We investigated the behavioral and brain responses (ERPs) of bilingual word recognition to three fundamental psycholinguistic factors, frequency, morphology, and lexicality, in early bilinguals vs. monolinguals. Earlier behavioral studies have reported larger frequency effects in bilinguals' nondominant vs. dominant language and in some studies also when compared to corresponding monolinguals. ...

Four groups of 10 subjects each (English and Spanish monolinguals, and two groups of Spanish/English bilinguals) produced Spanish or English sentences at speaking rates designated 'normal', 'slow', and 'fast'. Voice onset time (VOT) was measured in word-initial tokens of /p/ and /t/ found in sentence-initial, -medial, and -final words. The four groups produced comparable changes in sentence dur...

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of speaking rate changes on the perception of English stop consonants by four groups of subjects: English and Spanish monolinguals, 'early' Spanish/English bilinguals who learned English in childhood, and 'late' bilinguals who learned English in adulthood. Subjects identified, and then later rated for goodness as exemplars of the English /p/ catego...

Children acquire their native language according to a well-defined time frame. Surprisingly, although children raised in bilingual environments have to learn roughly twice as much about language as their monolingual peers, the speed of acquisition is comparable in monolinguals and bilinguals. Here, we show that preverbal 12-month-old bilingual infants have become more flexible at learning speec...

Bilingual first language learners face unique challenges that may influence the rate and order of early word learning relative to monolinguals. A comparison of the productive vocabularies of 435 children between the ages of 6 months and 7 years-181 of which were bilingual English learners-found that monolinguals learned both English words and all-language concepts faster than bilinguals. Howeve...

The aim of this study was to compare oral fluency strategies of Spanish-English bilinguals in Spanish and English with Spanish and English monolinguals when given either phonemic (alphabetical) or semantic categorical cues. The use of grammatical words (words that play a grammatical function relating words within a sentence) or content words (words that have a meaning such as nouns, verbs, and ...

When bilinguals process written language, they show delays in accessing lexical items relative to monolinguals. The present study investigated whether this effect extended to spoken language comprehension, examining the processing of sentences with either low or high semantic constraint in both first and second languages. English-German bilinguals, German-English bilinguals and English monoling...

When bilinguals process written language, they show delays in accessing lexical items relative to monolinguals. The present study investigated whether this effect extended to spoken language comprehension, examining the processing of sentences with either low or high semantic constraint in both first and second languages. English-German bilinguals, German-English bilinguals and English monoling...

The goal of this research was to examine word retention in bilinguals and monolinguals. Long-term word retention is an essential part of vocabulary learning. Previous studies have documented that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in terms of retrieving newly-exposed words. Yet, little is known about whether or to what extent bilinguals are different from monolinguals in word retention. Partici...

Bilingual speakers generally manifest slower word recognition than monolinguals. We investigated the consequences of the word processing speed on semantic access in bilinguals. The paradigm involved a stream of English words and pseudowords presented in succession at a constant rate. English-Welsh bilinguals and English monolinguals were asked to count the number of letters in pseudowords and a...