Abstract Does the brain of a bilingual process language differently from that of a monolingual? We compared how bilinguals and monolinguals recruit classic language brain areas in response to a language task and asked whether there is a "neural signature" of bilingualism. Highly proficient and early-exposed adult Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals participated. During functiona...

Previous research has suggested a lack of plasticity for second-language (L2) perceptual learning even in individuals who learned their L2 in childhood. This study examined the discrimination of English vowels by native (L1) Spanish speakers who learned English in childhood. Results showed that early bilinguals’ performance was much more similar to that of English monolinguals (though differenc...

With the renewed interest in the field of second language learning for the knowledge of collocating words, research findings in favour of holistic processing of formulaic language could support the idea that these language units facilitate efficient language processing. This study investigated the difference between processing of a first language (L1) and a second language (L2) of congruent col...

background and aim: today, bilingualism is a developing phenomenon which half of the world population is bilingual. auditory system is the main route to language learning, so it is expected that bilingualism has an effect on functions of the auditory system. auditory memory is one of the auditory processes which is a cornerstone of linguistic skills and learning process growth, so that, it has ...

It is often assumed that young bilinguals are lexically delayed in comparison to monolinguals. A comprehensive comparison of comprehension and production vocabulary in 31 firstborn bilingual and 30 matched monolingual children fails to find empirical foundation for this assumption. Several raters completed Dutch and French adaptations of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories for c...

Previous research suggests that bilinguals demonstrate superior cognitive control processes than monolinguals. The goal of the current investigation was to examine whether this "bilingual advantage" is observed in a language processing task that requires inhibition, i.e., lexical ambiguity processing. Monolingual and bilingual participants read sentences that biased the reading of a terminal ho...

We tested the hypothesis that early bilinguals use language-control brain areas more than monolinguals when performing non-linguistic executive control tasks. We do so by exploring the brain activity of early bilinguals and monolinguals in a task-switching paradigm using an embedded critical trial design. Crucially, the task was designed such that the behavioural performance of the two groups w...

In this paper, we take a closer look at the MT evaluation process from a glass-box perspective using eye-tracking. We analyze two aspects of the evaluation task – the background of evaluators (monolingual or bilingual) and the sources of information available, and we evaluate them using time and consistency as criteria. Our findings show that monolinguals are slower but more consistent than bil...

Bilinguals often outperform monolinguals on nonverbal tasks that require resolving conflict from competing alternatives. The regular need to select a target language is argued to enhance executive control. We investigated whether this enhancement stems from a general effect of bilingualism (the representation of two languages) or from a modality constraint that forces language selection. Bimoda...