Calendar calculations, the process of computing the target day or month, exhibit peculiar differences across languages. In systems like English, calendar labels are largely opaque (Tuesday, August), which invites calculations to rely more heavily on verbal listing. In transparent systems, like Chinese, habitual labeling of calendar terms numerically (Tuesday = Day 2, August = Month 8) facilitates fast numerical operations instead of verbal listing. This study examines the effects that different levels of transparency of the calendar naming system may have on calculations in the speakers’ first and second language. Chinese–English bilinguals were tested alongside English and Chinese controls. Forced-choice calendar calculations (day, month, hour and year) and self-reported strategies were used as tasks to tap into participants’ calculation speed, accuracy and temporal reasoning. In the calculation questions, we manipulated Distance (short/long), Direction (forward/backward), Input (linguistic/numerical) and Boundary (within/across). More complex Month calculations significantly differed across groups while easier day calculations did not. The English group reported reliance on verbal listing while the Chinese and the Bilingual groups preferred numerical reasoning. These findings bring new evidence for linguistic relativity in the form of modulations of calendar processing speed changing as a function of linguistic transparency, input type and task demand.

The present study compared both linguistic and non-linguistic representations of motion events in Korean–English sequential bilinguals sampled at varying proficiency levels (N = 80) against each other and against those of Korean and English monolinguals (N = 15 each). The bilinguals' L2 descriptions of motion events showed that their encoding patterns were influenced by both the first language (L1) and second language (L2) and also displayed unique behaviors that were not found in either monolingual norm. The non-verbal results on a triads-matching task demonstrated that bilinguals' categorization patterns followed L1-based patterns rather than L2-based patterns. The extent to which these bilinguals employed L2 encoding patterns in their motion event descriptions was largely modulated by L2 proficiency, whereas length of immersion experience in an L2-speaking country emerged as the only predictor of their non-verbal categorization patterns. These findings suggest that the bilinguals' verbal behavior seems more susceptible to change than their non-verbal behavior.

Previous studies demonstrate that lexical coding of colour influences categorical perception of colour, such that participants are more likely to rate two colours to be more similar if they belong to the same linguistic category (Roberson et al., 2000, 2005). Recent work shows changes in Greek–English bilinguals' perception of within and cross-category stimulus pairs as a function of the availability of the relevant colour terms in semantic memory, and the amount of time spent in the L2-speaking country (Athanasopoulos, 2009). The present paper extends Athanasopoulos' (2009) investigation by looking at cognitive processing of colour in Japanese–English bilinguals. Like Greek, Japanese contrasts with English in that it has an additional monolexemic term for ‘light blue’ (mizuiro). The aim of the paper is to examine to what degree linguistic and extralinguistic variables modulate Japanese–English bilinguals' sensitivity to the blue/light blue distinction. Results showed that those bilinguals who used English more frequently distinguished blue and light blue stimulus pairs less well than those who used Japanese more frequently. These results suggest that bilingual cognition may be dynamic and flexible, as the degree to which it resembles that of either monolingual norm is, in this case, fundamentally a matter of frequency of language use.