Bilinguals simultaneously activate both languages during word retrieval. False cognates, words overlapping in form but not meaning across languages, typically trigger crosslinguistic interference relative to non-cognates. Crosslinguistic interference resolution can be impaired in bilinguals with stroke-induced aphasia, yet little is known about the neural dynamics supporting these interference resolution processes. We recorded scalp electroencephalography in 21 age-matched controls and five bilinguals with aphasia participating in a picture-word interference paradigm eliciting crosslinguistic interference and a nonlinguistic spatial Stroop task. Bilinguals with aphasia showed lower performance than age-matched controls and crosslinguistic interference was present across both groups. A medial frontal component peaking around 400 ms post stimulus presentation was present in controls across tasks but was absent in the linguistic task in bilinguals with aphasia. This suggests that while bilinguals typically engage the medial frontal cortex to resolve crosslinguistic interference, this mechanism is disrupted in bilinguals with aphasia.

We corroborate findings showing a disparity in one’s willingness to update political beliefs in the face of counterevidence among bilinguals, examining the role of the Foreign Language effect (FLe) on belief maintenance. 133 Liberal English-Spanish bilinguals and 70 English monolinguals showed that belief change on political issues is lesser than on nonpolitical issues following counterevidence. Bilinguals, however, showed greater change in the second language (L2) compared to the first and greater belief change than the monolinguals overall. The second language also led to slower reading and rating times across all conditions, which corresponded with greater belief change. Among bilinguals using their L2, those most likely to show belief change reported having a less meaningful connection to the foreign language.

Past research suggests that novel word learning is facilitated by multimodal contexts, which enrich semantic representations and strengthen memory traces. We explored whether environmental sounds (e.g., a creaking door) facilitate foreign language (FL) word learning. In all, 36 Spanish-speaking natives learned 60 written Spanish–FL word pairs, each accompanied by one of three sound conditions: a congruent sound matching the word pairs’ denotation, a meaningless tone or silence. Participants then completed a semantic priming and lexical decision task where reaction times and accuracy were collected. Performance was similar for congruent sound and tone conditions and, compared to silence, showed lower accuracy in the lexical decision task and a marginal benefit in the semantic task. These findings suggest that environmental sounds can influence learning, with varying effects depending on the task. Results are discussed in terms of current language learning models.

People’s decisions may change when made in a foreign language (FL). Research testing this foreign language effect (FLE) has mostly used scenarios where uncertainty is expunged or reduced to a form of risk, whereas real-life decisions are usually characterized by uncertainty around outcome likelihood. In the current work, we aimed to investigate whether the FLE on decision-making extends to uncertain scenarios. Moreover, as it is still unclear what linguistic and psychological factors contribute to the FLE, we tested the effects of participants’ FL background, cognitive style and risk-taking attitude on decision processes under certain and uncertain conditions. Overall, we report null effects of language context (native versus foreign language) and problem condition (certain versus uncertain prospects) on participants’ choices. In addition, we found that both FL background and decision makers’ traits modulated participants’ choices in a FL, without emerging into the ‘classic’ FLE on decision-making. However, the direction of such effects was complex, and not always compatible with previous FLE theories. In light of these results, our study highlights the need to reconceptualize the FLE and its implications on decision-making.

We investigated the interactive effects of bilingualism and sleep on executive functioning at the behavioral level. We conducted two experiments using two independent samples of bilingual young adults, the Flanker task to assess executive performance, the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index to measure retrospective sleep quality over a one-month period and the Insomnia Severity Index to assess insomnia-related symptoms. In Experiment 1, we registered bilingualism effects on executive performance in poor, but not in good sleepers. In Experiment 2, the magnitude of bilingual effects increased with increasing severity of insomnia symptoms. We conclude that when poor sleep quality and insomnia negatively affect cognitive resources, bilingualism-related cognitive effects emerge more prominently. This suggests higher degrees of bilingualism may compensate detrimental effects of poor sleep quality and insomnia on executive functioning. We suggest that cognitive research in bilingualism and sleep could benefit from controlling for interindividual variability in sleep quality and vice versa.

Exposure to multiple languages may support the development of Theory of Mind (ToM) in neurotypical (NT) and autistic children. However, previous research mainly applied group comparisons between monolingual and bilingual children, and the underlying mechanism of the observed difference remains unclear. The present study, therefore, sheds light on the effect of bilingualism on ToM in both NT and autistic children by measuring language experiences with a continuous operationalization. We measure ToM with a behavioral, linguistically simple tablet-based task, allowing inclusive assessment in autistic children. Analyses revealed no difference between monolingual and bilingual NT and autistic children. However, more balanced exposure to different languages within contexts positively predicted first-order false belief understanding in NT children but not autistic children. Mediation analysis showed that the impact in NT children was a direct effect and not mediated via other cognitive skills.

Recent studies showed contradictory results with regard to the implementation of proactive language control during bilingual sentence production. To add novel evidence to this debate, the current study investigated the blocked language order effect, a measure of proactive language control that has previously only been examined in single-word production. More specifically, bilingual participants completed a network description task, using their L1 in Blocks 1 and 3 and their L2 in Block 2. Results showed increased language intrusions in Block 3 compared to Block 1. This pattern indicates that proactive language control can be implemented during bilingual sentence production.

