Autobiographical memories retrieved by bicultural Russian-English bilinguals were compared across languages. Results suggest that bilinguals languages may influence cognitive styles, so that when speaking a language associated with a more individualistic culture, bilinguals produce more individualistic narratives, whereas when speaking a language associated with a more collectivist culture, bil...

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...

Two studies are reported comparing the performance of monolingual and bilingual children on tasks requiring different levels of working memory. In the first study, 56 5-year-olds performed a Simon-type task that manipulated working memory demands by comparing conditions based on two rules and four rules and manipulated conflict resolution demands by comparing conditions that included conflict w...

The "bilingual advantage" theory stipulates that constant selection and suppression between 2 languages results in enhanced executive control (EC). Behavioral studies of EC in bilinguals have employed wide-ranging tasks and report some conflicting results. To avoid concerns about tasks, we employed a different approach, measuring gray matter volume (GMV) in adult bilinguals, reasoning that any ...

The authors induced tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) for English words in monolinguals and bilinguals using picture stimuli with cognate (e.g., vampire, which is vampiro in Spanish) and noncognate (e.g., funnel, which is embudo in Spanish) names. Bilinguals had more TOTs than did monolinguals unless the target pictures had translatable cognate names, and bilinguals had fewer TOTs for noncognates...

We study the role played by bilinguals in the competition between two languages and in the formation of a bilingual community. To this aim we introduce a simple three-state model that combines the Minett-Wang model, in which the bilinguals do not affect directly the probability of transition of an individual from monolingualism to bilingualism, and the Baggs-Freedman model, in which such a tran...

Accounts of bilingual cognitive advantages suggest an associative link between cross-linguistic competition and inhibitory control. We investigate this link by examining English-Spanish bilinguals' parallel language activation during auditory word recognition and nonlinguistic Stroop performance. Thirty-one English-Spanish bilinguals and 30 English monolinguals participated in an eye-tracking s...

In two experiments, we examined inhibitory control processes in three groups of bilinguals and trilinguals that differed in nonnative language proficiency and language learning background. German 5- to 8-year-old second-language learners of English, German-English bilinguals, German-English-Language X trilinguals, and 6- to 8-year-old German monolinguals performed the Simon task and the Attenti...

Abstract In adulthood, novel words are commonly encountered in the context of sequential language learning, and to a lesser extent, when learning new word one's native language. Paired-associate (PAL) cross-situational (CSWL) paradigms have been studied separately, under distinct theoretical umbrellas, limiting understanding mechanisms underlying process each. We tested 126 monolinguals 111 bil...

Decades of research have shown that, from an early age, proficient bilinguals can speak each of their two languages separately (similar to monolinguals) or rapidly switch between them (dissimilar to monolinguals). Thus we ask, do monolingual and bilingual brains process language similarly or dissimilarly, and is this affected by the language context? Using an innovative brain imaging technology...