Two studies (Golestani et al., 2007; Wong et al., 2008) have reported a positive correlation between the ability to perceive foreign speech sounds and the volume of Heschl's gyrus (HG), the structure that houses the auditory cortex. More precisely, participants with larger left Heschl's gyri learned consonantal or tonal contrasts faster than those with smaller HG. These studies leave open the q...

The underlying premise of this study was that the two phonetic subsystems of a bilingual interact. The study tested the hypothesis that the vowels a bilingual produces in a second language (L2) may differ from vowels produced by monolingual native speakers of the L2 as the result of either of two mechanisms: phonetic category assimilation or phonetic category dissimilation. Earlier work reveale...

This study explores the extent to which a bilingual advantage can be observed for three tasks in an established population of fully fluent bilinguals from childhood through adulthood. Welsh-English simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals, as well as English monolinguals, aged 3 years through older adults, were tested on three sets of cognitive and executive function tasks. Bilinguals were ...

Bilingual individuals need effective mechanisms to prevent interference between their languages. Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we present evidence for interference of phonological information from the nontarget language in German-Spanish bilinguals. A tacit picture-naming task was used in which bilinguals and monolinguals had to ma...

Previous masked phonological priming studies with bilinguals whose languages are written in the same script (e.g., Dutch-French bilinguals) strongly suggest that phonological representations for the two languages are integrated, based on the fact that phonological activation created by reading a word in one language facilitates word identification in the other language. The present research exa...

Whether lexical selection is by competition is the subject of current debate in studies of monolingual language production. Here, I consider whether extant data from bilinguals can inform this debate. In bilinguals, theories that accept the notion of lexical selection by competition are divided between those positing competition among all lexical nodes vs. those that restrict competition to nod...

The purpose of this study was to explore the roles of bilingualism and similarity/dissimilarity between first language (L1) and second language (L2) on word reading and phonological awareness of bilingual students. Totally 1614 monolingual and bilingual pupils from Tehran [Persian monolingual (Pm) area], Sanandaj [Kurdish-Persian bilingual (KPb) area] and Tabriz [Turkish-Persian bilingual (TPb)...

Second-language (L2) speech is consistently slower than first-language (L1) speech, and L1 speaking rate varies within- and across-talkers depending on many individual, situational, linguistic, and sociolinguistic factors. It is asked whether speaking rate is also determined by a language-independent talker-specific trait such that, across a group of bilinguals, L1 speaking rate significantly p...

This study examined Australian English speakers’ and Thai-English bilingual speakers’ ability to perceive word-final stops in English and Thai. Thai bilinguals lived in Sydney, Australia, for 5.5 years on average (range = 0.2 – 30.3). In Experiment 1 (categorial discrimination test), Thai bilinguals were able to discriminate stop contrasts differing in place of articulation in their two languag...

Background The typology of word order in Hindi (Subject-Object-Verb, SOV) differs from that English (Subject-Verb-Object, SVO). Bilinguals whose two languages have conflicting provide a unique opportunity to understand how affects language processing. Earlier behavioural and event-related brain potential (ERP) studies with Spanish-Basque bilinguals showed longer reading times more errors the co...