Early language development has rarely been studied in hearing children with deaf parents who are exposed to both a spoken and a signed language (bimodal bilinguals). This study presents longitudinal data of early communication and vocabulary development in a group of 31 hearing infants exposed to British Sign Language (BSL) and spoken English, at 6 months, 15 months, 24 months and 7 years, in comparison with monolinguals (exposed to English) and unimodal bilinguals (exposed to two spoken languages). No differences were observed in early communication or vocabulary development between bimodal bilinguals and monolinguals, but greater early communicative skills in infancy were found in bimodal bilinguals compared to unimodal bilinguals. Within the bimodal bilingual group, BSL and English vocabulary sizes were positively related. These data provide a healthy picture of early language acquisition in those learning a spoken and signed language simultaneously from birth.

Research demonstrates that English- and French-speaking Canadians differ in a wide range of attitudes, including their political preferences, their vision of the Canadian federation and their national identity. In this article, we ask whether individual bilingualism is associated with a decrease in the attitudinal differences between anglophones and francophones. Using survey data collected in the summer of 2023, we attempt to determine whether knowledge of the French language is related to an increase in the responsiveness of English-speaking citizens toward issues that typically preoccupy French-speaking Canadians. Our analyses suggest that knowledge of French as a second language is strongly linked to the political preferences of Canadian citizens but does not bridge the attitudinal gap between Canada’s two main language groups. These results highlight the relevance of considering the different languages that people speak—and not just their mother tongue—to understand their political attitudes.

Prospective memory (PM) relies on switching processes to change from the ongoing activity to the future intention. Similarly, bilinguals in dual-language contexts are frequently required to switch between languages. In this study, we experimentally simulated the exposure to a dual-language context in a sample of single-language context bilinguals to explore the effect of language switching on PM. Thus, a group of bilinguals practiced language switching previous to the PM task (practice group) and were compared to a homologous group that did not receive this practice (control group). Event-related potential results indicated that the practice group showed greater wave amplitudes than the control group in the components associated to monitoring and switching processes. Whereas, this practice did not affect the retrospective components associated with the retrieval of the intention. This suggested that the interactional context in which bilinguals are immersed modulates their cognitive control strategies in charge of recalling future intentions.

Unbalanced bilinguals often exhibit reduced emotionality in their non-native language, although the underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. This fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) study investigated neural differences during a silent reading task where late Spanish–English bilinguals read happy, fearful and neutral fiction passages in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages. We observed a significant language-by-emotionality interaction in the left hippocampus while participants read fearful texts, indicating a stronger limbic system response in L1. Functional connectivity analyses revealed lower coupling between semantic (left anterior temporal lobe) and limbic (left amygdala) regions when reading fearful texts in L2, suggesting less integrated emotional processing. Overall, these findings show that emotional reading in unbalanced bilinguals is strongly influenced by language, with a higher emotional response and more integrated connectivity between semantic and affective areas in the native language.

A central question in foreign language (LX) learning is how vocabulary acquisition is affected by using image versus orthographic referents. According to the picture superiority effect (PSE) and bilingual/dual coding theory (b/DCT), images should lead to better novel word encoding and retrieval. We tested this prediction using behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures. Thirty Polish native speakers learned 40 LX (artificial language) words using either image or L1/orthographic referents. After 24 hours, participants were tested using a translational priming paradigm in congruent and incongruent training-testing modalities. Behavioral results showed higher accuracy and faster responses for LX words learned and tested with images, in line with the PSE and b/DCT. ERP results revealed smaller Late Positive Complex (LPC) amplitudes for words preceded by image compared to lexical primes, likely reflecting less cognitively demanding lexical retrieval. These results provide converging evidence that visual referents provide a more salient modality for L2 learning.

Word frequency has long been considered an essential aspect of psycholinguistic theory. However, research has shown that measures of contextual and semantic diversity provide a better fit to lexical decision and naming data than word frequency. The current study examines the role of contextual and semantic diversity in picture naming ability across aging and bilingualism. A picture naming experiment was conducted with six groups of participants: younger monolinguals, older monolinguals, younger L1 English bilinguals, older L1 English bilinguals, younger L2 English bilinguals and older L2 English bilinguals. Consistent with previous findings, the contextual diversity measure accounted for more variance in the picture naming data than word frequency. Furthermore, older adults and L1 English bilinguals were more sensitive to semantic diversity information, while younger adults and L2 English bilinguals relied more on age of acquisition in their lexical organization.

This study examined the variability of language profiles in Spanish–English bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). The data included 529 children between the ages of 5 and 10 years. Eighty-eight of these children were identified as having DLD. A latent profile analysis was conducted based on children’s morphosyntax and semantics performance in Spanish and English. The optimal model identified five different profiles, illustrating the heterogeneity in bilingual development. Children with DLD were observed across all profiles, but most were classified in the only two profiles where lower morphosyntax than semantic performance was observed across languages. These results show the variability in both bilingual children with and without DLD. Additionally, the hallmark deficit of DLD in morphosyntax was confirmed, with the morphological weakness being observed in each of the bilingual children’s languages. Children’s background factors (age, maternal education and language exposure) were associated with profile characteristics.

Language mixing is a common phenomenon in the language input of bilingual children. However, the relation between the frequency of parental language mixing and children’s language development remains unclear. The present study investigates the relation between language mixing as observed in daylong audio recordings (LENA) and as reported by parents in the questionnaire for Quantifying Bilingual Experience (Q-BEx) and children’s language outcomes in the majority and minority language. Participants were 52 3-to-5-year-old Polish-Dutch and Turkish-Dutch children in the Netherlands and Bayesian informative hypothesis evaluations were applied. In 14 out of 15 regression analyses, the LENA and Q-BEx measures yielded similar associations with children’s language outcomes. Parental language mixing was not related to majority language outcomes, but a negative relation was found with expressive vocabulary in the minority language. Longitudinal studies are needed to pinpoint the directionality of this negative relation.