do not necessarily divide their language use between languages. Nonetheless, early ASL–English bilinguals retrieved fewer words in a letter fluency task in their dominant language compared to monolingual English speakers with equal vocabulary level. This finding demonstrates that reduced vocabulary size and/or frequency of use cannot completely account for bilingual disadvantages in verbal fluency. Instead, retrieval difficulties likely reflect between-language interference. Furthermore, it suggests that the two languages of bilinguals compete for selection even when they are expressed with distinct articulators.

Simultaneous interpretation is a cognitively demanding process that requires a high level of language management. Previous studies on bilinguals have suggested that extensive practice managing two languages leads to enhancements in cognitive control. Thus, interpreters may be expected to show benefits beyond those seen in bilinguals, either as an extension of previously-seen benefits or in areas specific to interpretation. The present study examined professional interpreters (N = 23) and matched multilinguals (N = 21) on memory tests, the color-word Stroop task, the Attention Network Test, and a non-linguistic task-switching paradigm. The interpreters did not show advantages in conflict resolution or switching cost where bilingual benefits have been noted. However, an interpretation-specific advantage emerged on the mixing cost in the task-switching paradigm. Additionally, the interpreters had larger verbal and spatial memory spans. Interpreters do not continue to garner benefits from bilingualism, but they do appear to possess benefits specific to their experience with simultaneous interpretation.

Four-year-old English speakers (N = 48) who were monolingual, bilingual, or regularly exposed to a second language were taught what they were told were foreign labels for familiar and novel objects. When task demands were low, there was no difference in word learning among the three groups. However, when task demands were higher, bilinguals learned more words than monolingual children, and exposed children's performance fell between the two. These findings indicate that the bilingual word learning advantage seen in adults may begin as early as the preschool years.

Analyzing L2 sentence processing in terms of cue-based memory retrieval is promising. But this useful general framework has yet to become a specific theory of L1-L2 differences.

Contrastive pitch accents benefit native English speakers’ memory for discourse by enhancing a representation of a specific relevant contrast item (Fraundorf et al., 2010). This study examines whether and how second language (L2) listeners differ in how contrastive accents affect their encoding and representation of a discourse, as compared to native speakers. Using the same materials as Fraundorf et al. (2010), we found that low and mid proficiency L2 learners showed no memory benefit from contrastive accents. High proficiency L2 learners revealed some sensitivity to contrastive accents, but failed to fully integrate information conveyed by contrastive accents into their discourse representation. The results suggest that L2 listeners’ non-native performance in processing contrastive accents, observed in this and other prior studies, may be attributed at least in part to a difference in the depth of processing of the information conveyed by contrastive accents.

The cognate facilitation effect (i.e., a processing advantage for cognates compared to non-cognates) is an evidence of language non-selectivity in bilingual lexical access. Several studies using behavioral or electrophysiological measures have demonstrated that this effect is modulated by the degree of formal overlap between translations. However, it has never been tested with a psychophysiological measure such as pupillometry. In the present study we replicate the cognate facilitation effect by examining reaction times and pupil responses. Our results endorse pupillometry as a promising tool for bilingual research, and confirm the modulation of the cognate effect by the degree of formal similarity.

Cunnings’ keynote article outlines a novel approach to native/non-native differences in on-line language comprehension by proposing that L2 speakers are more susceptible to cue-based retrieval interference than natives. Cue-based, parallel access approaches to processing have been prominent in monolingual studies for around 15 years now, but have barely been applied to L2/bilingual processing. We are particularly excited about the possibilities that this approach offers for understanding L1, L2 and bilingual processing, as well as individual differences. In this commentary, we focus on two issues: 1) whether the existing evidence for cue-based retrial mechanisms in L2 processing support a deficit model, as Cunnings seems to claim, and 2) how individual differences may explain both similarities and differences in L1 and L2 processing.

In communication, different forms of language combinations are possible for bimodal bilinguals, who use a spoken and a signed language. They can either switch from one language to another (language switching) or produce a word and a sign simultaneously (language blending). The present study examines language control mechanisms in language switching and simultaneous bimodal language production, comparing single-response (German or German Sign Language) and dual-response trials (Blend of the German word and the German Sign Language sign). There were three pure blocks, one for each Target-response (German, German Sign Language, Blend), as well as mixed blocks, in which participants switched between all three Target-responses. We observed language mixing costs, switch costs and dual-response costs. Further, the data pattern showed a specific dual-response advantage for switching into a Blend (i.e., a dual-response trial), indicating the specific nature of a blended response in bimodal bilingual language production.

Twelve-month-old bilingual and monolingual infants show comparable phonetic discrimination skills for vowels belonging to their native language/s. However, Catalan–Spanish bilingual toddlers, but not Catalan monolinguals, appear insensitive to a vowel mispronunciation in familiar words involving the Catalan–Specific /e/-/ɛ/ contrast. Here bilingual and monolingual toddlers were tested in a challenging minimal-pair word learning task involving that contrast (i.e., [bepi]-[bɛpi]). Both groups succeeded, suggesting that bilinguals can successfully use their phonetic categories to phonologically encode novel words. It is argued that bilinguals’ impoverished vowel representations in familiar words might be the result of experiential input factors (e.g., cognate words and mispronunciations due to accented speech).

Behavioral and neural correlates of cross-linguistic transfer (CLT) effects were studied at the word level, in a pair of linguistically distant languages. Twelve adult Persian speakers were tested on an overt picture-naming task in L2, during event-related fMRI scanning after an intensive computerized French lexical-learning program including cognates, clangs and non-cognate-non-clangs.

In distant language pairs, naming in L2 is effortful and demanding. Thus, it is less automatic, and must recruit more neural resources for lexical retrieval, and articulatory processing; it also requires more attention and cognitive control, even in cases where there is phonological overlap. Activation observed with different word types reflects the interaction of language and other cognitive systems including executive control and working memory circuits, even with phonologically similar and highly consolidated words. Moreover, phonologically similar words (cognates and clangs) seem to involve the implicit memory processing, whereas phonologically distant words (non-cognate-non-clangs) seem to require explicit memory.

The Flanker and Number Stroop tasks, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) were adopted to examine how bilingualism and public speaking training would contribute to cognitive control differences among young adults. Four groups of participants (of similar cultural and language backgrounds) were tested: monolinguals, general bilinguals, L1 public speaking bilinguals, and L2 public speaking bilinguals. Both ANOVA and multiple regression analyses showed that public speaking experience (esp. in L2) significantly contributed to conflict monitoring as tested in the global reaction times in the Flanker and Number Stroop tasks, whereas bilingualism (L2 verbal fluency, to be more specific) significantly contributed to mental set shifting as tested in the WCST. These results suggest that specific aspects of language experience, either in L1 or in L2, may incur enhancement in specific aspects of cognitive control, which has implications for bilingual advantage research.